1. The mythological background: Hippolytus
Theseus, the king of Athens, had a son, Hippolytus, by an Amazon queen (called Antiope or Hippolyta) whom he had kidnapped. The Amazons, women who lived on the eastern fringe of the world, shunned the normal conventions of marriage and child-raising. They were warriors who had sex with men of a neighboring tribe in random, anonymous couplings on a mountainside once a year. They kept their female children and gave the males to others to raise.
Thus it is not surprising that Hippolytus,
too, shuns normal sexuality and prefers to dedicate himself to Artemis,
a goddess of wild nature, rather than to Aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality.
In Greek cult unmarried girls were under the protection of Artemis, whose
realm they left when they got married. Hippolytus, like his mother
and her tribe, refuses to assume a customary adult sexual role.
2. The mythological background: Phaedra
Phaedra, the wife of Theseus and stepmother of Hippolytus, came from the island of Crete. Her father was Minos, the king, her mother Pasiphae. Minos once prayed to Poseidon, god of the sea, to send a splendid bull for sacrifice. Poseidon did so, but Minos kept the bull and refused to sacrifice it. Poseidon got revenge by causing Pasiphae to fall in love with the bull. The offspring of this odd union was the Minotaur, half-man and half-bull, which Minos shut up in a maze called the Labyrinth.
Because Minos' son Androgeos had been killed at Athens, Minos required the Athenians to send a yearly tribute of seven young men and seven young women to be devoured by the Minotaur. One such group included Theseus, who slew the Minotaur with the help of another daughter of Minos and Pasiphae called Ariadne, whom Theseus carried off, only to abandon her on his way back to Athens.
Thus Phaedra's passionate nature,
her susceptibility to Aphrodite, runs in her family.
3. The setting of the play
The Hippoloytus takes place not in Athens but in Troezen, a town in the Peloponnesus about a day's journey away. Hippolytus, since he is not a legitimate heir to the throne of Athens, has been raised there by his grandfather Pittheus. Theseus is living in Troezen for a year, along with Phaedra, as punishment for killing his cousins in a dispute over the kingship.
As the play begins, Phaedra is passionately in love with her stepson Hippolytus, but she is keeping her love secret. No one, least of all Hippolytus, knows about it.
The prologue of the play is spoken by Aphrodite herself, who declares her intentions right at the outset: She will use Phaedra's passion to get revenge on Hippolytus, who refuses to worship Aphrodite.
At the end of the play Artemis, to whom Hippolytus has dedicated himself, makes a balancing appearance, as Hippolytus is dying, and declares her own intentions.
4. Revision
The play was performed in 428 BCE (just after the beginning of the Peloponnesian War) and won first prize. But this was not the first Hippolytus of Euripides. There was an earlier Hippolytus--now lost--in which Phaedra propositioned her stepson directly. The Athenians found this offensive, so Euripides produced a revised play--the present Hippolytus--in which Phaedra knows that her passion is wicked and resists it as much as she can, and her servant the Nurse approaches Hippolytus without Phaedra's consent.
5. Questions to consider
The play is about human sexuality and morality in a world dominated by two powerful goddesses, Aphrodite and Artemis. Both are important in human life, and both must be respected. Both are capable of bringing ruin as well as happiness.
The question "What, if anyting, is Hippolytus guilty of?" is worth pondering. If Hippolytus is guilty, is his punishment appropriate?
"Are goddesses and gods moral?" is another question raised by the Hippolytus. Phaedra and her Nurse disagree on this. If the answer is "No," does this mean that there is no basis for human morality? Euripides' audience was familiar with questions of this sort, which were being raised by some of the teachers called Sophists.
6. Closure
When you finish the play, ask yourselves
whether Sophocles and Euripides provide the same kind of closure.
Do any questions remain unresolved?
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