Alecestis

Alecestis, the wife of Admetus, king of Phere in Thessaly. The god Apollo tended her husband's flocks when exiled from heaven for having slain the Cyclopes, and out of gratitude for his kindly treatment, prevailed upon the Fates to grant Admetus deliverance from death, if his father, mother, or wife should die in his stead. When the fatal hour arrived, Alecestis alone was found ready to give up her life for his. She was brought back to her husband from the lower world by Hercules. Alecestis is the subject of a noble tragedy by Euripides, which Browning has translated, and she appears as Chaucer's highest ideal of womanhood in the Prologue to his Legende of Goode Women. The allusion to her story in one of the finest of Milton's sonnets will be remembered.