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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
It is essential to observe that Euripides' dramatization of the tragedy of Hippolytus is such as to reveal a striking disparity between word and action, between the values or motives professed by the leading characters and their actual behaviour, between the secondary characters' assessment of the events of the drama and the events themselves. At the basis of such an observation is the noticeable emphasis which Euripides accords to the fact that all the participants in the drama, including the chorus, are most concerned to proffer explanations of the situations and behaviour which confront them. Yet it becomes most apparent that all of these explanations fall far short of a proper assessment of the circumstances with which the play is concerned and the conclusions to which a responsive audience is directed by Euripides' particular organization of the constituents of the traditional story. The following paper is concerned with an examination of the nature and extent of this disparity between statement and performance, and with a determination of its function.
1. And in spite of the argumentation of one of the finest articles upon this play, that of Knox, Bernard, ‘The Hippolytus of Euripides’, YCS 13 (1952), 3Google Scholar ft. Knox, as I propose to demonstrate, takes the pronouncements of Aphrodite too much at face value, e.g. at 4: ‘Aphrodite tells us not only what will happen but announces her responsibility and explains her motives. It is a complete explanation and one which (even if it were not confirmed in every particular by another goddess at the end of the play) we are bound to accept.’
2. Almost fifty years ago, E. R. Dodds, in an excellent, though regrettably brief, article, ‘The Aidos of Phaedra and the Meaning of the Hippolytus’, CR 39 (1925), 102Google Scholar ff., foreshadowed several of my conclusions. It is largely the purpose of my paper to pursue more deeply into the drama the essence of his remarks.
3. E.g. Linforth, I. A., ‘Hippolytus and Humanism’, TAPA 45 (1914), 10Google Scholar, Collingwood, R. G., An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford, 1940), 208–9Google Scholar, Barrett, W. S., Euripides’ Hippolytos (Oxford, 1964), 154Google Scholar. See also Segal, C. P., ‘The Tragedy of The Hippolytus’, HSCP 70 (1965), 117–20Google Scholar, and ‘Curse and Oath in Euripides’ Hippolytus’, Ramus 1 (1972), 177Google Scholar.
4. For instance, that which sees the play asserting laws of balance or moderation, e.g. Kitto, H. D. F., Greek Tragedy (London, 1961), 203Google Scholar, Blaiklock, E. M., The Male Characters of Euripides (Wellington, 1952), 210Google Scholar.
5. Later (337–43) she also refers her state to the context of family curse.
6. That her emotion is towards Hippolytus is of course confirmed in the thinly disguised direction of much of her language in her first scene, e.g. 215–22, 228–31.
7. Cf. Barrett, op.cit. (n.3 above), 222: ‘She finds a virtue in her very weakness; her collapse in face of the nurse’s insistence, and indeed of her own half-desire to unburden herself, becomes the αἰδώς that inhibits a man from selfish disregard of a suppliant’s request.’ See also Winnington-Ingram, R. P., ‘Hippolytus: A Study in Causation’, in Euripide, Entretiens sur I‘antiquité classique, 6 (Fondation Hardt, Geneva, 1960), 193Google Scholar.
8. For similar views see Barnes, H. E., Hippolytus in Drama and Myth (Nebraska, 1960), 86Google Scholar, and Winnington-Ingram, op.cit. (n. 7 above), 180.
9. Segal, , ‘Shame and Purity in Euripides’ Hippolytus’, Hermes 98 (1970), 288Google Scholar, I find takes far too sympathetic a view of the alleged struggle in Phaedra between two types of αἰδώς, that of inner purity and that of good name. The former on my contention plays no role in her behaviour, the latter some. But neither of these forms of αἰδώς really countenance all the facts of her behaviour. Once again, that her assertions concerning her reputation (690–2) are followed by the desire for revenge casts doubt on the validity of the role of the former. One is inclined after a time not to believe any of Phaedra’s overt contentions. See also Barrett, op.cit. (n. 3 above), 230, and Winnington-Ingram, op.cit (n. 7 above), 177–80.
10. Given the manifest weakness of Phaedra, arguments (e.g. Crocker, L., ‘On Interpreting Hippolytus’, Philologus 101 (1951), 242–3Google Scholar, and Barnes, op.cit. (n. 8 above), 90, that Euripides intended the pressures against which she struggles to be irresistible) are scarcely convincing.
11. More lenient evaluations abound, e.g. Barnes, op.cit. (n. 8 above), 89, Lesky, A., Greek Tragedy (London, 1965), 152–3Google Scholar, Conacher, D. J., Euripidean Drama (Toronto, 1967), 32–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also n. 9 above.
12. f. Barnes, op.cit. (n. 8 above), 95: ‘In this passage I think we have a clue to what is the core of Hippolytus’ trouble — a narcissism stemming from deep-set emotional maladjustment … There is perhaps as much of self-hate as of self-love in this egocentrism.’ The revealing self-consciousness of Hippolytus’ remark here is foreshadowed towards the end of his tirade against women (665). See also Grube, G. M. A., The Drama of Euripides (London, 1941), 184Google Scholar.
13. The association of Hippolytus and social rejection is strong in the play. The nurse mentions his bastardy in the context of its opposite, legitimacy (307–9), as also does Theseus (962–3). As an inhabitant of Troezen, Hippolytus has lived apart from his father. Finally of course there is his banishment.
14. For a comprehensive discussion of the symbolism of this scene see Segal, ‘The Tragedy of the Hippolytus’ (n. 3 above), 142–48.
15. Contrast Hathorn, R., Tragedy, Myth and Mystery (Indiana, 1962), 102Google Scholar: ‘The classical languages so frequently referred to emotions as coming into the individual from the outside; … it seems improbable that Euripides meant his play to be taken on the human psychological level.’ Some commentators of course have found, surely against the weight of Euripides’ details, a healthy ‘normality’ in Hippolytus. e.g. Bates, W. N., Euripides (Pennsylvania, 1930), 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Festugière, A., Personal Religion Among the Greeks (California, 1954), 13Google Scholar. Others — e.g. Greenwood, L. H., Aspects of Euripidean Tragedy (Cambridge, 1953), 47Google Scholar, Grube, op.cit. (n. 12 above), 196—argue that normal or admirable elements of Hippolytus’ behaviour induce his disaster; consequently there is little connection between the less commendable aspects of his character and his end. Such attitudes make many of the precise details of Euripides’ treatment redundant or gratuitous. They, moreover, take the matter of Hippolytus’ death too literally. It is clearly not the fact of Hippolytus’ death with which Euripides is concerned in the messenger scene, but the symbolic potential of its details to inform the audience about the crucial features of Hippolytus’ character and circumstances. Such are the dangers of responding to the facts of the ‘story’ rather than to the facts of Euripides’ treatment.
16. Knox, op.cit. (n. 1 above), 16–17, endeavours to countenance the duality of primitive divine forces and complex characterizations. His view surely relies too much on the evidence of statement, specifically Aphrodite’s statements, not of fact; statement, throughout the play, as I argue, is gravely misleading. Clearly one of the major obstacles in the path of evaluation of this drama has been the apparent coexistence of simple forces and complex characterizations. Thus some critics merely ignore the characterizations or dismiss them as unintentional, e.g. Kitto, op.cit. (n. 4 above), 266: ‘Are we tempted to think him somewhat a prig when he expounds his virtue? If we do, we are thinking of him as a tragic character instead of what he really is, a tragic figure. His purity is the whole point of his tragedy, consequently of his character too. Euripides must insist on it; nothing else in him counts. As Hippolytus speaks we must see him as the tragic victim of Aphrodite, going to his death because of her wrath. He speaks, like the others, out of the inner tragedy and not out of his own personality, and if we cannot take him simply as a tragic figure whose personality, except in this one respect, never comes into consideration; if, that is, we feel him priggish, that must be written off as one of the inevitable inconveniences of the whole method.’
17. In this observation I find I stand with Verall—see, e.g. The Bacchants of Euripides (Cambridge, 1910), 127Google ScholarPubMed—though my conclusions therefrom are rather, usually substantially, different.
18. Cf. Dodds, op.cit. (n. 2 above), 72.
19. Barrett’s explanation op.cit. (n. 3 above), 39–40, supported by Segal, ‘Curse and Oath …’ op.Cit. (n. 3 above), 173, in terms of Theseus being unsure of the efficacy of curse and therefore adding exile as a safeguard, is a priori implausible and unsupported by the text.
20. Contrast Winnington-Ingram, op.cit. (n. 7 above), 187: ‘They fell out as they did, because Theseus was the man he was. Of course Aphrodite played a part. As Theseus gives lyrical expression to his love for the dead Phaedra, we see the goddess working in him to further her purposes. He was a man of passion. It was because he was also a man of action that he sought release of emotion in an immediate act by cursing his son.’ Also Segal, op.cit. (n. 9 above), 293: ‘It is part of this tragedy that the father is the exact antithesis of the son as far as sexual behaviour is concerned. He fully embodies the conventional ‘double standard’ of male sexuality (cf. 320). Hence he is the person least capable of comprehending Hippolytus’ way of life (cf. 948–57). This difference is crucial for the movement of the action, for he is also the person least likely to believe Hippolytus’ defence. He has the usual view of where “maleness” generally leads (967–70).’
21. Cf. Hathorn op.cit. (n. 15 above), 105: ‘In Hippolytus Theseus rejects investigation, Hippolytus renounces adult experience, Phaedra forswears her own better knowledge. The play is a study of intentional blindness.’
22. For the particular traditions of the Hippolytus story see Barrett, op.cit. n. 3 above), 6 ff. The divine personifications of prologue and epilogue, besides serving the manifest religious function discussed above, are of course quite consistent with the traditions of Greek mythology recounting relationships between gods and men, and with those details, such as Poseidon’s curse and Artemis’ association with Hippolytus, already existent in the tradition of this story.
23. Segal, ‘Curse and Oath …’ op.cit. (n. 3 above), 175, observes the operation of these incompatibilities in the drama, but regards their function less fundamentally than I: ‘Yet Euripides clearly shows himself not altogether at ease with the old myth and not entirely able to take it at face value. In fact, he goes out of his way, repeatedly, to stress the discrepancies between natural and supernatural in his interpretation of the story … It is a favourite device of his dexiotes or subtlety to throw us off balance by thus juxtaposing ancient, primitive myth and modernizing rationalism.’
24. Of which the epilogue of the Orestes is probably the most conspicuous example.
25. Contrast Segal, op.cit. (n. 9 above), 296, who sees in this reconciliation ‘the most moving and positive development in the play.’
