| Hippolytus | |
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The Death of Hippolytus (1860) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema |
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| Written by | Euripides |
| Chorus | Troezenian Women |
| Characters | Aphrodite Hippolytus Attendants Nurse Phaedra Theseus Messenger Artemis |
| Setting | Before the royal palace at Troezen |
Hippolytus (Ancient Greek: Ἱππόλυτος, Hippolytos) is an Ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus, son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy.
Euripides first treated the myth in Hippolytos Kalyptomenos (Hippolytus Veiled), now lost. Scholars are virtually unanimous[1] in believing that the contents to the missing Kalyptomenos portrayed a shamelessly lustful Phaedra who directly propositions Hippolytus,[2] to the displeasure of the audience.[3]
This failure prompted Euripides to revisit the myth in Hippolytos Stephanophoros ("Hippolytus who wears a crown"),[4] this time with a modest Phaedra who fights her sexual appetites. The surviving play offers a much more even-handed and psychologically complex treatment of the characters than is commonly found in traditional retelling of myths.
The gods play a very important role in Hippolytus, framing the action. Aphrodite appears at the beginning and Artemis at the end, and they were possibly represented onstage throughout the action in the form of statues. These two goddesses can be taken as representing the conflicting emotions of passion and chastity.
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The play is set in Troezen, a coastal town in the northeastern Peloponnese. Theseus, the king of Athens, is serving a year's voluntary exile after having murdered a local king and his sons. His illegitimate son Hippolytus, whose mother is the Amazon Hippolyta, has been trained here since childhood by the king of Troezen, Pittheus.
At the opening of the play Aphrodite, Goddess of love, explains that Hippolytus has sworn chastity and refuses to revere her. Instead, he honors the Goddess of the hunt, Artemis. This has led her to initiate a plan of vengeance on Hippolytus. When Hippolytus went to Athens two years previously Aphrodite inspired Phaedra, Hippolytus' stepmother, to fall in love with him.
Hippolytus appears with his followers and shows reverence to a statue of Artemis, a chaste goddess. A servant warns him about his overt disdain for Aphrodite, but Hippolytus refuses to listen to him.
The chorus, consisting of young married women of Troezen, enters and describes how Phaedra is not eating or sleeping. Phaedra, sickly, appears with her Nurse. After an agonizing discussion, Phaedra finally gives in to her nurse's demands and confesses why she is ill: she loves Hippolytus. The Nurse and the Chorus are shocked. Phaedra explains that she must starve herself and die with her honor intact. However, the Nurse quickly retracts her initial response and tells Phaedra that she has a magical charm to cure her. However, in an aside she reveals different plans.
The nurse tells Hippolytus of Phaedra's desire, after making him swear an oath that he will not tell anyone else. He reacts with a furious, misogynistic tirade on the 'poisonous' nature of women. Because the secret is out, Phaedra believes she is ruined. After making the Chorus swear secrecy, she goes inside and hangs herself.
Theseus returns and discovers his wife's dead body. Because the Chorus is sworn to secrecy, they cannot tell Theseus why she killed herself. Theseus discovers a letter on Phaedra's body, which places the blame for her death on Hippolytus. Theseus takes this to mean he raped Phaedra and, enraged, he curses his son to death or at least exile. To execute the curse, Theseus calls upon his father, the god Poseidon, who has promised to grant his son three wishes. Hippolytus enters and protests his innocence but cannot tell the truth because of the binding oath that he swore. Taking his wife's letter as proof, Theseus exiles his son.
The Chorus sings a lament for Hippolytus.
A messenger enters and describes a gruesome scene to Theseus; as Hippolytus got in his chariot to leave the kingdom, a bull roared out of the sea, frightening his horses, which dashed his chariot among the rocks, dragging Hippolytus behind. Hippolytus seems to be dying. The messenger protests Hippolytus' innocence, but Theseus refuses to believe him.
Theseus is pleased with Hippolytus' suffering until Artemis appears and tells him the truth. She explains that his son was innocent and that it was Phaedra who lied. Although the goddess admonishes Theseus' decision, she ultimately recognizes that the blame falls on Aphrodite. Hippolytus is carried in half alive, and Artemis promises to take revenge on Aphrodite by punishing the next person that Aphrodite loves. Finally, Hippolytus forgives his father, and then he dies.
In many ways, this play is surprising in its even-handed approach to the two main characters, neither being presented in a wholly favorable light. Euripides has often been accused of misogyny in his presentations of characters such as Medea and Electra. However, Hippolytus seems unsympathetically puritan and misogynistic, though he is partially redeemed by his refusal to break his oath to the nurse and his forgiveness of his father ('I absolve you of this bloodshed'). Similarly, Phaedra is initially presented as sympathetic, honorably struggling against overwhelming odds to do the right thing, though our regard for her is reduced by her indictment of Hippolytus.
The tragedy occurs because of Hippolytus's hubris (his rejection of Aphrodite) and not for his lack of sympathy for Phaedra or his hyperbolic misogyny, which reeks of sophistry. The true damaging force of the play is uncontrollable desire personified by the vindictive Aphrodite in the introduction of the play.
Another monstrous force at work is the disaffected goddess of chastity, Artemis. She does not try to protect her favorite, as the gods are sometimes represented as doing (e.g., the relationship between Odysseus and Athena), stating that the gods do not interfere with one another's deeds ('This is the settled custom of the gods: no one may fly in the face of another's wish: we remain aloof and neutral.'). She instead promises to avenge Hippolytus' death by punishing the next mortal Aphrodite loves.
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