Content area
Full Text
SUMMARY: Euripides and Seneca both include the motif of the wishes from Poseidon/Neptune, which Theseus uses to kill his son in their plays, Hippolytus and Phaedra. This detail recurs nowhere outside of the Hippolytus story. This article examines the wishes, and suggests that Euripides invented them; that the Greek playwright uses this motif to explore the interplay between divine obligations and familial relationships; and that Seneca employs it in order to emphasize Theseus's age, to show his audience the seriousness of Phaedra's illicit lust, and to tie the events of the tragedy together.
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)
IN THE PROLOGUE OF EURIPIDES' HIPPOLYTUS, APHRODITE INFORMS THE audience that Poseidon had once promised Theseus to fulfill three ...,1 and she predicts that Theseus will invoke one of these binding wishes when he hears of his son's alleged violation of Phaedra (Hippolytus 43-46). And in fact, Theseus does ask Poseidon to redeem one in exchange for Hippolytus's death (Hippolytus 887-90). Theseus expresses uncertainty as to whether the wish will come true (Hippolytus 890, 893-98), suggesting that this is the first time he has made use of these divine gifts.2 Finally, Artemis confirms that it was Theseus's wish that caused the death of his son (Hippolytus 1315-17). These wishes occur only in the context of the Hippolytus story. There is no mention of them earlier than Euripides' play,3 and other than in the scholia to Euripides and in Asklepiades of Tragilos (FGrH 12F.28) they do not appear again in extant Greek. In surviving Latin, Cicero mentions them at de Officiis 1.10.32, calling them optata.4 Ovid refers to them while telling the story of Hippolytus: "hostilique caput prece detestatur," (and he [Theseus] condemned my head with a hostile prayer, Metamorphoses 15.505).5 And Seneca tragicus makes use of these wishes in his Phaedra (942-43), labeling them as vota, thus combining the meanings of Euripides' and Cicero's words. But in Seneca's play, Theseus clearly states that he is using the third and final wish: "supremum numinis munus tui," (the last gift of your divine will, Phaedra 949-50).
A number of questions revolve around these ...: when and why does Poseidon promise them to Theseus? Why did Euripides choose to include them in his play? And why did Seneca retain...