Hippolytus (, Hippolytos) is an Ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus, son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy. The text is extant.

Euripides first treated the myth in a previous play, Hippolytos Kalyptomenos ( – Hippolytus Veiled), which is lost, and survives only in fragments. What is known of it is based on echoes found in other ancient writings. The earlier play, and the one that has survived are both titled Hippolytus, but in order to distinguish the two they have traditionally been given the names, Hippolytos Kalyptomenos and Hippolytus Stephanophoros ( – "Hippolytus the wreath bearer").

It is thought that the contents to the lost Hippolytos Kalyptomenos portrayed a woman, Phaedra, reduced to shamelessness by a god, and not given the dignity of being able to resist the spell that Aphrodite has placed on her. Athenians may have been offended by a determinedly lustful heroine of a tragedy offering herself directly to Hippolytus. Such a weakness in Phaedra's character, may have caused Hippolytus' desire for purity to be less effectively portrayed. In 428 B.C., Euripides offered to the festival of Dionysus a second version of the story, in which Phaedra resists Aphrodite as best she can. This is the version that has survived.

Euripides revisits the myth in Hippolytos Stephanophoros, its title refers to the garlands Hippolytus wears as a worshipper of Artemis. In this version Phaedra fights against her own sexual desires, which have been incited by Aphrodite.

Apart from that, there were multiple points of debate, which were mainly centered on Hippolytus' character's reception at the time. While some scholars saw Hippolytus' excessive chasteness to be his downfall, others interpreted Hippolytus' rejection of man's desire as proof of his ascension to the spiritual ideal of purity and consequently saw his death as a triumph. It is also suspected that Hippolytus' character received poor reception from ancient Athenians, as his behavior would have likely been seen as unnatural and consequently frowned upon. This is also inferred in lines 99-109 of Hippolytus, which showcases a conversation between Hippolytus and a servant who questions Hippolytus' abrasiveness toward Aphrodite:

Servant

How then no word for a high and mighty goddess?

Hippolytus

[100] Which? Careful lest your tongue commit some slip.

Servant

pointing to the statue of Aphrodite

The goddess here, who stands beside your gate.

Hippolytus

I greet her from afar, for I am pure.

Servant

Yet she's revered and famous among mortals.

Hippolytus

I do not like a god worshipped at night.

Servant

[107] My son, to honor the gods is only just.

Hippolytus

Men have their likes, in gods and men alike.

Servant

I wish you fortune—and the good sense you need!

David Grene, an Irish American professor and expert in classics, offers a reinterpretation of the play. Primarily, Grene argues that Hippolytus is secondary to Phaedra, who is acting out Aphrodite's will.

Grene's points are also supported by the consistencies in both editions of Hippolytus. Euripides eventually revised his first version, ostensibly due to unfavorable reception from the Athenian audience. In the first release, Phaedra directly confesses to Hippolytus, and the Nurse does not exist; this play is now lost and only exists in fragments. In the second variant, Euripides adds the Nurse to act as the middleman between Hippolytus and Phaedra; it follows that the Nurse is the one responsible for disclosing his stepmother's attraction to him. Despite the changes, Grene contests that nothing essential was added into either character and Phaedra is aware of the confession anyhow. Either way, Grene underlines that the main framework of the plot stays constant—and it is how the embodiment of Aphrodite (love) operates on Phaedra and ultimately destroys Hippolytus. In addition to this, Grene points out that Hippolytus does not actually do much dramatic movement—he just suffers punishment—and it is Phaedra who is the main subject.

Besides methodological errors, Crocker proposes a different understanding of the play. He argues that, because Hippolytus had equal amounts of conflicts in both its titular character and Phaedra, the tragic meaning of the play transcends the individual tragedy of the protagonists. He claims that it is not a question of whose conflict is more important; instead, both conflicts come together to form a whole view. Crocker asserts that Hippolytus is more than a symbol for chastity, and that Phaedra is more than a symbol of lust. In Hippolytus' case, he is guilty of an excessive pursuit toward an ideal that humans cannot attain, since it is against man's nature to totally reject sex; by trying to become the embodiment of purity, Hippolytus tries to become more than human—attempting to be on par with gods.

Yet, taking a broad view, Hippolytus and Phaedra are both engaged in the same struggle between their primitive desire and the ideal they are aspiring to. Considering this, Crocker ultimately says that the tragic protagonist of the play is Hippolytus due to how he experiences fundamental aloneness, his storyline involved peripeteia, his punishment is disproportionate to the crime he committed, and he experienced true anagnorisis. Hippolytus' drive to be perfectly chaste is an existential crime, and the main ironies in the play concern him; in his pursuit to rise above, he ends up falling to his death—quite literally. In comparison, Phaedra's crime has more rationality than Hippolytus', as she is aware of the forbidden nature of her desire. Despite this, she is a victim to the gods' vengeance, and she still commits the crime of confessing her love for Hippolytus—irrespective of how she knows better. According to Crocker, instead of having tragic guilt, Phaedra's actions thus lead to ethical guilt. Because of this, he sees her as falling short of having full tragic stature.

Scholar Rachel Bruzzone argued in 2012 that Pygmalion in Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Hippolytus share certain characteristics. The main antagonist of both stories is Aphrodite, who seeks revenge on both for insulting her by remaining virgins. They are also both obsessed with remaining pure. Both are misogynistic with Hippolytus believing that women are morally corrupt and will ruin his pureness. Pygmalion believes the same in that women are just lust-filled creatures that will ruin his pureness. But Pygmalion unlike Hippolytus does desire a woman, just one he deems as perfect which is one that does not speak, is nameless and compliant. Both have a love affair with a statue. Hippolytus's love affair is more subtle where he just says that his wife is a statue but Pygmalion actually marries his statue, which is brought to life.

Texts

  • Barrett, W. S. (ed.), Euripides, Hippolytos, edited with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964; Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1964)

Translations

  • Robert Potter, 1781, verse full text
  • A. Mary F. Robinson, 1881, verse
  • Edward P. Coleridge, 1891, prose: full text
  • Gilbert Murray, 1911, verse: full text
  • Arthur Way, 1912, verse
  • H.D., verse, 1927
  • Augustus T. Murray, 1931, prose
  • Moses Hadas and John McLean, 1936 - prose
  • David Grene, 1942, verse
  • Philip Vellacott, 1953, verse
  • F. L. Lucas, 1954, verse
  • Robert Bagg, 1973.
  • David Rudkin, 1981 Heinemann
  • David Kovacs, 1994, prose: full text
  • John Davie, 1996, prose
  • David Lan, 1998
  • James Morwood, 1998
  • Anne Carson, 2006. Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides. New York Review Books Classics. .
  • Diane Arnson Svarlien, 2007. Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus. Hackett Classics.
  • George Theodoridis, 2010, prose: full text
  • Ian C. Johnston, 2016, verse: full text
  • Rachel Kitzinger, 2016 - verse
  • Brian Vinero, 2024, rhymed verse: [https://pwcenter.org/plays/hippolytus-adapted-from-euripides/]

Adaptations

  • The tragic play Phèdre by Racine (1677)
  • The film Phaedra (1962), incorporating elements of the two versions written by Euripides

Cultural influence

In music

  • Tragedy (2011), an avant-pop album by Julia Holter inspired by the second version of the play written by Euripides.

Notes

Further reading

  • Zeitlin, Froma (1996). "The power of Aphrodite: Eros and the boundaries of the self in Euripides' Hippolytos", in Froma Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 219–84.
  • (multiple English translations)
  • Summary and analysis