The Male Characers of Euripides by
E M Blaiklock
Continues from page 45
The pathological tirade against women is not to be dismissed as mere Euripidean sophistry, explained or excused by that domestic trouble in Euripides' own. life, which Aristophanes mentions in the Frogs. The outburst is dramatically defensible—and not simply on Gilbert Murray's grounds. 'The fury of this speech,' he writes,! 'while not unnatural to the youthful saintliness of Hippolytus, is intentionally made bitter and offensive by the playwright so as to throw our sympathies for the time entirely on the side of Phaedra. We hate Hippolytus, and can for the moment sympathise with, or at least understand, her terrible act of blind self-preservation and revenge.
" He speeds to abuse me to the king,' she cries in 1. 690. The torrent of words, as Murray goes on to remark, had covered his passing promise not to do so, and Phaedra had no reason to trust him.
The speech, then, has dramatic propriety, and links Hippolytus moral fault to the consummation of the tragedy. This, how-ever, is not all. For all its length, it is in character. Hippolytus actually does hate the other sex. Such perverted animosities invariably become fanaticisms in self-defence, and express themselves with a vehemence which senses a need to justify if not persuade itself, (20 )Hence the spate of words. Then, too, ll. 653-655 further under the line the religious basis of Hyppolytus’ self-conscious, purity
self-conscious purity:
Words that with mountain streams I'll wash away,
Sluicing mine ears. How should I be so vile
Who even hearing count myself defiled?
(Way)
In a proper context the sentiment might not be spiritually unsound. If but temptation were admitted, it might indeed be derived from the Sermon on the Mount." Hippolytus, however, will admit no charm in the hated thing, indeed, can see none, and the setting for his words is one of arrogance which denies them sweetness. Hippolytus, again, is proud. He is not as other men. 'Curse ye' he concludes-öloole (translation here please) , 'my woman-hate shall ne'er be sated.' He will leave home until Theseus' return, and then come back to watch with cynicism how the sin-conscious and tortured woman will meet her husband's eye.
In such a context the promise not to inform his father would become a refinement of cruelty likely to produce the very reaction in the guilty wife to which the drama moves. Hippolytus is clearly no saint. There is a humility which graces goodness, and which makes it safe, and the story of Socrates shows that it was not unknown five centuries before Christ.
Phaedra marks his fault well when she determines to die, and gives to the Chorus her reason:
Ủ cơn Mn Tì TOÎS CUOiS KaKOîS (translation from Greek needed here please)
(Hipp. 729-731)
(20)in the older Egyptian story i’ll be tempted. Brother is much more simply and noble based. Then the you became like a panther of the south with fury at the evil speech, which she had made to him: and she feared greatly. And he spake unto her saying, "Behold thou art to me as a mother, thy husband is to me as a father.
What is this wickedness that thou hast said to me? Say it not to me again. I will not tell it to any man. I will not let it be uttered by the mouth of any man." Petrie, Egyptian Tales.
21 Matt. 5: 27, 28.