Admetus

(Ἄδμητος), king of the Molossians in the time of Themistocles, who, when supreme at Athens, had opposed him, perhaps not without insult, in some suit to the people. But when flying from the officers who were ordered to seize him as a party to the treason of Pausanias, and driven from Corcyra to Epirus, he found himself upon some emergency, with no hope of refuge but the house of Admetus. Admetus was absent; but Phthia his queen welcomed the stranger, and bade him, as the most solemn form of supplication among the Molossians, take her son, the young prince, and sit with him in his hands upon the hearth. Admetus on his return home assured him of protection; according to another account in Plutarch, he himself, and not Pthia enjoined the form as affording him a pretext for refusal: he, at any rate, shut his ears to all that the Athenian and Lacedaemonian commissioners, who soon afterwards arrived, could say; and sent Themistocles safely to Pydna on his way to the Persian court. (Thuc. 1.136, 137; Plut. Them. 24.)

[A.H.C]