Low Pay

Hippolytus, an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, is unusual in its even-handed approach to the two protagonists, neither being presented as wholly good or wholly bad. Hippolytus emerges as an unsympathetic puritan who is deeply misogynistic, however he is redeemed when he forgives his father and also when he refuses to break an oath made to the nurse. Phaedra is similarly depicted in both a positive and a negative light. She is at first presented as a sympathetic woman who is honorably struggling against the odds to the correct thing yet her indictment of Hippolytus lessens the audience’s regard for her. In this strange even-handed approach to the two main characters, the play occupies a private cloud in the canon of Greek tragedies.

All in all however, the two main characters are blameless in comparison to the two goddesses who drive the play, Aphrodite and Artemis. Aphrodite is offended because Hippolytus rejects her, he being the master of desire and wholly chaste. Artemis, the goddess of chastity, does not step in to protect her favourite and allows him to die whilst promising to avenge his death by punishing the next human whom Aphrodite loves.