Phaedra

Phaedra was one of the daughters of Minos, king of Crete, and his wife Pasiphae, a daughter of the Sun. Apollodorus's Library lists her beside her sister Ariadne among Minos's children. Her marriage to Theseus came after Ariadne was lost to him. In Apollodorus's Epitome, Theseus receives Phaedra in marriage from her brother Deucalion. Diodorus Siculus adds that Deucalion, then ruling Crete, made an alliance with the Athenians and sealed it with this marriage. Apollodorus says Theseus's earlier Amazon wife, whom some called Hippolyte, arrived armed at the wedding and was killed there, though others said Theseus killed her in battle. Phaedra bore Theseus two sons, Acamas and Demophon.

The story that defines her is told most fully in Euripides's Hippolytus, staged at Athens in 428 BCE. The prologue belongs to Aphrodite. She is angry with Hippolytus, Theseus's son by the Amazon, because he scorns love and honors only Artemis. Her chosen instrument is Phaedra, who saw the young man at Athens and was seized with desire for him. While Theseus lives in exile at Troezen, Phaedra starves herself for three days and will not say why. Her nurse finally draws the truth out of her by clinging to her as a suppliant. Phaedra then explains that she tried silence, then self-control, and chose death once both failed, so as never to shame her husband or her children.

The nurse promises a cure and instead tells Hippolytus under an oath of secrecy. He reacts with fury, and Phaedra overhears him. Convinced that he will expose her, she resolves to die that day and to make her death harm him too. She hangs herself. When Theseus returns, he finds a sealed writing tablet hanging from her hand. It accuses Hippolytus of assaulting her. Theseus curses his son with one of the prayers Poseidon had promised him. Only at the end does Artemis reveal the truth: the nurse betrayed Phaedra, and Phaedra wrote a lying letter out of fear of being found out.

Other ancient accounts keep the outline and change the details. Apollodorus's Epitome makes Phaedra propose to Hippolytus herself. When he flees, she breaks open the doors of her bedchamber, tears her clothes, and charges him with assault. Theseus's curse kills Hippolytus, and only after her passion becomes public does she hang herself. Diodorus Siculus gives a third order of events. Phaedra accuses Hippolytus in person, but Theseus doubts her and summons his son to be examined. Fearing the test, she hangs herself before it can take place. Plutarch, writing his Life of Theseus, declined to retell the story at all. He noted that historians had never contradicted the tragic poets about Phaedra, so their version should stand.

Pausanias found Phaedra's story rooted in the ground at Troezen. The Troezenians showed him a temple of Aphrodite overlooking the race-course of Hippolytus, where they said Phaedra used to watch him exercise. Beside it grew a myrtle whose every leaf was pierced with holes. Local legend said Phaedra had stabbed the leaves with the pin from her hair, venting her despair. Her grave stood near the tomb of Hippolytus. At Delphi, in the painting by Polygnotus of the underworld, Pausanias saw Phaedra on a swing, gripping its ropes, while Ariadne watched her. He read the pose as a hint at the manner of her death. Homer's Odyssey had already placed her among the shades of famous women that Odysseus saw, naming her beside Ariadne.

Roman writers kept returning to Phaedra. Ovid's fourth Heroides is a letter written in her voice to Hippolytus, confessing her love. Seneca's tragedy Phaedra reshapes the accusation once more. There she uses the sword Hippolytus left behind as her evidence, and after his death she confesses the lie to Theseus and falls on a sword. Jean Racine drew on Euripides and Seneca for Phèdre, first performed in Paris in 1677, which remains the best-known modern version of her story.