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42 pages 1 hour read

Euripides

Hippolytus

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 428

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Character Analysis

Hippolytus

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to violence, sexual violence, and death by suicide.

Hippolytus, after whom the play is named, is a mythical hero associated with Athens and Troezen. He is the son of Theseus, the king of Athens, and a former Amazon woman (usually called either Antiope or Hippolyta, depending on the source). Hippolytus is portrayed as a devoted follower of Artemis, the Greek goddess of nature and hunting. This is unusual, as Artemis was typically a goddess of young women. As part of his devotion to Artemis, Hippolytus rejects women and dedicates himself to hunting. This extreme devotion makes Hippolytus very dear to Artemis, but also earns him the hatred of Aphrodite, who feels that his behavior dishonors her.

Hippolytus takes great pride in his sense of virtue and purity, and sometimes this pride looks much like arrogance. In one scene, Hippolytus even goes so far as to characterize himself as the most virtuous man alive:

You see the earth and air about you, father?
In all of that there lives no man more pure
or temperate than I, though you deny it (993-95).

Hippolytus’s self-assurance, combined with his stubborn and uncompromising nature, are what lead to his downfall.

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Related Titles

By Euripides

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Study Guide

The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter
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