Hippolytus: Seneca, Euripides, Ovid
The story of Hippolytus, a man wronged and killed by his own stepmother is a myth retold by many different writers. For this paper, I have chosen to discuss the myth as retold by Ovid, Seneca, and Euripides. Each multiform has a few distinct differences that impacts the meaning of the myth as whole. While reading each myth, the reader receives a completely different sense from the story, a conclusion that is unique to each story.
The difference in each retelling that changes the meaning of the story most significantly is the stepmother, Phaedra’s role and the emphasis each author places on her character in his form of the story. The variations in the portrayal of her character provide each story a different meaning; a large portion of the meaning comes from the reader’s ability or inability to relate to Phaedra; this ability depends on the author’s portrayal of her and her actions.
Seneca’s version of the story of Hippolytus’s death is called Phaedra. Before even beginning to read the narrative, the reader understands that Phaedra is the main character in the story; the main conflict of the story is one between her and her stepson. She does everything in her power to get Hippolytus to sleep with her: she asks the nurse to convince him and even tries to do so herself after fainting in his arms. She does not seem to care about his strong morals or her own morals.
Aphrodite’s curse on her has led her to be so determined to sleep with her stepson that she ignores her ideals and the ideals of Hippolytus. When she is rejected, she spreads the lies about Hippolytus having raped her and lives to see the consequences of those lies; though she is in control of the situation and could physically stop the story from ending tragically, she does nothing to prevent her stepson from being cursed by his father. She is alive when Hippolytus’ mangled corpse is brought to her and her husband, Hippolytus’s father, Theseus.
Only then does she realize her immense shame because she recognizes that her dishonest actions lead to Hippolytus’s undoing and that her need for revenge is what causes Hippolytus to suffer his horrendous fate. Her shame only comes after she causes her stepson’s death. In Euripides’ version, Phaedra kills herself before Hippolytus is cursed. She leaves a suicide note blaming Hippolytus with her death. She is unable to outlive Hippolytus and see the consequences of her vengeful actions.
Unlike in Seneca’s version, in Euripides’s retelling Phaedra dies and has no ability to stop the spread of lies about Hippolytus. She can do nothing to take back her actions like she could have in Seneca’s version. The reader can accept Phaedra’s actions more in Euripides’s version because she dies, attempting to keep herself morally good and free from shame and guilt for her lust; she is portrayed more as essentially a good person who is cursed by Aphrodite and her attraction to her stepson. One can be more empathetic to her in this version because Aphrodite could cast the same curse on anyone.
In her death, she blames Hippolytus of rape, relating her to Seneca’s version of her character as a harsh person, intent on revenge, someone to whom the reader cannot easily relate. Ovid’s retelling of the myth of Hippolytus is completely different from Seneca and Euripides’ narratives. First of all, Ovid’s account starts with Hippolytus’s narration of the story; the reader is first introduced to Hippolytus as someone returned from the dead so, even without reading the story, the reader already knows that Hippolytus suffers tragic death at the end of the story.
Because he is telling his story to a bystander, Hippolytus does not go into great detail of his life; he recounts the story of his stepmother’s betrayal in a very short and succinct manner, concentrating more on the suffering he faced when his “limbs [were] entangled in the reins [of his chariot]” (Ovid’s Metamorphoses p. 539 line 608-609). The fact that Hippolytus talks of his own death in a conversational manner, attempting to console Egeria is important because it is one of Ovid’s techniques that he used to place the reader’s attention on Hippolytus.
Whereas Seneca wrote about Phaedra and described the story with her as the main character, Ovid wrote about Hippolytus, from Hippolytus’s point of view. In this story, Aphrodite is not even mentioned as being the instigator of Phaedra’s lust. Phaedra is portrayed as a cold-blooded, merciless killer who did not feel shame for her murder of Hippolytus. The shame aspect, that was so important in defining the other author’s versions of the myth, is absent from Ovid’s version. Phaedra’s shame’s absence from the myth can be explained by the fact that Hippolytus himself is narrating the story.
Ovid gives the reader a perspective from the victim’s point-of-view, which does not view any guilt felt by Phaedra as relevant. Even if she feels guilt, she is still held responsible for her actions. Whereas in the other myths, the reader knows that Aphrodite is the final cause of Hippolytus’s death and Phaedra is not completely guilty, in Ovid’s myth, she is not mentioned since Hippolytus was not aware of her influence on Phaedra. The three versions’ portrayals of Phaedra are important when analyzing the different meanings of the multiform myth.
The difference lies in the different conflicts that arise in each myth and the various sources of Phaedra’s shame, or the absence of it. In Euripides’ version of the story, the main struggle of the myth lies in Phaedra’s inner conflict; she struggles with her desires and is unable to express them and deal with them in a healthy way. She must use the help of her nurse to help her and before the story is over, the shame of her immoral thoughts kills her. Unlike Euripides’ version, Seneca’s retelling of the myth shows her conflict to be one with Hippolytus.
Phaedra’s every action is a struggle against Hippolytus’ strong morals and chastity. The story is one of a fight between the two characters, concluding with Hippolytus’ loss of life, an event that leads to Phaedra’s shame and eventually her death. Ovid tells the story as a conflict between Hippolytus and Phaedra from Hippolytus’ point-of-view. Hippolytus, in Ovid’s version is wronged by his stepmother, who is portrayed as evil and coldhearted. There is no mention of any shame she might feel for her stepson’s murder; the lack of shame depicts as heartless, an obvious antagonist to Hippolytus’.
From these differences, one can interpret that a greater meaning lies in the three author’s definitions of shame. Whereas Phaedra in Seneca’s version is shameful of her own immoral thoughts and urges, the other Phaedra, in Euripides’ version, only realizes her guilt when she sees Hippolytus’ dead body; she acts more child-like, not believing that such terrible consequences could come from her actions until she sees them. Ovid differs completely in his view of shame. He sees it as irrelevant to the victim’s suffering and pain.
In his version, Hippolytus does not consider Phaedra as having felt any remorse for her actions, he sees her as a coldblooded killer who caused him immense grief. The way I began to analyze the myths of Hippolytus was to think about the major differences between the characters. Because the story is all about the characters rather than the setting or culture, I thought that the differences of each character among each multiform would give me a clear view of the meanings of each multiform. The character that seems to influence each story the most is Phaedra.
I could have gone into greater detail about the differences amongst each Hippolytus, Theseus, and nurse but I realized that analyzing those differences would result in an essay of 20 pages and would not be as meaningful. Relying on the differences among each author’s version of Phaedra to give meaning to the differences was very fruitful. I managed to find that the differences in Phaedra’s character were based in her decisions throughout the story. In one story, she killed herself before Hippolytus was dead; in another version, she killed herself after Hippolytus died and in the third version, she was barely even mentioned.
Each story showed her as more or less humane; in Euripides’s and Seneca’s versions of the story, Aphrodite was mentioned as the source of her attraction to Hippolytus. The godess’s participation in the crime took some of the blame off of Phaedra’s shoulders and made it easier for the reader to relate to Phaedra. In Ovid’s version, Aphrodite was not mentioned and Hippolytus’s death was viewed as a direct result of Phaedra’s cruel passion. More differences between Seneca and Euripides’s versions could be found and meaning could be discovered from the timing of Phaedra’s death.
I asked myself, “why caused her to die before or after Hippolytus and what is the meaning of the difference in her suicide? ” I realized that in both cases, shame had caused her to kill herself but in each story, shame was a result of something different. In Euripides’s version, Phaedra kills herself because of her own immorality; she feels guilty about her sinful passions towards Hippolytus. In Seneca’s versions, she commits suicide from guilt of seeing Hippolytus’s mangled corpse and realizing that her actions had caused his death.
