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    Hippolytus
    Hippolytus
    Hippolytus
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Hippolytus

    By Euripides

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    Together with Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides provided the canon of Greek tragedy and thereby laid the foundation of Western theatre. Though little is known for certain of his early life, Euripides was probably born around 460 b.c.e. to the farmer Mnesarchus and his wife Clito, and his studious nature quickly led him to a literary life in Athens. His plays are often ironic, pessimistic, and display radical rejection of classical decorum and rules. "Hippolytus" was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 b.c.e. and won first prize. It is a religious and psychological retelling of the mythological rivalry between Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Artemis, the goddess of chastity. The gods play an important role in the story of three main characters – Phaedra, Hippolytus, and Theseus – and help to unveil themes of carnal vs. spiritual love, and passion vs. restraint.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781420944839
    Author

    Euripides

    Eurípides (Salamina, 480 - 406 a.C.) es, con Esquilo y Sófocles, uno de los tres grandes poetas trágicos de la antigüedad griega. Reformó la estructura de la tragedia tradicional ática acercando al espectador las motivaciones más íntimas, casi se diría psicológicas, que mueven a sus personajes. Se estima que escribió más de noventa tragedias, pero solo nos han llegado diecinueve, entre la que sobresalen Medea, Hipólito, Electra, Las troyanas, Orestes y Las bacantes.

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      Book preview

      Hippolytus - Euripides

      HIPPOLYTUS

      BY EURIPIDES

      TRANSLATED BY GILBERT MURRAY

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2669-9

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-0406-2

      This edition copyright © 2012

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTORY NOTE

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      HIPPOLYTUS

      INTRODUCTORY NOTE

      Euripides, the youngest of the trio of great Greek tragedians was born at Salamis in 480 B.C., on the day when the Greeks won their momentous naval victory there over the fleet of the Persians. The precise social status of his parents is not clear but he received a good education, was early distinguished as an athlete, and showed talent in painting and oratory. He was a fellow student of Pericles, and his dramas show the influence of the philosophical ideas of Anaxagoras and of Socrates, with whom he was personally intimate. Like Socrates, he was accused of impiety, and this, along with domestic infelicity, has been supposed to afford a motive for his withdrawal from Athens, first to Magnesia and later to the court of Archelaues in Macedonia where he died in 406 B.C.

      The first tragedy of Euripides was produced when he was about twenty-five, and he was several times a victor in the tragic contests. In spite of the antagonisms which he aroused and the criticisms which were hurled upon him in, for example, the comedies of Aristophanes, he attained a very great popularity; and Plutarch tells that those Athenians who were taken captive in the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 413 B.C. were offered freedom by their captors if they could recite from the works of Euripides. Of the hundred and twenty dramas ascribed to Euripides, there have come down to us complete eighteen tragedies and one satyric drama, Cyclops, beside numerous fragments.

      The works of Euripides are generally regarded as showing the beginning of the decline of Greek tragedy. The idea of Fate hitherto dominant in the plays of his predecessors, tends to be degraded by him into mere chance; the characters lose much of their ideal quality; and even gods and heroes are represented as moved by the petty motives of ordinary humanity. The chorus is often quite detached from the action; the poetry is florid; and the action is frequently tinged with sensationalism. In spite of all this, Euripides remains a great poet; and his picturesqueness and tendencies to what are now called realism and romanticism, while marking his inferiority to the chaste classicism of Sophocles, bring him more easily within the sympathetic interest of the modern reader.

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      THE GODDESS APHRODITE

      THESEUS, King of Athens and Trozên

      PHAEDRA, daughter of Minos, King of Crete, wife to Theseus

      HIPPOLYTUS, bastard son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyte

      THE NURSE OF PHAEDRA

      A HENCHMAN OF HIPPOLYTUS

      THE GODDESS ARTEMIS

      AN OLD HUNTSMAN

      A CHORUS OF HUNTSMEN

      ATTENDANTS ON THE THREE ROYAL PERSONS

      A CHORUS OF TROZENIAN WOMEN, WITH THEIR LEADER

      The scene is laid in Trozên. The play was first acted when Epameinon was Archon, Olympiad 87, year 4 (B.C. 429). Euripides was first, Iophon second, Ion third.

      HIPPOLYTUS

      APHRODITE

      Great among men, and not unnamed am I,

      The Cyprian, in God's inmost halls on high.

      And wheresoe'er from Pontus to the far

      Red West men dwell, and see the glad day-star,

      And worship Me, the pious heart I bless,

      And wreck that life that lives in stubbornness.

      For that there is, even in a great God's mind,

      That hungereth for the praise of human kind.

      So runs my word; and soon the very deed

      Shall follow. For this Prince of Theseus' seed,

      Hippolytus, child of that dead Amazon,

      And reared by saintly Pittheus in his own

      Strait ways, hath dared, alone of all Trozên,

      To hold me least of spirits and most mean,

      And spurns my spell and seeks no woman's kiss,

      But great Apollo's sister, Artemis,

      He holds of all most high, gives love and praise,

      And through the wild dark woods for ever strays,

      He and the Maid together, with swift hounds

      To slay all angry beasts from out these bounds,

      To more than mortal friendship consecrate!

      I grudge it not. No grudge know I, nor hate;

      Yet, seeing he hath offended, I this day

      Shall smite Hippolytus. Long since my way

      Was opened, nor needs now much labour more.

      For once from Pittheus' castle to the shore

      Of Athens came Hippolytus over-seas

      Seeking the vision of the

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