Hippolytos [Paperback]

What becomes interesting in Euripides' telling of the tale is how Phaedra resists the will of Aphrodite, having resolved to starve herself to death rather than ever reveal her infatuation. However, Phaedra's secret is revealed when in a state of semidelerium she confesses to her nurse. The nurse, out of love for Phaedra, tries to solicit an appropriate response from Hippolytus, who is horrified that his stepmother wants him as her lover. Mortified that her secret is now known, Phaedra hands herself, but trying to spare the reputation of her children she leaves a note accusing Hippolytus of having tried to rape her. When Theseus returns from a long journey only to find his wife dead at her own hand and his son implicated in her suicide, he pronounces a deadly curse upon Hippolytus.

Ironically, despite the tragic fate that awaits him, Hippolytus is not a sympathetic figure. Certainly his devotion to Artemis does not require him to spurn the ways of love and an Athenian audience would not look kindly upon him as a martyr to the idea of chastity. Of course, this is a story by Euripides, which means readers have to look for another level of meaning. In this regards "Hippolytus" is similar to "Medea." The latter dealt with how the Greeks in general and the Athenians in particular viewed foreigners, while the former deals with the stigma of illegitimacy. After all, Hippolytus is the bastard son of Theseus and the Queen of the Amazons. Consequently, it seems reasonable that Hippolytus has a real hatred for Aphrodite since it was the goddess of love who was responsible for the illegitimacy that makes him unlike other men. Meanwhile, Phaedra becomes the truly tragic character in the tale, who has her dignity taken away from her by a vengeful goddess and a friend with the best of intentions, surely as potent a combination of dangerous characters as you can find in literature.

Another consideration is the portrayal of Theseus, generally accounted the wisest and best of the heroes of classical mythology. Yet in this story the man whose objectivity and sense of fairness made him give Oedipus a resting place (at least as the tale is told by Sophocles in "Oedipus at Colonus") gives way to an angry impulse worthy of Heracles. If we take into account how highly the Athenians esteemed Theseus, then "Hippolytus" again shows the frequent trend in Euripides' plays to attack the city-state in which he lived. It is this implicit critique of Theseus that Jean-Baptiste Racine makes more central to the tale in his Neo-Classical version of the story, "Phaedra." These two plays, "Hippolytus" and "Phaedra," make a very interesting analog for students of drama, classical or otherwise, looking at how the telling and retelling of a tale can reflect the changing societies in which such stories are told. Seneca's version of "Phaedra" can be used towards this end as well.