Hippolytus and Phaedra

Canonical narrative

Aphrodite stands before the audience at the opening of Euripides' Hippolytus and announces what she has already set in motion. Hippolytus honors Artemis, keeps company with her, and calls Aphrodite the basest of divine powers. Aphrodite has answered that rejection by making his stepmother Phaedra desire him. She says both mortals will die before the day is over.

Phaedra has not chosen the desire. She wastes away while trying to hide it and protect her honor. Her nurse presses until Phaedra names Hippolytus, then swears him to secrecy and tells him what his stepmother feels. Hippolytus responds with horror and a long attack on women. Phaedra now sees no way to save her name. She hangs herself and leaves a written accusation that Hippolytus violated her.

Theseus returns, finds his wife dead, and reads the charge. Hippolytus is bound by his oath and cannot reveal what the nurse told him. His father calls upon Poseidon to use one of three promised curses and kill his son. As Hippolytus drives along the coast, a bull rises from the sea. His horses panic, overturn the chariot, and drag him against the rocks until he is mortally broken.

Artemis arrives after the destruction cannot be stopped. She tells Theseus that Phaedra's desire came from Aphrodite and that Hippolytus was innocent of the assault. She promises to avenge him by killing one of Aphrodite's beloved mortals in the future. Theseus begs his son's forgiveness, and Hippolytus releases him from guilt before dying.

The tragedy gives no easy victory to either chastity or desire. Aphrodite destroys a man who denies her divine place, but Phaedra bears the imposed desire, public shame, and death through which the punishment works. Hippolytus' oath protects the nurse's disclosure and helps condemn him. Divine rivalry enters a household, and mortals pay for it with their bodies and names.

Episodes in this myth

Participants and roles

Source-scoped variants

Source witnesses