A Deed the Gods Could Not Ignore
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Phaedrus — καὶ μητρός, οὓς ἐκείνη τοσοῦτον ὑπερεβάλετο τῇ φιλίᾳ διὰ τὸν ἔρωτα, ὥστε ἀποδεῖξαι αὐτοὺς ἀλλοτρίους ὄντας τῷ ὑεῖ καὶ ὀνόματι μόνον προσήκοντας, καὶ τοῦτʼ ἐργασαμένη τὸ ἔργον οὕτω καλὸν ἔδοξεν ἐργάσασθαι οὐ μόνον ἀνθρώποις ἀλλὰ καὶ θεοῖς, ὥστε πολλῶν πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ ἐργασαμένων εὐαριθμήτοις δή τισιν ἔδοσαν τοῦτο γέρας οἱ θεοί, ἐξ Ἅιδου ἀνεῖναι πάλιν τὴν ψυχήν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐκείνης ἀνεῖσαν ἀγασθέντες
and his mother whom she so exceeded in devotion, because of love, that she showed them to be strangers, related to the son in name only. And having done this deed, so fine a deed she seemed to have wrought not only among men but among gods too, that though many people had done many fine deeds, the gods gave this prize to just a few, to send the soul back up from Hades — but hers they sent back, in wonder.
Continuing directly from 179b, where Phaedrus named Pelias's daughter Alcestis as proof that lovers alone are willing to die for each other, and said that Admetus had a father and a mother both still living when his death came due. Phaedrus now spells out what their refusal cost them by comparison, and what the gods gave Alcestis instead. The sentence keeps running into 179d, where 'admiring' (ἀγασθέντες) is completed by 'the deed' (τῷ ἔργῳ), just before Phaedrus turns to the counter-example of Orpheus, who was sent away from Hades unsatisfied.
The word Plato reaches for, γέρας, is not ordinary praise. In Homer it names the prize voted to a hero out of the common spoils of war — the quarrel that opens the Iliad is a quarrel over a γέρας. Putting that word on what the gods grant Alcestis turns her death into a feat on the scale of taking a city, and the return of her psychē into a battlefield award rather than an act of mercy. Diotima will use this exact story by name later in the dialogue, at 208d, arguing that Alcestis died for Admetus expecting to win an immortal reputation, the way Achilles died avenging Patroclus — an immortality through fame that competes with the immortality blood-children are supposed to secure for their parents. Read against that later speech, Phaedrus's sentence has already done the sorting: the in-laws who share Admetus's blood are ἀλλότριοι, strangers, and the one outsider who married into the family is the only one who acted like family.
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