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"Besides I knew
too well I was a woman, and must be
abhorred by all."

Euripides never lets me down.

The full title of the edition I read is "Hippolytus in Drama and Myth." It's translated by Donald Sutherland and includes an essay by Hazel E. Barnes.

The base myth of the eponymous Hippolytus portrays him as a shining exemplar of virtuousness and chastity, a kind of saint. The story goes like this: his stepmother Phaedra falls in love with him but he rejects her advances, and in revenge, she accuses him (falsely) of rape. His infuriated father Theseus believes Phaedra, and so exiles Hippolytus and curses him, whereby he meets his end tragically, pure and true to the very last. Hippolytus is someone virgin girls can look up to on festival days and proffer offerings to at temples, a role model of goodness.

But Euripides doesn't let the story rest at that. Instead, in his play he forges Phaedra into a sympathetic character, noble in her own way. Hippolytus becomes self-righteous and unbearable. And the conflict between the two-- between desire and abstinence, impulse and restraint, connection and isolation -- becomes the heart of the tale. Phaedra (and through her, Aphrodite) represents one end of the spectrum, and Hippolytus (and through him, Artemis) the other. Once again the Greeks are powerless to shape their destinies, and become mere pawns in the games of the gods. These same deities who -- by the very nature of their divine characteristics-- are necessarily forever in opposition, elemental forces pulling humans first that way, then the other.

Instead of Phaedra being the villain, it's really Aphrodite, who "breathes a deadly honeyed breath" over everything, that's at fault in Euripides' retelling. Hippolytus would rather worship Artemis than her. In order to “glut her anger" over this slight, she curses Phaedra with a forbidden and burning love of him.

Poor Phaedra. She's powerless to subdue this desire, and she's driven to suicide "in abhorrence of" the potential loss of honor, the shame of it all. Phaedra's honor being such an essential part of herself and identity reminded me of how a knight's or samurai's honor is so important that they also would die in its name. I feel like I've encountered a lot of narratives about a man's honor but not as much about a woman's honor (unless we're talking chastity). It's a perhaps small distinction, but I found it interesting seeing her, rather than someone else, take on sole responsibility for the protection of her honor, even if it ended in suicide.

Hippolytus I found insufferable. His cruel speech to Phaedra really proves that his arrogant belief that he is a perfect, infallible man is completely deluded. I agree with Theseus, who says to him: “You kill me with your sanctimoniousness!� and accuses him of “rapt worship" of himself. In fact, I can't imagine anyone reading this play and not being totally put off by Hippolytus. For one thing, he's an unrepentant misogynist. His hatred of women is unfettered and passionate, to the point of religion. This is the guy who says:

"O Zeus, why have you sent this counterfeit
this vileness, Woman, to inhabit the world?"

His other choice descriptions of women include: “noxious growth� and “monster�; he rants about � how great an evil a wife is"; declares “I loathe a clever woman� and that he'll "never have enough of hating women." And his mania for chastity takes on the hue of rigidity, of an unbending, horrifying obsession. He says: “Either let someone show me they are chaste or let me trample on these creatures still."

So it's with great satisfaction, and no sympathy or anger at Theseus, that you read his cursed end, as he's dragged into the "loud salt sea" :

"Up in the air flew bolts and spokes of the wheels
and axle-pins. And poor Hippolytus
wound in the reins, was dragged along, being tied
by bonds that would not loosen, in the dust
dashing his head against the rocks, tearing
his flesh, and howling dreadful cries to hear
“Stop! Stop! You mares fed at my cribs! Do not
annihilate me! Oh my father’s curse!"

In her essay, Barnes writes of Euripides:

"Rather he seems to be stressing the idea that each of these forces in man calls for an absolute commitment which will brook no compromise, that once the individual yields to either of these needs of his nature, his will is no longer free to balance and moderate.�

Hippolytus' unyielding chastity and virtuousness, his attempt at (and belief he's achieved) a perfection and purity not seem in humans, is his downfall. Paradoxically, it's his strict orthodoxy to virtue that leads him to cruelty (against Phaedra); a kind of sterile emotionless treatment of those around him; and eventually to Theseus disowning him and casting a bitter death curse on him. The sea takes him, a wild force that at long last, will succeed in submerging his self-importance.