Hippolytus Book

For Euripides, Hippolytus is an intentional and accordingly annoying celibate, whose chastity offends Aphrodite ("All those that live and see the light of the sun / from Atlas' Pillars to the tide of Pontus / are mine to rule" (ll.3-5)). Apparently one is subject to nemesis if one lives out the hubris of this no-fuckin' eidos zoe.

Nemesis in this case comes in the form of unlawful desire created in H's stepmom, Phaedra, who has married H's father, Theseus, who at the opening of this text had been off with his potentially heteronormative proverbial friendly friend Pirithous to kidnap Helen and Persephone; no one can accuse them of lacking ambition, I suppose. This kidnapping mission went cock-eyed in Tartarus, where they were trapped for years. One may accordingly not blame Phaedra if she needed to depend upon the kindness of xenos insofar as attentive lovers were in short supply in mythical Hellas. Because of this dearth, Phaedra is "afire with longing" (232), and her "body / is wracked and wasted" (274)--a "secret sickness" (293) to be disclosed to purported women only ("But if your troubles may be told to men, / speak, that a doctor may pronounce on it" (295-96)).

Luckily for her, H can hardly be thought of as xenos, so no big deal, right? H after all litters his speech with seductive ironies such as how he is "the seed of / Chastity" (ll. 80-81), which suggests his plausible skill as a practitioner of the erotic arts. Either way, the chorus regards it as "Pan's frenzy" or "Hecate's madness" (ll. 141-42), which perhaps suggests that it may in fact be a big deal after all. (I may be dead wrong about Hippolytus not being xenos, incidentally, to the extent that Phaedra is referring to him (an irresolvable ambiguity at the foundation of this text) when she says "Destruction light / upon the wife who herself plays the tempter / and stains her loyalty to her husband's bed / by dalliance with strangers" (407-410).)

P is instructed that there is "no remedy in silence" (298), which is the advice that triggers the tragedy here--P does not want to disclose her desire, as it is a "stain" (317) to be concealed (is it the desire, or the dalliance, supra, that is the stain, however? another irresolvable ambiguity)--but her interlocutors try to "force confession" (325). When asked "are you in love, my child? And who is he?" (350), P replies, non-responsively, "There is a man, ...his mother was an Amazon..." (351). Answered: "You mean Hippolytus?" (352); countered: "You have spoken it, not I" (353), which does not change the entire play--her silence is maintained and the action sets forth in the style of Three's Company thereafter--except in this case the salacious inferences of Mr. Roper just happen to be correct.

The chorus is too stupid to see that they have Mr. Ropered this thing, stating "you yourself / have dragged your ruin to the light" (366-67), which is emphatically false (unless the nurse is a slave, whose body acts out the will of the despot and is imputed to same--cf. Agamben on Aristotle here)--though it indicates that the underlying desire is less the problem than the disclosure of it. P understands the problem of disclosure (which comes across in agambenian terms almost) : This is the deadly thing which devastates
well-ordered cities and the homes of men--
that's it, this art of oversubtle words.
It's not the words ringing delight in the ear
that one should speak, but those that have the power
to save their hearer's honorable name. (ll 486-91) The transaction here is doubly stupid insofar as everyone recognizes the inferred underlying desire as alien: "Your case is not so extraordinary, / beyond thought or reason. The Goddess in her anger / has smitten you, and you are in love" (ll. 437-39).

Anyway, after promising P that H won't be told, the nurse tells H and that leads inexorably to everyone being dead. Misogynist H, whose "tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged" (l. 612), endorsing thereby a mind/body dichotomy worthy of Epictetus, also regards the disclosure as the problem: "I'll go to a running stream and pour its waters / into my ear to purge away the filth" (l. 653-54). Charming! P's counterstroke is to accuse H of crime in her dying declaration. Artemis appears post-catastrophe to explain to the survivors just how dumb they are (if she had hurried up before everyone died, there wouldn't be a tragedy here). Good times for all.

When Seneca takes up this narrative, he strips it of the theophanic prologue and epilogue, and thereby allows the human persons to expose and conclude the premises of the conflict. The characters incessantly refer to the deities--right away Hippolytus praises his 'diva virago' (l. 54).

We note the connection to the setting developed in Seneca's Medea, to the extent that Phaedra here refers to her home as "the vast sea's mistress, whose countless vessels along every coast have held the deep, yea, whatever lands, e'en to Assyria" (ll. 85-87)--the insistence upon a free and open maritime zone, the basis of Roman military logistics.

Also noted is the connection to Seneca's Hercules Furens, insofar as Phaedra's critical self-assessment (i.e., anagnorisis, but very early) leads her to "Why this mad love of forest glades? [quid furens saltus amas] I recognize my wretched mother's fatal curse; her love and mine know how to sin in forest depths" (ll. 112-14). But of course the furens of Heracles leads to him to murder his kids, rather than try to seduce them.

Phaedra's nurse in this version is upfront about the "monstrous passion" (l. 142) and "impious intercourse" (l. 160)--it is a "deed which no barbaric land has ever done, neither the Getae, wandering on their plains, nor the inhospitable Taurians [i.e., where Iphigenia went post-sacrifice], nor the scattered Scythians" (ll. 166-68). By contrast with Euripides, Seneca has Phaedra ratify this recitation: "I know, nurse, that what thou sayest is true" (ll. 178-79). (The nurse chides Phaedra with the spectre of "strange prodigies" (l. 175), asking "Why do monsters cease? [cur monstra cessant] (l. 174), which can also mean "why do the warnings stop?"--but the answer in either event is that Heracles killed all the chthonic monsters already.) Nurse otherwise is standard stoic: "Control thy passion" (l. 255)--until she agrees to assist Phaedra to "ensnare his mind" (l. 416), which includes encouraging young Hippolytus to "let Bacchus unburden thy weighty cares" (l. 445).

Hippolytus is too rustic for all that, preferring the "free and innocent" life of the country (l. 482), the "ancient ways." It is a political point for him: "no slave is he of kings" (490), but he also fears ochlocracy ("no shouting populace, no mob, faithless to good men" (ll. 485-86)). He is a true conservative insofar as he is nostalgic for "the primal age," "no blind love of gold," "not yet did rash vessels plough the sea: each man knew only his native waters" (ll. 525 et seq.). He is sufficiently obnoxious to be anti-agriculture (l. 538), preferring a pastoral or even hunter-gatherer economy. "Unholy passion [furens] for gain broke up this peaceful life" (l. 540).

Moreover, the nasty conservatism comes out as a regular misogyny, as he highlights that "alone, Medea, will prove that women are an accursed race" (ll. 563-64): "I abominate them all [detestor omnes]" (l. 566). So, yeah, totally setting up a meet-cute, wherein she offers to be his slave (l. 612), endorsing a nasty fungibility of persons doctrine because "Theseus' features I love" (l. 647), which she detects on Theseus' son. H responds with the promising flirtation of "O thou, who have outsinned the whole race of women, who hast dared a greater evil than thy monster-bearing mother" (ll. 687-88). At that point, P can't handle it any longer and threatens suicide, and H runs away into the forest. The Nurse here reverses Euripides by reporting to everyone that H tried to ravish P (l. 725) (just as Seneca also reversed the role of who reported her desire to Hippolytus, NB). Phaedra, for her part, ratifies the lie (l. 900 et seq.), and Theseus concludes that "The breed reverts to its progenitors and debased blood reproduces the primal stock" (ll. 906-08), referring to his son's alleged racial 'furens.'

Thence it all shakes out as we know, but with Senecan gore mixed with stoic moralisms. Gotta love that. On to Racine.