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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Rather than apologize for taking up this battered subject once again, let me compare scholarly treatment of the passage to such ancient rites as singing the skolion, where every member of the symposium was supposed to give his variant of a given theme. First we must have the passage before us. Phaidra, after first appearing on stage in a delirium where her speech is by no means coherent, addresses the chorus of women of Troizen from line 373 on in rational terms, explaining her predicament and behaviour. Peoples' lives, she says, are not ruined by lack of intelligence, but by failure to live up to their recognition of right and wrong. Some fail to realize (381 ⋯κπονεῖν) their high ideals through laziness or inertia (381 ⋯ργ⋯ας ὓπο), others by putting some dubious pleasure before the good (382–3 οἱ δ' ⋯δον⋯ν προθέντες ⋯ντ⋯ το⋯ καλο⋯ / ἂλλην τιν').
1 Commentators have not been slow to detect in this position polemic against Socrates, who maintained that no-one chooses the wrong course knowingly. Snell, B, Szenen aus griechischen Dramen (Berlin/New York, 1971), 60–75, is the main champion of this view.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 
could mean ‘something else (sc. than 
), a pleasure’ as Barrett, W. S, Euripides' Hippolytus (Oxford 1964) 229,Google Scholar and Manuwald, B, ‘Phaidras tragischer Irrtum. Zur Rede Phaidras in Euripides’ Hipp. 373–430, RhA022 (1979), 134–48 (here p. 137), maintain with parallels, or it could mean ‘some pleasure other than 
’, as argued by Kovacs, D, ‘Shame, pleasure and honour in Phaidra's great speech’, AJP 101 (1980), 287–303. Kovacs suspects a lacuna before 384 as Phaidra's list really only contains two items, 
as 
and 
(by hendiadys)‘ long leisurely talks’. In fact Phaidra's list is short but perfectly adequate with three items. My paraphrase ‘some dubious pleasure’ rests on the assumption that 
has the rare meaning here ‘something other than true or good’ i.e.‘ illusory, bad’ (cf. LSJ III 3 and 4). A good example of this meaning comes at Hesiod, Works and Days 344 
‘any untoward affair in the village’ (Paley).Google Scholar
3 That 
has no plural form in Greek is no objection to the view that Euripides is talking here of two different types or aspects of 
. Kovacs makes too much of this difficulty, concluding that Euripides must be talking of two types of 
instead (above n. 2). Cairns, D. L, AIDOS. The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford, 1993), 326, comes, tentatively, to the same conclusion, but concedes doubt. He points in particular to the parallel constructions 
… and 
arguing that they should share the same subject. I see the greatest difficulty with this view in v. 387 
… as the statement‘ there would not be two of them…’ (the number two underlined by the dual verb) contradicts 383, where pleasures are said to be many. Cairns recognizes the difficulty and resorts to the expedient of understanding ‘of two types’ in 387. But that is not what the Greek says.Google Scholar
4 Ad loc;, p. 230. He cites Plutarch, de virt. mor. 448f., who explains aidos in our passage in terms of moral scruples which sometimes harmonize with rational perception, sometimes not.
5 ‘AIDOS in Euripides Hipp. 373–430: review and interpretation’, JHS 113 (1993), 45–59.
6 It is true that Craik's best alleged parallel (Theognis 1263–6) implies sexual gratification through innuendo when the poet says that a boy whom he has treated well has failed to show aidos to him, but only by innuendo. There the paederastic context makes the poet's point clear, but Phaidra's speech is not on the level of sly winks.
7 AIDOS esp. 330–32. E. R Dodds, ‘The 
of Phaedra and the meaning of the Hippolytus', CR 39 (1925), 102–4, similarly points to this earlier scene of the play as an indicator as to what aidos in the great speech means, but he identifies the pleasure deriving from Phaidra's submission to the nurse's entreaties as the ‘pleasures of confession’ i.e. Phaidra had been (subconsciously) longing to tell someone of her illicit passion for Hippolytos, and when the nurse supplicated her, this provides a welcome excuse to succumb to conventional aidos in order to ease her aching heart by revealing her secret. In a brief but lucid treatment of our passage from the point of view of ethical philosophy, Williams, B., Shame and Necessity (Sather Classical Lectures, vol. 57; Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), 225–30, cites Dodds approvingly, though pointing to a slightly different pleasurable facet of,aidos: ‘…it is a social pleasure— a comfort or reassurance’ (p. 228).Google Scholar
8 
Maas: 
O:
p: om. A: 
Bergk: 
Young. The reading is adopted by van Groningen, B. A, Théognis, Le premier Livre (Amsterdam, 1966), who dispenses with Bergk's view that the lines are by Mimnermos.Google Scholar
9 von Erffa, C. E, AIDOS und verwandte Begriffe in ihrer Entwicklung von Homer bis Demokrit (Philologus suppl. vol. 30; Leipzig, 1937), 12, 42 etc., recognizes this inverted use of aidos from Homer on (e.g. Od. 8.480), calling it the'passivische Bedeutung' in the sense that a person receives rather than shows respect/honour etc. However, he derives this passive sense from a hypothetical derelopment 
shame, respect 
respectable → passive 
honour, esteem. He finds the meaning ‘esteem’, ‘honour’ particularly prominent in Tyrtaios (pp. 59–60). Van Groningen (previous note) translates ‘respect de soi’. For the phrase,Google ScholarCarriere, J, Théognis de Mégare(Paris, 1948), 127, compares the Orphic formula 
0 Kern 336.Google Scholar
10 Thus Erffa (above n. 9), 12f. Citing Snell, Erffa makes the comparison with 
which means both what someone believes and what others believe of him, i.e. reputation.
11 Thus Erffa (above n. 9), 46: ‘…eine Eigenschaft der Rede bzw. des Redenden’.
12 Text and lengthy commentary:Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, Isyllos von Epidauros (Philologische Untersuchungen 9; Berlin, 1886;Google Scholartext in Powell, J, Collectanea Alexandrina repr. Chicago, 1981), 132–6. The text almost certainly dates to the late fourth century B.C.Google Scholar
13 Hesiod, Erga 317, writes that aidos is an unsuitable companion to a man in need (sc. as it may stop him acting to better himself. Erffa (above n. 9, 84–5) finds that both Pindar and Theognis oppose aristocratic aidos to the profit-motive {kerdos) of the gain-seekers
14 Dale, A. M, Euripides, Alcestis (Oxford, 1961), 102, paraphrases: ‘Nobility tends to carry its chivalry almost too far’.Google Scholar
15 From its original meaning of a bier or couch, 
came to denote a banqueting room—where couches for dining, conversation and entertainment were placed around the walls of the room—and then, by association, the conversation or gossip which characterized gatherings in these public meeting places. It might be remarked in passing that these pleasures mentioned by Phaidra appear more characteristic of the leisure activities of fifth-century Athenian men, rather than women, as the latter had little opportunity for social gatherings at home. There was no equivalent to the men' dining room, andron
16 409 
415–18 express her outrage at the women' hypocrisy.
17 
Clearly aidos is pulling Agamemnon in two directions here: on the one hand his high rank prevents him giving in to his natural grief; on the other this very suppression of emotion causes him shame
18 349:
19 London, 1993
