Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Theseus, married to Phaedra daughter of Minos, had a son Hippolytus by the Amazon (Antiope or Hippolyte). Hippolytus, dedicated to Artemis, scorned Aphrodite and the bed of love. Aphrodite, in Euripides’ prologue, vows revenge and uses Phaedra as her instrument. While Theseus is away (exiled for a year to Trozen for blood-guilt, or visiting an oracle), Phaedra is consumed with desire for her stepson. She resists, sickens, and—urged by her Nurse—lets the truth be spoken to Hippolytus. He recoils in horror and purity; Phaedra, fearing exposure and shame, hangs herself, leaving a tablet that falsely accuses Hippolytus of assaulting her. Theseus returns, reads the tablet, and believes it. He calls on his father Poseidon to grant one of three curses and dooms Hippolytus. Poseidon sends a bull from the sea against Hippolytus’s chariot on the Trozenian shore; the horses panic, the car is wrecked, and Hippolytus is dragged and mortally wounded. Artemis appears, reveals Aphrodite’s plot and Phaedra’s falsehood to Theseus, and promises cult honor to Hippolytus. Father and dying son are reconciled too late. Euripides’ play is the fullest classical psychological version: divine quarrel, Phaedra’s struggle, the Nurse’s fatal mediation, the curse, and Trozenian aetiology. Apollodorus’s epitome preserves the same skeleton without the tragic speeches; Trozenian cult (Pausanias) honored Hippolytus with rites that match Artemis’s closing promise.