Enter Apollo from the palace of Admetus. He is wearing a quiver and carrying a bow.

Apollo

House of Admetus! In you I brought myself to taste the bread of menial servitude, god though I am. Zeus was the cause: he killed my son Asclepius, striking him in the chest with the lightning-bolt, [5] and in anger at this I slew the Cyclopes who forged Zeus's fire. As my punishment for this Zeus compelled me to be a serf in the house of a mortal. I came to this land and served as herdsman to my host, and I have kept this house safe from harm to this hour. [10] I am myself godly, and in Admetus, son of Pheres, I found a godly man. And so I rescued him from death by tricking the Fates. These goddesses promised me that Admetus could escape an immediate death by giving in exchange another corpse to the powers below. [15] But when he had sounded all his near and dear in turn, his father and the aged mother who bore him, he found no one but his wife who was willing to die for him and look no more on the sun's light. She is now on the point of death, held up by the arms of her family within the house. [20] For it is on this day that she is fated to die. And I, to avoid the pollution of death in the house, am departing from this palace I love so well.
Enter Death by Eisodos A.

Ah, I see that Death, the sacrificer of the dead, is already drawing near. [25] He is about to take her down to the house of Hades. He has arrived punctually, watching for today when she must die.