There are no villains in the Alcestis, and there are no heroes. There is one heroic character, but her heroism is of so common a type that it usually passes unnoticed. The three men, Admetus, Pheres and Heracles, in varying degrees are animated by the strongest of all male motives, self-preservation. Alcestis lacks their sound common-sense; she is guided by passion, by the strongest of all female passions and that which comes nearest to the divine, the maternal passion of self-sacrifice. She has given life once, she is prepared to give it again. It is commonly assumed—and even Verrall tacitly allows this to go unchallenged—that Alcestis ‘is in love with’ Admetus, and Admetus ‘is in love with’ Alcestis. The affection which, happily for us, may usually be expected to exist between husband and wife, is taken for granted in the very different conditions of Euripides’ time. Now, as we have seen, this is a cardinal error. Mutual affection and esteem did _not_ reign in an ordinary Athenian household. Husband and wife were usually indifferent one to another, and even this indifference was an improvement upon the Ionian relationship when husband and wife were often natural enemies. That a wife should give up her life out of love for her husband is a state of things so agreeable to the natural man that it is, perhaps, not surprising if the language of the play has never been too closely examined. _Alcestis’ motive is not love for her husband, but love for her children._ Euripides, following Æschylus, knew that maternal love is a far stronger force than conjugal affection, even when the latter exists. The mother and the children—on them he spends all the resources of his unrivalled pathos—the husband is a mark for his bitterest irony. It is because Alcestis does not wish her children to be left _fatherless_ that she consents to death.