Background and Preliminaries

• Produced 428 BC

 
• Who are Theseus, Phaedra, Hippolytus: the complications of their relationships

                                        Aegeus/Poseidon - [Aethra]
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           Minos - Pasiphae                          Theseus - Antiope (Amazon)
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                         ________|________                                                                                      |
                         |                                |                                                                                     |
                  Ariadne                     Phaedra                                                                          Hippolytus
 
 

• Stories of:
• Minos & Pasiphae & the Bull
• note the bull coming from the sea!
• note the perverse and promiscuous woman!
• Minotaur & Labyrinth & the "twice seven" : Theseus & Ariadne
• note the promiscuous woman (running off with the hero unwed!)
• note how the hero Theseus deserts the woman (a good guy?)
• Theseus, Antiope, Phaedra, and the Amazons
• note how Theseus deserts yet another woman
• note how Amazons are women who (a) hunt, and (b) are chaste
• A family where the women inherit the "love's desire for what one should not"?

 

• Who are the goddesses Artemis and Aphrodite?
• Pictures and descriptions of the four principal Olympian goddesses, including Artemis and Aphrodite, which makes clear the sort of essential associations and distinctions

 

 
 
 

Artemis (= Roman Diana). A virgin goddess, associated with the hunt, chastity, and childbirth (!)

Attributes: bow, fawn (or doe or stag); often appears with her brother, Apollo; usually a short dress (chiton) and a girl's hairstyle




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Artemis, the maiden-who-is-desired-but-cannot-be-touched

Associated with "virgin" nature, animals, hunt, chastity (but also childbirth!)
Odyssey 6 (a simile describing Nausicaa): "As Artemis the arrow-shooting moves across the mountains, delighting in boars and swift running deer, and with her play the nymphs, daughters of Zeus, who range in the wilds, and Leto rejoices in her heart: Artemis holds head and forehead above them all and is easily known, but all are beautiful: so excelling her handmaidens shone the unbroken virgin.
In origin, "Mistress of the Animals", both (in some sense) a fertility goddess assoc. with wild beasts, but also a slayer of beasts (Artemis - deer - Iphigenia). Portrayed both with a gentle, virgin nature, accompanied by fawns, and as "the modest maiden who loves the din of the hunt and shoots volleys of arrows at stags" (Homeric Hymn to Artemis).

Similarly there are two sides to her virginal (lack of) sexuality. Not, like Athena, a lack of sexuality: peculiarly erotic, and challenging in the erotic allure. The inviolate and inviolable virgin, usually accompanied (as in the story of Actaeon) by a swarm of equally enticing nymphs. But the appearance of Artemis' nymphs is strangely bound up in myth with rape: Zeus and Callisto, Theseus and Helen.

The image of the "Pure Virgin" is unstable: no sanctity here, but rather that destabilizing eroticism tied up with virgin girls of marriageable age. "Nymph": cf. Greek nymphe =

(1) divinities present in streams and flowers and young trees
(2) newlywed brides
(3) young women in their first encounter with love
Actaeon and similar tales can be read then as a mythical exploration of the dangerous eroticism that goes along with the innocence and beauty of a young woman or girl of marriageable age




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Aphrodite. (= Roman Venus; sometimes called Cytherea or Cypris).

Attributes: in early art, usually clothed and often impossible to distinguish from Hera or other goddesses, unless there is an inscription; from the 4th century onward, usually nude (after Praxiteles); sometimes pictured with a sceptre or a mirror; often accompanied by Eros (=Roman Cupid) or several Erotes (Cupids); sometimes accompanied by a goose or swan.



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Aphrodite, the woman-who-is-desired-and-CAN-be-touched (cf. Artemis), the woman-who-is-not-the-wife (cf. Hera), woman-as-destabilizing-force (cf. Athena)

Greek verb: aphrodizein. A. represents female eroticism in the full bloom of beauty and without restraint, not a loss of innocence but a mature sympathy with the frank appreciation and expression of beauty and sexual love: "the joyous consummation of sexuality" (Burkert)

Near Eastern antecedents: Ishtar (goddess of love & war), also called Inanna and Astarte. Ritual prostitution. Sexuality, despite later representations, not solely feminine: bearded Aphrodite/Ishtar, male Aphroditos/Astar.

But as Aphrodite develops in Greek culture, clearly she is conceived as a contrast to Artemis.

• Artemis: simple garb, lives among the beasts, accompanied by nymphs (feminine divinities of the wild: streams, trees)
• Aphrodite: heavily adorned, accompanied by 3Graces (feminine divinities of feminine allure as it is enhanced by clothes, jewelry, hair-dressing)
• Artemis "shoots straight"
• Aphrodite "leads astray": Anchises because "she even led astray the mind of Zeus...": her feminine wiles are too much for Anchises, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, lines 97ff (Powell p. 158-9)
• Artemis as the "repression" or denial of Aphrodite (and Euripides' Hippolytus as a meditation on that)
• Euripides had produced an earlier Hippolytus, referred to by scholars as "Hippolytus Veiled"
• in that earlier play:
• yes, Hipp. is killed by the curse of Theseus b/c of the accusation of Phaedra that he raped her
• but no, Phaedra is not a noble woman: for Phaedra herself (and not a surrogate) actively pursues Hippolytus, supposedly in response to Theseus' infidelities; when the chaste Hipp. refuses her and threatens to tell Theseus, she in humiliation and anger accuses him first; and after Hipp's death hangs herself
• the earlier play was so offensive to the Athenians that it was voted #3 of the 3 in the contest!
• whereas the new Hippolytus (the one we have) was one of only 4 "firsts" won by Euripides in his career
• Euripides as mythmaker: essential to the play are, perhaps, Hipp.'s chastity, Theseus' revenge; but even so seemingly essential a point as whether Phaedra actively sought Hippolytus, or was trapped by the connivings of her nurse, is something the poet feels empowered to change in accordance with his purpose
 
• Structure of the play is typically Euripidean
• prologue: a formal prologue (here Aphrodite) that introduces the background to the action
• epilogue: the deus ex machina (here Artemis) swings down from the crane (the "machine") to "solve" the problems

 

Hippolytus: a man with a veritable hubris of virginity (!)

Hippolytus' first entrance: 58ff

a song: an ode to Artemis, the patron goddess of young maidens and new brides (!) but also Hipp's own patroness

a chorus of virginmen like the chorus of virgin nymphs that accompany Artemis

he deflowers the "inviolate meadow"

no one else, only he, may pluck and gather the flowers in the "inviolate meadow" of Artemis!

Hipp. has a passion for his patron deity, Artemis and virginity which is, to say the least, paradoxical

a veritable hubris of virginity: no moderation in this behavior!

Hippolytus develops over time: from a strangely priggish, sex-obsessed youth, to a high falutin' snobbish youth, to a pathetic but dignified tragic victim

Look at how he changes from that first entrance, to the second entrace at 601ff, to the agon with his father at, esp., 948ff + 983ff (where Hippolytus is clearly revealed as a snob, an effete, a vegetarian for godssake!), to the final tragic scene of his death at 1348ff (where pathos reigns, and he assumes real dignity in his suffering)

What is the moral basis for action for each of the characters in the play?

• Are the individual characters moral? do they act on principle, and if so on what principle?
• Phaedra: tries to keep silent, but can't, and then turns around and murders (in effect) Hippolytus to preserve her own aidos (=sense of shame, both in the positive sense of modesty and in the negative sense of disgrace for immodest behavior: this aidos is what constitutes the core of a woman's value, in Phaedra's (and many Greeks') view)
• Nurse: I would have been wise had I been successful: very much a stance of Realpolitik
• Hippolytus: very high minded, but erotic in his virginity, insufferably elitist in his arguments and orientation, unforgiving and arrogant, and impious towards the gods: a veritable hubris of virginity, ignoring and thus offending Aphrodite
• Theseus: culpably ignorant (like Oedipus!): tragic in his snap judgement. [Th. believes what he wants to believe, ignoring Hipp.'s character & strong denial of guilt, and does not consult with the gods, thus jumping to culpably regrettable conclusions.]
• Aphrodite: hell bent on revenge.
• Artemis: hell bent on revenge in turn
• Like many of Euripides' dramas, this play seems to have no hero, no clear center of focus: Phaedra 187 lines, Theseus 187 lines, Hippolytus 271 lines, Nurse 216 lines (!)
 

Euripides and belief in the gods

• Predestination and free will: Aphrodite tells us what will happen. Yet in terms of the play itself, humans seem to have choices: Phaedra can be silent or speak, and chooses to speak-- disastrously; Nurse ditto; Hippolytus can speak or be silent, and chooses silence-- disastrously; Theseus speaks his curse and refuses to retract or reconsider-- again, disastrously (and very much like Hipp.'s rash oath of silence to the nurse)
• Euripides as atheist: In Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousae a woman who makes wreaths for worshippers complains that her business has been cut by more than half since Euripides "in his tragedies, has persuaded men that the gods do not exist"; and in the Frogs, Aristophanes has Euripides address a prayer to "other gods," among them "upper air" and "intelligence"; the result, Aristophanes implies, was moral degeneration.
• Euripides' vision of the gods is not, as in Aeschylus, of deities who impose suffering as a step towards wisdom, nor, as in Sophocles, of deities who seem to represence an assurance of divine order even if it is one that can only be accepted and never fully understood by humans. Rather, the gods in Euripides are like Homer's-- which is to say, just like us!, with all the pride, vindictiveness of pride insulted, revengeful anger, etc.
• cf. the hateful figures of Aphrodite and Artemis in this play: esp. 1104ff: are these gods the Greeks could really worship???
• cf. the pain and suffering of Phaedra and Hippolytus in this play: there is no hint here of a divine purpose in human suffering; man's situation seems more hopeless; the human vitims seem just that, victims, in a world they cannot hope to understand

• Hippolyus
• Phaedra
• Nurse (as depicted here)
• Theseus
• Artemis (as depicted here)
• Aphrodite (as depicted here)