Hippolytus
Hippolytos
Refusing to honor the goddess of love as fiercely as Hippolytus does invites her destructive retaliation just as surely as indulging desire without restraint does, and no purely virtuous extreme escapes catastrophe among gods who demand their due.
- divine retaliation for exclusive devotion
- Phaedra's forbidden love and shame
- a false accusation with fatal consequences
- the danger of moral extremity
- psychological depth for both accuser and accused
Hippolytus, which won first prize in 428 BC, dramatizes the destruction of Theseus's son Hippolytus, who scorns Aphrodite entirely in favor of chaste devotion to Artemis, provoking the offended love-goddess to make his stepmother Phaedra fall helplessly in love with him. Phaedra's nurse betrays her secret to Hippolytus against her wishes; humiliated, Phaedra hangs herself but leaves a note falsely accusing Hippolytus of rape, and Theseus, believing it, curses his son to death using one of three wishes granted him by Poseidon. Euripides frames the tragedy as the collision of two divine claims neither mortal character can safely honor exclusively, while giving unusual psychological depth to Phaedra's shame and Hippolytus's self-righteous purity alike.
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