Dictionary of Classical Mythology by March Jennifer R

Author:March, Jennifer R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Ancient / Greece
ISBN: 9781782976363
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2014-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

Fig. 91. A bull rises from the sea in front of Hippolytus’ chariot, while a Fury brandishes a torch and an old man looks on in horror.

Hippolytus’ story is best known, however, from Euripides’ version of the myth in his powerful tragedy Hippolytus(428 BC; a previous Hippolytus, now lost, had a rather different plot: see PHAEDRA). Here Hippolytus is a chaste youth, in fact so totally chaste, and so devoted to the virgin goddess ARTEMIS, that he completely ignores the worship of the love-goddess APHRODITE. She punishes this neglect by forcing the virtuous Phaedra to fall in love with him, well aware that this will bring Hippolytus to death, and Phaedra too, innocent though she is. Phaedra struggles to overcome her passion in silence, but eventually she is too weak to keep her love secret any longer, so she tells her nurse what ails her. The nurse, anxious to ease her mistress’ sufferings, reveals her love to Hippolytus, and he responds to these well-meant overtures with bitter rage against women in general and Phaedra in particular (616–68): “Zeus,” he begins,

why did you create and put on earth with men so vile and worthless a thing as woman? If you wanted to propagate the human race, you didn’t have to do it through women. Better that men should buy children from you, paying at your temples in gold or iron or bronze, each man what he could afford. Then they could live in freedom in their own homes, without women. Women are a great curse to men.

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