EURIPIDES HIPPOLYTOS Edited with Introduction and Commentary by W. 8S. BARRETT Fellow and Tutor of Keble College ford CLARENDON PRESS - OXFORDThis book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification ‘in order to ensure its continuing availability OXFORD Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP (Oxford University Press isa department of the University of Oxford. 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(reproduced by courtesy of the ‘Trustees ofthe British Museum).PREFACE I zp make no apology for producing a new edition of the Hip- polytas; but I may with advantage say a few words about its plan. ‘The commentary has grown out of lectures delivered in Oxford on the Hippolytos as a special book for Honour Moderations. It has grown a good deal: I conceived it with the undergraduate in mind, but I have expanded it through the years to serve the needs of the experienced scholar as well. Yet I have tried to keep the undergraduate firmly in mind throughout: I have never been silent where I thought that he might be in need of help; I have done my best not to puzzle him with unexplained technicalities; and I have tried above all to make the commentary self-contained, and to let no argument depend on a mere reference to the writings of other scholars. Furthermore, I have so arranged the commen- tary that a reader may, if he will, concern himself only with my text and my interpretation of it: where the text as I print it is conjectural or disputed, I begin by interpreting it and proceed only in the second place to its justification ; similarly where the interpretation is disputed I state my own view first and leave the reader if he will to stop at that point and neglect my account of the views which I reject, I have preferred to let him make his own decisions about what to ignore, and have not given him the deterrence of square brackets or smaller type ; I commonly divide my notes into sections by means of the dash, and matter that he may wish to disregard will normally form a separate section whose nature should be at once apparent. T interpret the play for those who are reading it; literary and dramatic comment I give therefore not as an introduction but piecemeal through the commentary, in association with the de- tailed interpretation from which it springs, My introduction con- cerns itself only with an investigation, presupposed by the commentary and not incorporable in it, into two topics external to the play: the history of the legend and the history of the text. In the section concerned with the first of these two topics I proceed, after a brief inquiry into the earlier development of the legend, to a full consideration of the two lost plays, Euripides’ first Hippolytos and Sophocles’ Phaidra. A great deal has beenvi PREFACE written already about these plays, and much of that great deal T have found unsatisfactory: conjecture building on assumption has erected fabrics which belong often more to the clouds than to solid earth. I have therefore found it necessary to investigate the evidence at length; but the investigation is so involved and so forbidding that I have relegated it to an appendix, and in the body of the introduction have given only a résumé of my con- clusions—inadequate if read alone, but at least more readable. In the appendix I have printed the fragments of the plays and have printed or summarized the other evidence, and in my dis- cussion have sought to distinguish between the certain (of which there is little), the probable, and the merely possible. The dis- cussion is complex, the positive results are slight; I hope at least that the negative results will have been worth establishing. ‘The second section, on the history of the text, is the outcome of more uncongenial labour than I care to reckon. Previous colla- tions of the medieval manuscripts were often incomplete and some- times evidently unreliable, and I have therefore collated them all anew (some from the originals, some from photographs). I give in my apparatus full reports of the readings of ten of these manu- scripts, including two (O D) whose readings had previously been reported only in part and two (CE) that had never been used at all; I have collated but excluded (save in special circumstances) an eleventh manuscript (P), and have neglected only a group of very late manuscripts which appeared, from the published read- ings of one representative (Haun.), to merit neither collation nor report. From all this labour a few new readings have emerged (an accepted conjecture confirmed at 1255, a neglected one at 659); but the chief gain has been that with the full evidence before me I have been able to establish facts about the relation- ip of the manuscripts which from the partial evidence pre~ viously available it had been impossible even to suspect. Papyri, whose readings I have taken from existing collations, have had little direct effect upon the text (a neglected conjecture con- firmed at 584) ; but they have thrown, in this and in other plays, a great deal of light on the early history of the text, and have led me to propose considerable modifications of existing views. T have not in general been able to take account, cither in commentary or in introduction, of writings published after 1959. I have been unwilling, however, to pass over the new evidencePREFACE vii afforded by papyri; I include therefore in my addenda an account of a number of these, directly or indirectly relevant to the Hippo- Jytos, which appeared in 1961 and 1962. Normally, when I print an addendum, I have inserted a reference to it in the body of the book; I draw attention therefore to my ‘Addendis addenda’, added too late for such references to be inserted, where I discuss a new papyrus of the beginning of the play and a fragment of Stesichoros relevant to the early history of the legend, In printing the text I have diverged in a few details from current usage; I give here a brief account of these divergences, lest they should be thought to be mere caprice. ‘My text presents what I think the poet wrote; I have thought it wrong to encumber it with the errors of his manuscript tradi- tion, I print therefore not ‘EMdc at Athens of Adpo8iry év Innouretent (or -rov?) or ent ‘InoAtrat (or-rov).} In each case also it was associated with a precinct of Asklepios ; and in each case it was Hippolytos who was there first, and Asklepios (a late-comer among Greek deities) who joined him later.+ Asklepios seems to have made a habit of supplanting local heroes with healing powers;§ but there is no evidence that Hippolytos was ever credited with these, and his connexion with Asklepios must remain obscure. It is commonly assumed that Hippolytos at Athens is an im- portation from Trozen ; ifso he will probably have come in in the sixth century, when his father Theseus was establishing himself as, the Athenian hero, The assumption is not an unlikely one, but it rests on no scrap of concrete evidence; and the possibility of a Hippolytos cult near Marathon (which seems to have been "1G. it, 190 = Ziehen, Lege sacrae, 10. » Paus. 2. 32. 93 from it Phaidra was said to have watched Hipp. exercising near by. 3°16. 3, 324. 69 = S.E.G. x, 227. 66 (429/2 9.0.) afpobirec eo hero I 310. 280 (¢. 429/8 3.0.3 ef, SEG. x. 225) agpoB]irec el[m er]modvro; E. Hipp. 32 ént "Frwohtran (he alleges that Phaidra founded the temple because of her love for Hipp.; it was s0 sited as to look out acrom the sea to Trozen). + The Asklepios cult seems to have been established at Epidauros at the end of the 6th cent., and to have begun to spread thence to other states not earlier than and L, Edelstein, Asclepius, i. 242 ff. —The Trozenian le the precinct of Hipp.; the building has been iden- tified from excavation, and dated to the late qth cent. (G. Welter, Tr. u. Kal, 95; it was destroyed by earthquake c. 250 .¢.). Pausanias does not mention it, but does mention in Hipp.’s precinct a statue of Asklepios by Timotheos ‘which the ‘Trozeniane sy isnot Aall, but Hipp the same Timotheos was working on the Epidaurian Asklepicion c. 370 ».c. , 102). Tt looks as though the cult may have come to Trozen at some time in the middle of the 4th cent. —The Athenian, Asklepieion lay just east of the yvfua of Hipp. ; it was founded in 420/19 (J.C. i. 4960). 5 Nilsson, Gesch. d. gr. Rel, i8. 598. ® Asklepios in his lifetime restored the dead to life (for which Zeus killed him), and the story that he so restored Hipp. seems to have been early (fist cited from the epic Navedxria, perhaps 6th cent.) ; the Epidaurian Asklepi pretending to record Hipp.’s dedication of twenty horses in gratitude, This may or ‘may not be relevant to the cult connexion.6 THE LEGEND ‘Theseus’ original home in Attica) suggests that Hippolytos may not necessarily have been native only to Trozen. But what does seem to be true is that the Athenian Hippolytos was a mere shadow compared with the Trozenian: whereas at Trozen he was a major figure of local cult, at Athens he seems to have been a very minor hero indeed. 4. THE LEGEND BEFORE ATTIC TRAGEDY Hippolytos, like all figures of Greek cult, had his legend. We meet it first in Attic tragedy of the fifth century; for its earlier history we have no direct evidence at all. But there can be no doubt that the tragedians took it over from earlier sources ; and in one way or another we can deduce a certain minimum about its history before that time. His father is always Theseus ; who his mother may have been is uncertain and unimportant (in the 5th cent. she is an Amazon, but we may doubt whether this is original!). In character he is chaste and devoted to outdoor pursuits, notably to the driving of horses. And the legend that attached to him is one of the many appearances ofa common theme of folk-tales : that of the married woman who falls in love with a young man and attempts to seduce him, and then when he rebuffs her anticipates his denun- ciation by turning the tables and accusing him to her husband of rape or attempted rape. We meet this motif in Greek mythology in the stories of Peleus and the wife of Akastos, of Bellerophon and Stheneboia ; it is familiar in other mythologies, as in the story of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar; and there can be no doubt that in the legend of Hippolytos too it appeared to begin with in its simple and straightforward form. ‘The married woman in this case is Hippolytos’ own stepmother Phaidra ;? the outcome of her + See below, p. 8, 2 In the extant Hipp. he i a devotee of hunting and a votary of Artemis, This last fact is so invaluable dramatically (with the antinomy Artemis-Aphrodite to symbolize the antinomy between chastity and sexual love) that its hard to say how Tit was traditional and how far Eur. roay have built ic up for his own purpotes; though I abserve thatthe beach at Trozen where Hipp. raced his horses wat inthe precinct of Artemis Saronia (sce my notes on 148-50, 228). We have no evidence Sh any connexion between Hipp. and Artemis in Greek ‘ult. (See also below, p.8,n. 1.) 2 is sometimes sad that in the original Trozenian legend the married woman with whom Hipp. was involved was not Theseus’ wife Phaidra but Diomedes wiTHE LEGEND BEFORE ATTIC TRAGEDY 1 accusation is that Hippolytos is killed (miraculously, by a mon- strous bull that Poseidon, invoked by Theseus, sends from the sea as Hippolytos is driving his chariot) ; Phaidra herself in the end commits suicide. We may safely assume that it was in Trozen, not Athens, that the legend first took shape. The assumption depends not merely on the greater importance of the Trozenian cult but on the nature of the legend: it has every appearance of being an aetiological myth, a legend invented to explain the practices of an historical cult, The heroines to whom brides offer their hair at Megara and Delos are virgins who died young and unmarried ; so the Hippo- lytos to whom they offer it must be the young man who died young and still chaste, who died indeed because of his chastity. But it was only in Trozen, not Athens, that they offered him their hair it was at Trozen, therefore, that the legend first arose. Other evidence points the same way : the bull coming from the sea is topographically appropriate at Trozen;' Euripides would scarcely (in his surviving play) have put the scene of the legend at Trozen if his Athenian audience had believed the legend to be native to their own soil. We know nothing of Trozenian literature that carried the legend: whatever there was may have been only oral and is un- likely to have had more than local currency.? When Euripides Aigiale. This is fale: it depends on an evident corruption in the scholion on Lykophron 610, where itis said that according to Mimnermos Aphrodite made Aigiale moMote piv porxote cuynoysnBivar, épacBivas 82 xal ‘InmoNrov Kopsjrov 70d Z¥erélou vios. Only Kometes can be in question, as in the parallel scholion BDT on Ig, 4123 the nonsense ‘Trehivov Koyjru isto be removed not by inverting ‘a wal (Tzetzes) but by removing ‘Inmodvrov. The previous sentence (on a quite differen topic) has mentioned that Phaidra jpdedy vos “Tnodivov; the “Tnwotrev has intruded from there. "Hipp. wat in the habit of driving his chariot on a long beach near the town (ace my note on 148-50), andthe ‘Trozenian told that it was here that he was Lied (Baus, 2. 2, 10) We have no evidence that he was ever given a comparable riding-place near Athens (though one might I suppose ride near the sea at Phaleron, and equally a Marathonian Hipp. might have ridden near the sea at Marathon): when Attic tragedy puts the scene of the legend at Athens it appears to use other means for bringing him by the coast (pp. 42 below). Tadd that Poseidon athe agent of Hipp,'s destruction is perhaps especialy appropriate at Trozen: he is the greatest of Trozenian gods, and it was there rather than at Athens that he was fegarded as Theseus’ father. OF Trozenian poets, the Hagias to whom Proklos ascribes the cystic Néerot is only a name and perhaps a ghost; the Hlegias whom Paws. (1.2. 606) cites for a version of Theseus? Amazon adventure i mort (Ucoby ad lc).a THE LEGEND speaks (1428 ff.) of songs that the girls will always sing about Hippolytos and Phaidra’s love, we must presumably think of cult- songs; I should hesitate to assume with Wilamowitz (intr. to Hipp.) that it was only in these that the Trozenian legend was preserved, There is one hint that the legend may have been known outside Trozen: the Navrdiria (apparently the poem of a Hesiodic school at Naupaktos) told how Asklepios restored Hippolytos to life and was killed by Zeus in punishment;! we do not know the date of the poem (perhaps sixth century), and how much of Hippolytos’ legend it told in the process we have no idea? If the legend originated in Trozen, so probably did the figure of Phaidra; for the legend is her one real raison d’étre. In fifth- century Athens she has the further function of bearing Theseus his legitimate sons Akamas and Demophon (Hippolytos being a bastard, the son of the Amazon Antiope or Hippolytes) ; but this Philod. mept edeeBeac 52, ps.-Apollod, bibl. 3. 10. 3, 10. The story of his raising the dead, and his punishment by Zeus, was common from early times, but the man raised varies in different authors; each of the above passages isa list of variants, of which the Navndxra’s is one. For other lists, eg. sch. E. Al. 1, see E. J. and L. Edelstein, Asclepius, i. 97 ff. —Philodemos, in citing the Navrdxria and two 4th- cent, authors for the raising of Hipp., adds ‘at the request of Artemis’; we cannot in so summary a list assume that this last detail was found in all three sources. The ‘Romans, and apparently Kallimachos (fr. 190 Pf.) identified this restored Hipp. with the Virbius attendant on Diana in her sanctuary at Aricia in Latium, and told. how Diana-Artemis had not merely had him restored to life but had hidden him away there in security; the identification (doubiless suggested by the fact that horses might not enter the precinct at Aricia) is presumably Hellenistic, and wil reflect the Greek legend only in its later forms. I do not know whether the fact that the Aricine Diana, a woman's goddess, seems to have had healing powers (Wissowa, 329. 39 ff.) is in any way relevant to the connexion of Hipp. with Asklepios. usually held to be relatively late (Diehl, R.E. xvi. 1976); it was perhaps used by Pherekydes (early 5th cent.) and is first mentioned by Charon of Lamp- sakos (c. 400 n.c.). It seems (Paus. 4. 2. 1, 10, 38. 11) to have been a genealogical poem like the Hesiodie "H. ing the histories of famous women and their descendants: possible pegs for this incident would be Phaidra (or rather her mother Pasiphae) and Asklepios’ mother Koronis. Koronis (and Asklepios, and his death) featured in the "Hota: (frr. 122-5 Rz.) ; I do not know whether this tells for for against her appearing in the Navrderia. (For a conjecture that the Navrdwria may have been ascribed to Hesiod at Naupaktos see Wilamowitz, D. Ilias u. Homer, 412.) 3 The Amazon is probably an Attic importation into Hipp.'s ancestry: Theseus’ ‘expedition against the Amazons, in which he won her as-his captive, looks like an Attic innovation, modelled on Herakles’ expedition and serving to moti ‘much older story of the Amazons’ invasion of Attica, The story of t ‘Trozen (Paus. 2. 32. 9) is geographically suspect and looks like a ref legend. —Both Antiope and Hippolyte seem to be traditional Amazon names;THE LEGEND BEFORE ATTIC TRAGEDY 9 is a function in which she might well have supplanted another mother, and indeed there is evidence which suggests that she did. For we are told that in Pindar the son of Theseus and Antiope was, not Hippolytos but Demophon;? this seems to echo an earlier form of Attic legend with neither Hippolytos nor Phaidra, and with the Amazon functioning not as concubine but as wife.* ‘The legend first took shape, then, in Trozen; and from Trozen it was later adopted by the Athenians. We should expect it to have been adopted at the latest in the sixth century, at the time when Theseus was being erected into a national hero, and to have been recounted in the Theseis; and if Phaidra was first adopted along with the legend there is evidence that it was, for the Theseis told how Theseus married her and Antiope made an attack on him at the wedding. Furthermore, Phaidra appears in the list of heroines in the Nékvia, linked with the Athenian Prokris and with Ariadne whom Theseus sought to bring to Athens (Od. 11. 321- 5): if this is (as it must be) an Attic insertion it is presumably sixth-century, in which case Phaidra, and the legend, will have been established at Athens by that date. Certainly in the fifth century it was already well known at the time when Euripides wrote his first tragedy on the theme ;* and what may be a hint of it in Polygnotos’ painting of the Néxua at Delphis (c. 460 3.c.?) may be thought most likely tohave come from an Athenian source. When the Athenians adopted the story from Trozen we may expect them to have left it essentially unaltered ; and we shall see later that there is one piece of evidence which confirms this expectation.‘ But in one respect a change is likely. If one adopts ‘Theseus’ Amazon perhaps originally Antiope (the only name on inscribed vase- of her abduction, all c. 500 n.c.: D. von Bothmer, Amazons in Greek art, en made the mother of Hippolytos, Eur. ‘himself calls her, four times, merely ‘the Amazon’; later tradition varies. © Plut. Thes. 28. 2 rc 8° Horudmye dnoBavosene Eynwe DalBpar, Zyav vidv ‘Trms- Se Be MisBapse $nce Anuopiavra (Pi. fr. 176 S. = Pindar simply for the identity of Theseus’ sor he talked of the marriage with Phaidra. This i ign of the Amazons against Athens (ft 174 = 157); an Attic source seems indicated. # And the Amazon herself may well have supplanted another mother (cf. p. 8, 1, g): the list of Theseus’ amours is a long one (p. 18, n. 3). * Phat, Thes. 28. 1, citing & rie Onentboe movyrhe. 4 Ar. Fr. 10525 se¢ below, p. 31 with n. 2. + Paus. 10. 29. 3. He showed Phaidra sitting in a looped rope used as a swing10 THE LEGEND a legend into the career of one’s local hero, one will adopt it if possible into his local career: it would be the natural thing to put the scene of the adopted legend not in Trozen but in Athens itself. Such a transference is suggested by the existence in Athens of a cult and grave-mound of Hippolytos (whether or not these were there already or were introduced at this very time) ; and when we find that fifth-century tragedy sets the scene of the legend in Athens, the presumption that the sixth century had already done the same becomes very strong. 5: THE LEGEND IN ATTIC TRAGEDY (a) The three plays The legend of Hippolytos was the subject of three plays by the fifth-century Attic tragedians: two of Euripides, both called Hippolytos (and later distinguished as ‘InmAvroc KaAurréq.evoc and “Immébivroc Srepaviac or Zreparnpdpoc'), and one of Sophocles, the Phaidra, Of the Euripidean plays the surviving one, the Erepamfépoc, is the later, and was produced in 428 B.c.; we do not know in what year the earlier play was produced, We are told nothing of the date of Sophocles’ play; when I place it between the Euripidean plays this is pure conjecture. We do not know the titles of the plays with which any of the three formed a tetralogy.* ‘The evidence available to us for the reconstruction of the lost plays is in general inadequate and uncertain; and for that very reason the work of reconstruction is difficult and complex, with the problems of one play interlocking with those of another. I therefore relegate my discussion of the evidence to an appendix, and in my main account give merely a connected résumé of the conclusions of that appendix, followed by an account of the surviving play in the light of those conclusions. It will be seen that while we can say a few things about the lost plays that are certain, (78 re dio alwpounéryy capa ev cerpae wal rate xepely dupordpasc éxaréputler ric ceipae éyouéryy) ; Paus., not improbably, takes this to be a hint at her suicide. T" Kahomzéueboc Poll. 9. 50 and (with a variant Karaxalvrrépevoc) schol. Theokr. 2. 10, Zregarlac arg. Hipp. (= Ar. Byz.) 28; Dregavndépoc Stob. 4. 44. 34, Hesych. . dvacupdtet, and the medieval mss. of Hipp. (A in the title, BODEL in the jo). For the explanation of the epithets see below, p. $7 with n. 15 they will have been added after Eur.’s time but before that of Ar. Byz., who uses Erefariac as an epithet already current. For a conjecture concerning the first Hipp. see p. 40 below.THE LEGEND IN ATTIC TRAGEDY n or nearly s0, we are for much of the time moving in the realm merely of the probable or possible; and although the account I give is that suggested by the evidence, the evidence is usually so tenuous that the truth may sometimes be very different, (0) The first Hippolytos In his first play Euripides adopted the traditional legend with- out modification: Phaidra was a shameless and unprincipled woman who when she fell in love with Hippolytos made a deliberate attempt to seduce him; he rebuffed her, and she, in anger and self-defence (lest he should accuse her to Theseus), ac- cused him instead to Theseus of rape or attempted rape. Theseus cursed him, Poseidon sent the bull, and he was killed. Then, apparently, Phaidra’s treachery was exposed; whereupon she killed herself. The principal character of the play was probably (as in the extant play) not Phaidra but Hippolytos; but we know nothing of the poet’s treatment of him, save that he was given the traditional chastity. OF the detail of the action there is little that we can say for sure, but much that we can conjecture with varying degrees of confidence. The scene of the play was pretty certainly Athens. ‘The prologue-speech may perhaps have been delivered by Phaidra herself or by her Nurse; we may surmise that the early scenes included one in which Hippolytos was separately characterized and another in which Phaidra and her Nurse debated her love (the Nurse perhaps attempting to restrain her). It is likely that Phaidra made her approach to Hippolytos in person and on the stage; he appears to have reacted by veiling his head in horror («advipacBar; hence the title Kadunrépevoc). When she accused him to Theseus she may have supported her charge by faked evidence of violence. There then seems to have been an dydv between Theseus and Hippolytos: there are hints that this may have been initiated by Theseus’ summoning Hippolytos to make his defence, that Hippolytos may have been kept from establish- ing his innocence by an oath of secrecy exacted by Phaidra before making her overtures, and that it was at the end of the dy.iv that ‘Theseus delivered his curse. It is likely that he added a sentence of exile, and that it was as Hippolytos was driving away along the coast to Trozen that the bull came from the sea and he was killed, The truth was then revealed (how? perhaps a confession12 THE LEGEND by the Nurse) ; and Phaidra killed herself. Whether or not Hip- polytos appeared dying on the stage we do not know; but at the end there was a prophecy, presumably by a deus ex machina, of his future cult, (6) Sophocles’ Phaidra The first Hipp. met with disfavour: the ordinary conventional Athenian disapproved of the portrayal of illicit passion in a woman, and we may surmise that Euripides had done nothing to spare him in his depicting of Phaidra’s psychology. It may well have been at this juncture, after the first Hipp. but before the second, that Sophocles wrote his Phaidra, The play seems (as its title suggests) to have been concerned primarily with the charac- terand fate not of Hippolytos but of Phaidra :ifso we may assume that she had the virtue necessary for tragic stature; we may also assume for Sophocles a treatment that would give no offence to the conventional Athenian. Of the detail of the action there is very little that we can say. The scene was again most likely Athens. The plot seems to have hinged on the fact that Theseus in the early part of the play was not merely absent but believed to be dead (he had gone to Hades years before to help Peirithoos ravish Persephone, and had never returned) : Phaidra’s love for Hippolytos, therefore, froward though it may have been, was at least (in intention at any rate) not adulterous.' There are various ways in which her character may have been spared in the early part of the play, but about these we can only speculate (the approach to Hippolytos not made in person? the accusation in order to save herself for her children’s sake? but there is no real evidence) ; at the end of the play she is most likely to have killed herself not on discovery but after confession and in remorse. Of the poet’s treatment of Hippolytos we know nothing. It is likely, * Hipp. of course was sill her stepson but would a Greck have regarded marriage between them as incestuour? Obviously adultery with a stepson was ‘specially heinous (the son wronging his own father); but marriage after the father's death might be another matter. The Greeks certainly permitted ma thatare forbidden in modern law and custom at Athens, for instance, aman might marry his halfsister by the same father (though not by the same mother). ‘The neavest parallel that 1 have found is that of Kallias (Andok, 1. 124 ff), who is alleged to have committed adultery with his wife's mother and then after divorcing his wife to have married the mother; Andokides affects to regard both the adultery and the marriage as an unheard-of scandal, but Kallis was able to declare his gon by the mother legitimate and to enrol him in his phratry.THE LEGEND IN ATTIC TRAGEDY 3 though not demonstrable, that he took no part in the action after he rejected Phaidra’s advances, and perhaps thathe drove straight off in horror to Trozen; ifso his flight would be taken by Theseus. as proof of guilt, and the bull when he was cursed would come from the sea as he was driving along the coast. (d) The second Hippolytos It was a very unusual thing for a Greek tragic poet to write two separate plays on an identical theme. When therefore in 428 B.C. Euripides produced a second Hippolytos, our surviving play, we may assume that the failure of his earlier play had rankled with him; and if Sophocles’ play had been produced, as I have as- sumed, in the meantime and had met with some success, this would be likely to increase his dissatisfaction still more. At any rate he did produce a second play; and in it, though he kept closely within the framework of the traditional legend, he yet produced so radical and so successful a recasting of his original treatment that with it (and the accompanying plays) he won one of the only four first prizes that he achieved throughout his career. The scene is Trozen. Hippolytos has been brought up there by Theseus’ grandfather Pittheus; he is a passionate hunter and devotee of the virgin Artemis, and despises women and love. Phaidra has seen him when he has come to Athens for the mys- teries, and has fallen in love. Then Theseus comes to Trozen for a year, to expiate the killing of his cousins the Pallantidai, and brings Phaidra with him ; she now falls even more deeply in love, but keeps her love secret from everyone and pines away in silence. So much we are told by Aphrodite in the prologue; and at this point the action of the play begins, with Theseus away from ‘Trozen on a visit to an oracle, First a brief scene in which we are shown Hippolytos, both in his purity and in his intolerance, ‘Then the stage is taken by Phaidra. She has for three days been in bed, refusing to eat, and is half delirious and desperately ill. She will say no word of what her trouble is, and resists her old Nurse’s questions; but in the end the Nurse worms the secret out of her. Phaidra herself, to save her honour and her children’s, is resolved to die with her love unconfessed ; but the Nurse, to save her life, makes advances to Hippolytos without her consent. Hippolytos rejects the advances in horror; he jumps to the con- clusion that they were inspired by Phaidra, and upbraids her4 THE LEGEND mercilessly for a villainy of which in fact she is innocent. ‘The ‘Nurse, before speaking to him, had made him swear silence, but Phaidra cannot believe that he will keep his oath ; she hangs her- self, and to discredit-what he may say (and at the same time in anger at his treatment of her) leaves a written message for Theseus in which she accuses him of rape. Theseus believes her accusation (supported as it is by her suicide), and curses Hippolytos out of hand. Hippolytos then appears and protests his innocence, but is precluded by his oath from revealing the truth; Theseus sends him into exile, and as he drives his chariot away along the coast Poseidon sends the bull from the sea. Then Artemis appears and tells Theseus the truth; and as he stands there in horror and abasement Hippolytos is brought dying on to the stage. Artemis bids Hippolytos farewell, and promises him ritual honours in Trozen; father and son are reconciled; Hippolytos dies, and the play is over. “The fundamental change lies in the treatment of Phaidra’s character, She is no longer the abandoned and wicked woman of the earlier Hipp.: she is a virtuous woman who attempts to conquer her love, and when she finds herself too weak to conquer it determines to die rather than involve herself and her children in dishonour ; even her calumny of Hippolytos acquires an honour- able motive, as her one means of defending her children against a disgrace they donot deserve. I have guessed (perhapswrongly) that this last element may have been suggested in part by Sophocles; but the essentials of the change—her refusal to accept her love, her betrayal by her Nurse, the new and effective timing of her suicide—are without doubt Euripides’ own. They result at every point in immeasurable gain. The Athenians were doubtless over- squeamish in their abhorrence of the Phaidra of the first play ; but she can have been at best but a distasteful character, and now in her place we have a far nobler and more tragic figure. The ‘economy of the play is improved : now that Phaidra’s accusation is reinforced by her suicide, we feel it entirely ratural that Theseus should believe her and ignore Hippolytos’ defence ; and since the play is the tragedy of Hippolytos, it is well that Phaidra should be dead and out of the way before the process of his calamity begins. But perhaps the greatest advantage lies in the treatment of Hip- polytos that is now made possible, Whatever terms he may have used in condemning Phaidra’s proposals in the earlier play, it isTHE LEGEND IN ATTIC TRAGEDY 15 hard to see how they could have been felt as other than deserved ; in consequence his downfall will have seemed wholly unmerited, and so not really tragic. But now, with the more sympathetic Phaidra, Euripides is able to bring out more effectively the flaw in his character which is responsible for his downfall: the reverse side of his chastity and virtue is a narrow unthinking intolerance of common humanity, and this intolerance (brought out effec- tively in his opening scene) has full play in his scathing and wholly unjustified denunciation of a Phaidra who has fought as hard as in her lies to avoid the very crime for which he is now denouncing her. This major change in the structure of the play will inevitably have carried with it a number of minor changes which we are now, in no position to define: the most likely, perhaps, is the introduc- tion of Aphrodite as prologue-speaker (we need to be told of Phaidra’s love, of which no-one knows but Phaidra herself, and Phaidra is in no case to tell us: the speaker must be a god). But at the same time Euripides seems to have made a number of in- dependent changes for the mere purpose of differentiating the new play as clearly as possible from the old. In particular, he transfers the scene of the play from Athens to Trozen: this has no dramatic advantage and indeed is a source of some incon- venience, and is unlikely to have had any motive other than that of variation. One other change perhaps belongs equally under this head: whereas in the first play Thescus’scems to have given Hippolytos a hearing before cursing and exiling him, in this play curse and exile come first and the hearing only later, not as a trial but as an appeal. Certainly in this case one can sce dramatic advantage in the change; but it involves also an inconvenience so great that one may suspect that variation again was a leading motive, There may well have been other such changes too; but if so we have no evidence of what they may have been. APPENDIX: THE EVIDENCE FOR THE LOST PLAYS (a) The nature of the evidence First, the direct evidence: a statement that the first Hipp. was the first; an ancient title (‘Inm. Kavnrépevoc) ; a few allusions6 THE LEGEND (in quite general terms) to impropriety, or to Phaidra’s immo- rality, therein; and fragments of the two plays (plus two allu- sions which are equivalent to fragments) preserved by quotation in ancient authors and anthologies. These fragments, if one ig- nores citations of single words, amount to twenty (41 lines) from the first Hipp. and eleven (26 lines) from the Phaidra; they are mostly sententious utterances which might fit a variety of situa tions and which therefore tell us little about the action of the plays. Secondly, later treatments of the legend which are at variance with the extant Hipp. We may expect, in view of the influence of Attic tragedy on later writing, that the variant elements will often derive from one or other of the lost plays; but we shall never be quite certain, we shall not (without other evidence) know from which play, and we must remember that one author may well combine elements from more than one source. These later treatments are of two kinds: (a) in mythographers and historians; notably a fragment of Asklepiades of Tragilos (4th cent. B.C. ; F. Gr, Hist. 12 F. 28), probably from his TpayaiSovjeva (a work dealing with legends treated by tragic poets; he seems not to have followed individual poets, but to have sought to give astandard form of a legend, indicating variants where necessary), and the account in the mythological handbook (1st or and cent. ‘A.D.?) that goes under the name of Apollodoros (¢pit. 1. 16 ff); () in literary works; notably Seneca’s tragedy Phaedra, but also Ovid’s letter of Phaidra to Hippolytos (Heroides 4) and the brief account in his Metamorphoses (15. 497 f.).! ‘The most extensive of these treatments, Seneca’s Phaedra, is at the same time the most dangerous to use. It is true that Seneca’s plays are normally adapted from Attic originals, and that since this play bears little relation to the extant Hipp. it may safely be assumed to contain material from the lost plays. But we know from other plays whose Attic models survive that it is Seneca’s habit to diverge from these models with great freedom.* His plays + ‘This account leads up to the story of Hipp.’s restoration to life as Virbius; Kallimachos, therefore, who told that story (see p. 8, n. 1), may come into ques- ¥ Closest are his Oedipus (= 8. 0.7.) and Hercules Furens (= E. Her.) less close his Hercules Octecus (= 8. Tr.) and Medea (= E. Med.); his Agamemnon, Troades, and Phoenissae are 20 remote from their extant namesakes that we must suppose (unless they are virtually independent compositions) other models now lost.APPENDIX: EVIDENCE FOR LOST PLAYS = 17 are meant not for acting but for recitation, and he aims through- out not at dramatic unity and coherence but at the rhetorical effect of the individual scene; to this end he will excise or insert (even whole scenes), will condense or expand, will portray directly events which in his model are merely reported, will change the characters and motives of the personages, will do anything that gives scope (at whatever cost dramatically) for declamation, for point, for exaggerated effect. Even if we knew that there was only one lost play that could have served him as a model he would be hazardous evidence for its reconstruction; when, as with the Phaedra, there are two lost plays that he might have used? we must proceed with the greatest caution: we have no reason to think that Seneca confined himself to a single model, and proof indeed that he did not, for one short scene is clearly based (though with much recasting) on the extant Hipp. any element in his Phaedra may be based on cither of the lost plays, or both, or neither, and if we can show that one element has a given source this creates no presumption whatever that another element has the same;* nothing, that is, can safely be assigned to either of the lost plays without specific evidence in support of the assignation. Finally, the extant Hipp. itself: this provides us at least with negative evidence for earlier plays, since there are some elements in it which are evidently innovations and others which may at least be thought to be; it is certainly to be expected that in writing a second play on the same theme Euripides should have tried wherever possible to differentiate it, in the detail as well as in the main lines of his treatment, from its unsuccessful predeces- sor, We may also derive occasional hints from the little we know or can surmise about the history of the legend before the time of tragedy. Other evidence we have none; ancient art, which pro- vides invaluable evidence for many legends, gives us here (with one dubious exception) no help at all. * Te may well be that not all his deviations are his own: forall we know he may have incorporated elements from other sources now lost, whether Attic or Helle- istic or Roman (in his Medes, for instance, he may have had Ovid's Medea before him). But the source of the deviations is irrelevant to the point here at isue. To say nothing of a lost Hellenistic play, the Hippolyas of Lykophron. 3 Ph. 358-4033 see below, p. 36 with n. 3. + T stress this principle, which has tg0 ofien been taci ignored or rejected.8 THE LEGEND (b) The fragments of the first Hippolytost A. (443 Nauck; Stob. 4. 52. 12) & Aapnpdc ailhip *pnépac 0 dyvév $doc, dhe 73) Aevccew rote Te mpdecovew KaABe kai roice Sucruyobcw, dv médux’ eydb, The opening of a soliloquy (the invocation of the elements is typical) ; the speaker can hardly be other than Phaidra, pre- sumably on her first appearance and most likely before the Chorus enter (prologue-speech? or immediately after it? cf, with similar invocations, E. El. 54, 8. El. 86, A. Pr. 88 ff.) B (p. 4g N.; Plut. mor. 27 £-28 a) my... PalSpay kai mpoceykadotcay ist Oncet menoinxer (sc. EipuniBne) cic 81d rac éxetvou rapavopiac épacbeicay 708 ‘Inno Asrov. The rapavoylat are presumably the rapes and seductions for which he was notorious.? © (490 N.; Stob. 4. 20. 25) dyw 8¢ rye Kal Opdcove biSdcxadov & roic dunydvouet edrropdrarov, “Epwra, névrey Sucpaydrraroy Bedy. Evidently Phaidra, considering her approach to Hippolytos. D (434.N.; Stob. 4. 10. 13) od yap kar’ evceBeiav al Ornray réxat, roduripaciy 5¢ Kal xepOv SmepBodaic aNckeral re mdvra wat Onpeverat, Presumably Phaidra, perhaps in the same context as C (less probably apropos her accusation of Hippolytos) ; though xep@v SmepBodaic is not very apposite to her case. Or is she possibly suggesting to Hippolytos that he should make a bid for royal power? * I report in my footnotes only the more important ms. variant 2 Welcker's attribution, to Theseus newly emerged from Hades, is certainly false: the one thing that might suggest it (the greeting of sky and sun) in fact dis- proves it, for we cannot think of Theseus emerging direct from Hades on to the stages nor could Theseus at this moment speak of himself as Bucruxef. > See the list of his women in Istros F. Gr. Hist. 934 F. 10 (Ath. 557 a3 cf. Plut, Thes. 29. 1). It is true that many of them belong to his youth, and were therefore ancient history at the time of Phaidra’s complaint; but Helen at least comes later in his life, and in any case a poet will not be scrupulous over such detail.APPENDIX: EVIDENCE FOR LOST PLAYS 19 E (p. 4g N,; schol. Theokr. 2. 10) raic Epwrt karexojievate Ty cedijvyy dvaxareicBar cvvnec, die Kal EvpuniSnc move? iv DaiSpav év rai Kadvmropeven ‘Inroddrot.! It is broad daylight (A above), so hardly an actual invoca- tion on the stage; more likely the Nurse (or even Phaidra her- self) is describing her love-lorn behaviour. F (428 N.; Stob. 4. 20. 3, Plut. mor. 778 b) of yap Kenpw pevyovrec dvOpdmuw dyay ‘vocot Spoiwe roic dyav Onpwpevorc. Evidently spoken to Hippolytos, but by whom? Probably not by Phaidra: it looks more like general advice to give up his celibacy (as by the Servant in the second Hipp., the Nurse in Seneca). G (495 N.; Erotian s.v. 8eBAj8ycav, p. 31 Nachm.) 118° fy Auele pe SiaBddnic mabeiv ce 3e0;* From the exacting of an oath? in swearing an oath one calls down a grievous penalty on oneself if one should transgress, and in stichomythia the person exacting the oath may elicit the naming of the penalty by just such a question as this: Med. 754.708" Span ride pt) eupevre mdBorc ;, 1.T. 750 8 éxdimay rev épxoy dBucolne eue;, and cf. S, Tr. 1189. One thinks at once of Phaidra swearing Hippolytos to silence, and S:aBdAnuc ‘speak to my discredit? would fit this well;? Avdecc might then be ‘when you are released (from my suppliant’s hold on you)’.* H (496 N.; Stob. 3. 31. 3) & rérw’ alBiic, etBe rote macw Bporote ewvoiica révalexuvroy ebjipou dpevav. Hippolytos protesting at Phaidra’s shamelessness? Or The- seus at Hippolytos’, during the dydiv? * dvaxadeicBar EAG, peraxaetcdas K; moet K, dyci EAG; xadvmropdrun KA, raranahorroys EG. The and BoPdknc Stephanus, Ave and Bafaheic cod. 2 Te would not fit im the sense for which Erotian citer the fragms DeylGetas“delude’: thin might be used of the of its breaking. But the sense seems unlikely in any context: did Erotian mis- ‘understand it? * T owe this suggestion to Profewor Dodds; the hold will be the physical one (she clasps his knees or arm), not the moral one (from which he will not be re~ leased), If this is not the meaning I'can think of no other that would. be appropriate either fo this context or to any other that I ean imagine.20 THE LEGEND J (429 N.; Stob, 4. 22. 176, Clem. Al. strom. 6. 12. 2) dunt mupéc yap do mip peilov ¢Bddcropev ywrai- ee mons Sucpaxtirepor.! Glyconics, therefore a choral ode; it looks as though Phaidra has just made, or is about to make, her accusation. K (440 N.; Stob. 4. 22. 180) Onced, rapa cor 73 Aércrov, et ppovetc: yovauni melBov pnBé-radn6j wAtov.? Not by Hippolytos (who would not address his father as @nced); the language (‘don’t believe a woman even when she tells you the truth’) has a homely sound appropriate to a servant (cf. Hipp. 1252-4). Said, evidently, after Phaidra’s accusation but before Theseus has acted on it: has he there- fore, before cursing Hippolytos, sent for him to tax him with what she has said? L (437 N.; Stob. 4. 41. 43) 6pa 88 roic moMotcw dvlpcbmore ey riwrovcay iBpw viv népoid” ebmpaglay. tob. 4. 31. 55) Bow re rixrer modroc, ob $e8ih, Biov.% ‘These two fragments (L and M) seem to belong together; their verbal similarity suggests that one is a reply to the other. Possibly therefore from the dydv: L by Theseus (Hippolytos’ edmpafia as an argument for his dpc), M in Hippolytos’ reply (it is in the mAovicior, not the peiBwho! like myself, that iBpcc arises).* derower Dobree, dxfdcraper Stob., PAdcro» Clem. (with a confused word M (438 N, * cot Gaisford, xal codd.; el suppl. Gaisford; dpovete A, dpovei M. 2 ob Nauck, # codd. + Leo (Senecae trag. i. 174.£.) ascribed the fragments to a scene in which the Nurse blamed Phaidra’s passion on her riches; this scene, he thought, was imitated by Seneca (204 ff, the Nurse to Phaidra; ef. esp. 204 f. quisquis secundis rebus cexsultat nimis | fuitque lio, semper insolita appetit, 211 ff. cur sancta paruis habitat in tectis Venus | «contra diuits | regnogue ulti plura quam fas est petunt?) and alluded to by Ovid (rem. am. 743 perdat opes Phaedra, parces Neptune nepoti). 1 suppose that this is possible; but I observe first that Upc is a word more suited to Hipp.'s alleged behaviour than to Phaidra’s passion, secondly that I do not see how in such a context one could avoid giving both fragments to the Nurse, and that the repeated