Euripides' Hippolytus Study Guide

Euripides' Hippolytus Study Guide

Hippolytus Redux, by Dr Rosa Andújar

The myth of Hippolytus had many manifestations across the Mediterranean, with the sameessential facts: a married woman becomes sexually obsessed with a younger man, and, whenspurned, she responds to his rejection with persecution and retaliation (typically by accusing himof rape to her husband). The Greeks had several such stories: the sixth book of Iliad recounts howthe hero Bellerophon was pursued by his host’s wife, Stheneboea, whereas the mythssurrounding Peleus, Achilles’ father, similarly narrate how in his youth he was sought after byAstydamia, who became bitter after he scorned her advances. In Judaeo-Christian tradition wealso find similar analogues, such as the story of Potiphar’s wife, who lusted after Joseph, which isrecounted in the book of Genesis.

The Greek myth of Hippolytus likewise tells of the love of a married woman for a single man, but acrucial difference: the woman is now his stepmother, married to the young man’s father. This smallalteration now suffuses this canonical story with quasi-incestuous connotations. Equallydisconcerting are the finer details of this myth: the woman, Phaedra, comes from a long line of‘troubled’ Cretan women, who were notorious in the ancient world for their illicit passions (she is,for example, the daughter of Pasiphaë, who developed a monstrous fancy for a bull, whichsubsequently produced the Minotaur). The husband is Theseus, one of the most famous andwell-connected Athenian mythic heroes, who like Heracles and Perseus boasted both a divine anda mortal father. The young man is the son of an Amazon queen, whose people were famous fortheir untamed and warlike nature.

In many ways, this brief sketch of Hippolytus, Phaedra, and Theseus illustrates that theingredients of a great tragedy are already in place, ones which furthermore guarantees disastrousconsequences: we have Athens’ greatest hero who is frequently absent due to his variousexploits, a woman from a line of licentious Cretan women, and young man from a proud and wildrace. It is therefore no surprise that this tale was brought to life on the Athenian tragic stage,especially given the recurring fascination in tragedy with women who lusted after men who werenot their husbands. Tragedians also had no qualms depicting married women who specificallylusted after young men: Euripides himself dramatized Bellerophon’s story in a lost tragedy,Stheneboea, which famously ended with the hero mounted on the winged horse Pegasus.

But what is surprising is that in the fifth century there were not one, but three different tragediesthat dramatised the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra: two by Euripides with the title Hippolytus,and a Phaedra by Sophocles. Unfortunately we know very little about Sophocles’ play, beyond anassumption that the play must have focused on the experience of Phaedra. Yet with Euripides’ twoversions of Hippolytus we have the only certain instance of a fifth century tragedian who rewritesone of his plays. In comedy, we know that Aristophanes revised a few of his plays — there werefamously two versions of his Clouds, for example. But throughout the fifth century BC all tragedieswere performed for a single performance in Athens, and it is only in the fourth century that revivalsof the ‘classics’ began. In other words, the spectators of 428 BC (who saw the second and onlysurviving version, the play we now possess) had a special treat in store, witnessing what isperhaps the only second treatment of the same myth by the same tragic playwright.

Though we only have a few extant fragments of the original Hippolytus, we know from this andother evidence (e.g. Aristophanes’ Frogs 1043) that the play featured a shameless Phaedra, whomade a deliberate and bold attempt to seduce Hippolytus, in direct contrast to the virtuous anddiscreet Phaedra from the version that survives today. Reeling from the shock of being so openlypropositioned, Hippolytus appears to have reacted by veiling his head in horror and shame: hencethe title, Hippolytus Veiled (Hippolytus Kaluptomenos from the Greek verb kaluptô, ‘to cover’).

Euripides' Hippolytus Study Guide https://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/classical-play/archive/2012Hippol...

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With the second Hippolytus, Euripides therefore set out to do something extraordinary: to redeemand transform the formerly sexually assertive Phaedra into a nobler and more sympathetic figure.Indeed, the second Phaedra actively seeks to repress her illicit passion for Hippolytus, whichdirectly contravenes her ideals of chastity and good reputation. Throughout the play, Phaedranever addresses Hippolytus herself; in fact the symmetrical structure of the play, which is neatlydivided into two equal episodes, keeps the two apart as each focalizes on Phaedra’s passion andHippolytus’ fight against the false rape charge, respectively.

That Euripides was successful in recasting his heroine (and consequently, his tragedy) isconfirmed by the fact that he won one of the four first prizes that he was to win at the City Dionysiaduring his life. Later generations praised his new version: the famous scholar and head of theAlexandrian library Aristophanes of Byzantium, for example, wrote that the second versioncorrected what was reprehensible in the first version. But the play’s radical refocus is not merelybrought about by the change in Phaedra’s personality. Rather Euripides effects change throughthe addition of the gods and the expansion of a minor character’s role. The new symmetrical playhas a divine frame with Aphrodite delivering the prologue and Artemis appearing as dea exmachina at the play’s close. As is made clear at the outset and throughout the play, thegoddesses stand on opposite sides against and for Hippolytus, and whose role can be readsymbolically as representing different aspects of the world: sexuality and chastity. With theintroduction of the gods, the tale of illicit sexual desire is now elevated into a clash of human willand divine power: Phaedra’s passion becomes secondary to Aphrodite’s vengeance andHippolytus’ rejection of a lustful woman is now an offending slight to a god. Besides adding thegods, Euripides crucially expands the role of the nurse, who was possibly present in the firstversion but now has the second largest part in the tragedy. She is the shameful intermediary whoon her own initiative decides to approach Hippolytus. Given the economy of ancient Greektragedies, with three actors sharing all the roles between them, the actor who played the nursewould have also previously played the part of Aphrodite, a fact that would have furtherunderscored Phaedra as the unwitting victim of a tragedy over which she had absolutely nocontrol.

Euripides’ rewriting of Hippolytus suggests the enduring power of this myth and its ability toassume a variety of effective forms that fascinate audiences ancient and modern. The ancientGreek manifestation of this tale, which features a stepmother in love with her stepson, may haveespecially resonated in a society in which childbirth was extremely dangerous, and widowersfrequently introduced a new wife to stepchildren often no younger than herself (as attested, forexample, in Antiphon’s Against the Stepmother). At the same time, Euripides’ act ofself-adaptation additionally tells us something about the functioning of myth in Greek culture morebroadly: in ancient Greece, myths were not a static and unchanging story, but rather flexiblenarratives that could be ceaselessly modified and re-imagined, even by the same author. (© DrRosa Andújar)

Hippolytus and its legacy

Euripides, the third of the great Athenian tragedians, wrote Hippolytus for performance at the CityDionysia in 428 BC, where it won first prize. The characters and events of the ancient Greektragedy have engendered many imaginative theatrical responses, both in, and after, antiquity. Itsdepiction of feminine irrationality and male misogyny have proved extremely provocative, and laterversions have all concentrated on the power of human passions by eliminating the divinebookends of Euripides’ play. The first canonical rereading of Euripides’ tragedy was Phaedra bythe Imperial Roman tragedian Seneca (ca. 4 BC – 65 AD). Though it follows much the same plotas Euripides’ original it is more sympathetic to Phaedra, shifting the blame for the accusation ofHippolytus more on to the nurse and allowing her a chance to explain herself to Theseus beforeshe commits suicide. In much the same vein was Phèdre, a play by the seventeenth-centuryFrench neo-classical playwright Jean Racine (1639-1699). Racine creates more roundedcharacters than his two ancient predecessors: for example Hippolytus is not the puritanical youngman that he is in Euripides and Seneca, but is actually shown to fall in love with another femalecharacter named Aricia. Perhaps the most controversial retelling of Euripides’ play has beenPhaedra’s Love by the short-lived English playwright Sarah Kane (1971-1999). In this play, whichKane described as her ‘comedy, the action is set in a dystopian modernity and, in a reverse ofEuripides’, Seneca’s and Racine’s characterisation, Hippolytus is portrayed as a sexuallypromiscuous prince who uses sex to distract himself from the banality of his existence. Phaedra’slove for him thus becomes all the more irrational, but her suicide initiates a series of events inwhich Hippolytus is finally able to overcome his boredom and experience true excitement.


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Study questions

1. Do you think Euripides is fair in his portrayal of Hippolytus and Phaedra?2. Who is the main character of his drama: Hippolytus, Phaedra, or Theseus?3. Does the appearance of the gods at the start and end of Euripides’ play present anydifficulties for a modern reader of the play?4. Why do you think that Seneca, Racine and Kane all change the title of their adaptations tosomething to do with Phaedra rather than Hippolytus?5. How do the different portrayals of Phaedra’s suicide respond to the different times in whichthese various plays were written?

Further Reading

A website that provides background to the myths behind Euripides’ Hippolytus and to generalthemes in the play: Robin Mitchell-Boyask

A website detailing some of the common tropes in popular culture that can be found in Euripides’Hippolytus: TV Tropes

The text of Seneca’s Phaedra >>

A useful introduction to the themes and content of Seneca’s play: Gradesaver Study Guide

A useful resource which introduces Racine’s Phèdre in terms of its text and stagecraft, and alsoexplains something about this play’s legacy: Translating Racine

Phèdre by Jean Racine: A Study Guide

Review by Michael Billington of the National Theatre 2009 production of Racine’s Phèdre in theGuardian

‘Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love’ reviewed by Steve Barfield in Didaskalia

Death of Hippolytos, Jean-Baptiste Lemoine the elder, 1715, Louvre


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The Death of Hippolytus, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1860

Racine’s Phèdre, National Theatre London 2009

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Euripides' Hippolytus Study Guide