No less, and more inhospitable I;
And to my ills were added this beside,
That this my home were called ‘Guest-hating Hall.’
Yea, and myself have proved him kindliest host
Whene’er to Argos’ thirsty plain I fared.“[[29]]
But now there comes in sight a procession bearing burial gifts, headed by the old parents of the king. At their entrance there is an abrupt change of tone, a descent from the ideal standpoint, and a violent clash of character which make for acrid realism in the scene which follows. It is one of mutual recrimination between father and son, each blaming the other for the cowardice which the onlooker can perceive in both. As the procession halts before his door, Admetus drops to the dead level of existence from the height of great emotion. He hates the formal troop of mourners: the gifts by which they seek to honour the peerless spirit of his wife: the trite phrases of consolation which are belied in the uttering by the hardness of voice and eye. He hates the very presence of his father, reminding him, as it does, that they both of them alike have cowered for safety under the sacrifice of a woman. And when, in the selfishness of an unlovely old age, Pheres praises the act of Alcestis because it leaves him the protection of his son, the wrath and shame in the heart of Admetus break out into unreasonable railing against his father.
“Thou grieve!—Thou shouldst have grieved in my death hour!
Thou stoodst aloof—the old, didst leave the young
To die:—and wilt thou wail upon this corpse?“[[29]]
The retort is obvious, and pointed with caustic truth: Pheres does not spare his son, and although there is fierce malignance in his speech, there is justice in it too.