The Anodos of Alcestis

Abstract

This paper deals with the voluntary death of Euripides’s heroine, Alcestis, who saves her husband’s life by accepting death for herself and then succeeds in returning to life. The study compares similar myths which replicate Orpheus’s journey in the underworld and in which husbands try to get back their spouses from death with more or less success. The study deals with the mythical perils with which the Underworld threatens those who dare enter, and also with the hazards that beset those who help the deceased back to life (e.g. the madness of Hercules or the death of Asclepius). The discussion demonstrates that mythical variants in which re-emergence ends with complete success (like in Alcestis’s story) are extremely rare.