How is Hippolytus killed?
The widowed Theseus banishes his son from from his kingdom, cursing him in the name of his own father, the sea god Poseidon. As he leaves his home, Hippolytus' chariot horses are terrifed by a great sea-monster sent by Poseidon, and he is dragged to his death.
How did Hippolytus die in Euripides Hippolytus?
Poseidon sends a sea-monster to terrorize Hippolytus's chariot horses, which become uncontrollable and hurl their master out of the vehicle. Entangled in the reins, Hippolytus is dragged to death.
Does Hippolytus die in Hippolytus?
The horses dragged Hippolytus to death.
What deity kills Hippolytus?
PoseidonWhile Hippolytus was driving along the seashore, his horses were frightened by a bull sent forth from the water by Poseidon, and he was thrown from his chariot and killed.
What happened to Phaedra and Hippolytus?
Other versions of the story In another version, after Phaedra told Theseus that Hippolytus had raped her, Theseus killed his son, and Phaedra then committed suicide out of guilt, for she had not intended Hippolytus to die.
Why did Theseus killed his son Hippolytus?
Theseus, enraged at the actions of his son, cursed Hippolytus using one of the three wishes he was granted by the god Poseidon. The god then sent a sea monster that freaked the horses on which Hippolytus was on; as a result, he was dragged to death.
What does Aphrodite do to Hippolytus?
In revenge, Aphrodite causes Phaedra, Hippolytus' stepmother, to all in love with him, a circumstance which leads both to her suicide and to Hippolytus' violent death when cursed by his father.
What did Artemis promise Hippolytus as he lay dying?
As he is dying, he is brought back to his father for a heartbreaking reconciliation, engineered by the deus ex machina Artemis, who explains to Theseus the truth and promises Hippolytus honors after his death for his devotion and that she will get even with Aphrodite.
What does Artemis reveal at end in Hippolytus?
When she finally appears at the end of the play, she confesses that a law among the gods had prevented her from interfering with Aphrodite's machinations. Still, she vows revenge, and gives establishes a cult in Hippolytus's honor after his death.
Who was the ugliest god?
HephaestusHephaestus. Hephaestus is the son of Zeus and Hera. Sometimes it is said that Hera alone produced him and that he has no father. He is the only god to be physically ugly.
Who is the tragic hero in Hippolytus?
The main victim in Phaedra is Hippolytus. Hippolytus from the beginning of his life was a doomed hero. He was kind hearted, gentle, innocent, and was very compassionate man but always was subordinate to others.
Why does Hippolytus hate Aphrodite?
She introduces the audience to the major conflict of the play: Hippolytus, the illegitimate son of Athens' King Theseus, has severely insulted Aphrodite by rejecting her and erotic love altogether in favor of a chaste life as a devotee of Artemis.
Etymology
The meaning of Hippolytus' name is ironically ambiguous. Ἱππό translates to "horse", and the element -λυτος (from λύω "loosen, destroy") suggests the adjective λυτός, -ή, -όν "which may be undone, destroyed." His name thereby takes on the prophetic meaning "destroyed by horses".
Premise of the myth
Hippolytus is a hunter and sportsman who is disgusted by sex and marriage. In consequence, he scrupulously worships Artemis, the virgin huntress, and refuses to honor Aphrodite.
What is the theme of the play "From fruits to winged sandals"?
Other plays treat the same story; the theme is that of the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and of the story, in the Iliad, of Bellerophon and Stheneboea (Anteia).
What did Poseidon send to Hippolytus?
Poseidon sent a sea monster that frightened Hippolytus’ horses until he could no longer control them. They smashed the chariot and dragged their master to death. Britannica Quiz. A Study of Greek and Roman Mythology.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. ...
Who was the son of Theseus?
To the Greeks his name might suggest that he was destroyed by horses. In Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus, he was son of Theseus, king of Athens, and the Amazon Hippolyte. Theseus’ queen, Phaedra, fell in love with Hippolytus.
Why is Phaedra afraid of Hippolytus?
The reason is terrifying: Phaedra has overheard Hippolytus calling her nurse “pander for the wicked,” and she is sure that her identity is hidden beneath the last word. “She has destroyed me by speaking of my troubles,” cries Phaedra as she heads for the palace.
Why was the lost play not well received in Ancient Greece?
As far as we can deduce from the available evidence, the lost play was not well received in Ancient Greece, probably because Hippolytus was seduced directly by Phaedra —an act which may have greatly offended the original audience of the tragedy.
Why does Aphrodite punish Hippolytus?
To punish him for shunning love and sexual pleasures from his earthly affairs , Aphrodite makes Hippolytus ’ stepmother Phaedra fall in love with him. This is what Phaedra reveals to her aged nurse at the beginning of the play as the reason why she hasn’t eaten or slept in three days.
What did Theseus do after learning of the terrible news from the Chorus?
After learning of the terrible news from the Chorus, Theseus finds his dead wife’s note and, upon reading it, orders the exile of Hippolytus. He also curses him with death, imploring his father Poseidon to make this wish a reality.
How many Troezenian women enter the stage?
As soon as Hippolytus and his servants leave, twelve Troezenian women enter the stage, and in the entrance song of the main chorus, express their worries over the health of the queen.
Where did Theseus go after killing Cecrops?
We learn from her opening speech that, after having murdered Cecrops, Theseus has left Athens with his wife Phaedra and is now serving a year of exile to cleanse himself from the deed in the small coastal town of Troezen . Together with the royal couple is also Hippolytus, Theseus ' son by “the Amazon woman.”.
What does Phaedra say to the chorus?
Both the nurse and the Chorus are horrified to hear this, but Phaedra calms them down: she tells them that she has done nothing so far, nor she plans to, preferring to die rather than spoil her good name. “Only one thing,” Phaedra says, “competes in value with life: the possession of a heart blameless and good.”.
What did Phaedra do after Hippolytus learned of the secret?
Thinking that anything is better than facing him, Phaedra decided to kill herself. However, before doing that, she penned a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of trying to seduce her.
Who punished Hippolytus for falling in love with him?
After all, even Zeus himself wasn’t immune to her powers. Phaedra couldn’t stand a chance: Aphrodite decided to punish Hippolytus by forcing the virtuous queen to fall in love with him, fully aware that this would set a chain of events which should eventually bring about the death of Hippolytus.
Who is more innocent, Phaedra or Hippolytus?
It is only fitting to start this second version of the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra with the other of the two main characters: after all, in this case, Phaedra is much more innocent, and Hippolytus much more guilty for his demise. His fault? As Aphrodite informs us at the very beginning of Euripides’ surviving Hippolytus, he alone among the citizens of Troezen saw in the goddess of love “the basest of divinities.” Moreover, he thought Artemis the greatest of all deities; and to honor her, he swore to eternal virginity, shunning the bed of love and claiming that marriage is one thing he would never consider.
Did Phaedra love Hippolytus?
As we said above, the love of Phaedra for Hippolytus was dramat ized at least three times by Ancient Greek tragedians; however, both Sophocles’ play ( Phaedra) and Euripides’ earlier play ( Hyppolitus Veiled) have been lost. Fortunately, Euripides’ second play, Hippolytus the Wreath-Bearer – known today simply as Hippolytus – has been preserved. From what we know, the much later play, Phaedra – written by the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca the Younger – shares quite a few similarities with the two lost plays, so consult that one for the first story. Finally, in The Heroines – a collection of poems by Ovid presented as though written by some of the most famous women in Greek mythology – you can read a letter in which Phaedra confesses his love to Hippolytus; it is both elegiac and poignant.
Who was Phaedra interested in?
Quite the opposite, she was interested in her husband’s son from his previous marriage with the Amazon queen Antiope (also known as Hippolyte). So, Phaedra set out to entice him, using all her charms and trickeries – both plentiful.
Who brought Hippolytus back from the dead?
You see, soon after his death, Artemis, aggrieved for having lost such a dedicated follower, asked the healer Asclepius to bring Hippolytus back from the dead.
Who deified Hippolytus?
There, the Romans believed, he lived a virtuous life and, upon death, he was deified by Artemis as the minor god Virbius. The Troezenians, though unwilling to accept this version of the events, refused to show Hippolytus ’ tomb to strangers, claiming that he had become the constellation Auriga, or “The Charioteer.”.
Overview
Legends
The name Hippolytus appears in various hagiographical and martyrological sources of the early Church. The facts about the life of the writer Hippolytus, as opposed to other celebrated Christians who bore the name Hippolytus, were eventually lost in the West, perhaps partly because he wrote in Hellenic Greek. Pope Damasus I dedicated to a Hippolytus one of his famous epigrams, referring to a priest of the Novatianist schism, a view later forwarded by Prudentius in the 5th century in his "Passion of St Hippolytus". In the Passionals of the 7th and 8th centuries he i…
Life
Little is known for certain about his community of origin. One Victorian theory suggested that as a presbyter of the church at Rome under Pope Zephyrinus (199–217 AD), Hippolytus was distinguished for his learning and eloquence. It was at this time that Origen, then a young man, heard him preach.
In this view, Hippolytus accused Pope Zephyrinus of modalism, the heresy which held that the names Father and Son are simply different names for the same subject. Hippolytus championed the Logos doctrine of the Greek ap…
Writings
Controversy surrounds the corpus of the writer Hippolytus. In the Victorian Era, scholars claimed his principal work to be the Refutation of all Heresies. Of its ten books, Book I was the most important. It was long known and was printed (with the title Philosophumena) among the works of Origen. Books II and III are lost, and Books IV–X were found, without the name of the author, in a monastery of Mount Athos in 1842. E. Miller published them in 1851 under the title Philosophumena, attributing them to Origen of Alexandria. Recent scholarship prefers to tre…
Eschatology
Hippolytus is an important figure in the development of Christian eschatology. In his biblical compendium and topical study On Christ and the Antichrist and in his Commentary on the Prophet Daniel Hippolytus gave his interpretation of the second advent of Christ.
With the onset of persecutions during the reign of Septimius Severus, many early Christian writers treated topics of apocalyptic eschatology. On Christ and the Antichrist is one of the earliest works. It is thought Hippolytus was g…
Feast days
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the feast day of St Hippolytus falls on August 13, which is also the Apodosis of the Feast of the Transfiguration. Because on the Apodosis the hymns of the Transfiguration are to be repeated, the feast of St. Hippolytus may be transferred to the day before or to some other convenient day. The Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrates the feast of "St Hippolytus Pope of Rome" on January 30, who may or may not be the same individual.
See also
• Apostolic Tradition
• Epistle to Diognetus
• Canons of Hippolytus
• Illiterate popes
• Josephus's Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades (actually by Hippolytus)
Further reading
• Aragione, Gabriella, and Enrico Norelli (Eds) (2011) Des évêques, des écoles et des hérétiques. Actes du colloque international sur la Réfutation de toutes les hérésies, Genève, 13-14 juin 2008 Éditions du Zèbre, 2011
• Brent, Allen (1995). Hippolytus and the Roman church in the third century : communities in tension before the emergence of a monarch-bishop. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-10245-3.
Overview
In Greek mythology, Hippolytus is the son of Theseus and either Hippolyta or Antiope. His downfall at the hands of Aphrodite is most famously recounted by the playwright Euripides, although other, sometimes differing versions of the story have also survived.
Hippolytus in Euripides
Euripides' tragedy Hippolytus describes the death of the eponymous hero after a confrontation with his stepmother Phaedra, the second wife of Theseus. Cursed by Aphrodite, Phaedra falls so ardently in love with Hippolytus that she becomes physically ill and decides to end her suffering through suicide. Her nurse tries to save her by revealing the secret to Hippolytus and encouraging him to reciprocate. Hippolytus responds only with horror and disgust, humiliating Phaedra. In despair, and not wanting to admit the true reason for ending her life, she hangs h…
Etymology
The meaning of Hippolytus' name is ironically ambiguous. Ἱππό translates to "horse", and the element -λυτος (from λύω "loosen, destroy") suggests the adjective λυτός, -ή, -όν "which may be undone, destroyed." His name thereby takes on the prophetic meaning "destroyed by horses".
Premise of the myth
Hippolytus is a hunter and sportsman who is disgusted by sex and marriage. In consequence, he scrupulously worships Artemis, the virgin huntress, and refuses to honor Aphrodite. Offended by this neglect, Aphrodite causes Phaedra, Hippolytus’ stepmother, to fall in love with him; Hippolytus rejects Phaedra’s advances, setting events in motion that lead to his death in a fall from his chariot.
Gallery
• Esculape rend la vie à Hippolyte by Abel de Pujol
• Hippolytus, Phaedra and Theseus. German School, 18th Century
• Part of the mosaic of Hippolytus in the Archaeological Park of Madaba, Jordan.
• Hippolytus set - Seuso treasure
See also
• Rex Nemorensis
• The Golden Bough
• Phaedra complex
• Ippolito ed Aricia
• Hippolyte et Aricie
External links
• Media related to Hippolytus at Wikimedia Commons
• Hippolytus for details on the figure of Hippolytus and a classicist's philological study of the evolution of Hippolytus as a chastity paradigm in Euripides, Seneca, Racine; extensive bibliography (in Dutch)