Hippolytus, also known as Phaedra, has been approached by multiple tragedians from the Greek to the French. Euripides, Seneca, and Racine have all written their own version, each poet twisting the story slightly from the last. This paper will examine Euripides’ Hippolytus (428 BCE) and Seneca’s Phaedra (290 CE), with a focus on the Messenger’s speech. Through an inspection of the perspective, language, and imagery of the two Messenger’s speeches, this paper will argue that Euripides’ Hippolytus is better received as a performance, whereas Seneca’s Phaedra is better received as a piece of read literature.
Euripides purposefully grounds his images in reality, making the events in the play tangible and accessible to a live audience. When the Messenger arrives to tell Theseus of Hippolytus’ terrible accident, the rationally intelligent world remains. The Messenger tells Theseus: “The wheels’ naves and the axle pins were leaping into the air, and the poor man himself, entangled in the reins, bound in a bond he could not untie […] his head being smashed against the rocks and flesh being torn”[1]. Although violent and grotesque to imagine, this is an image that an audience can digest auditorily and then imagine. To process and appreciate an act that takes place off stage, it is key that it be reminiscent of reality. Shirley Barlow describes Euripides’ balance of reality and powerful imagery in The Imagery of Euripides: “Euripides’ narrative has, throughout, visual appeal, but he does not judge it expedient to describe the bull at such length that it will either slow down the action or appear to distort the fact”[2]. Barlow is spot on; Euripides is careful in his description of the death of Hippolytus (emphasizing the violence and adding a drama to the stage), drawing the audience into the scene without disrupting the flow of what is processable. Euripides’ Hippolytus is meant for the stage: “If the sun is just coming up, that is to tell us what time of day [...] If the cattle are mentioned early in the speech, this is to prepare for their reappearance”[3]. Reality is key to Hippolytus, despite its ventures into violence. The Messenger’s descriptions of Hippolytus’ death are painful but real, dramatic but possible. Thus, an audience can both appreciate and resonate with the story on stage: it is not too far off from their own lives.
Seneca approaches the Messenger’s speech differently, grounding his images in the supernatural. In doing so, Seneca establishes his Phaedra as a tragedy better appreciated when read. We see this impact when the Messenger tells Theseus: “How the thing looked! How huge! A bull it was, towering high with a dark blue neck, and he reared a high mane upon his verdant crest; his shaggy ears stood up; his eyes flashed with changing colour”[4]. “Shaggy ears”, “towering high” and “eyes flashing with changing colour”, distort reality. These descriptions require a working imagination, they are not inherently self-explanatory. Rather, they verge on the supernatural, far from reality. Seneca fearlessly speaks of “horned monster[s] of the deep”, bringing his audience to an alternate world[5]. This is starkly different from other accounts of Hippolytus; as Barlow puts it: “Seneca is neither so economic [from Euripides], nor so restrained in his description of the same event”[6]. Seneca’s decision to distort the Messenger’s speech complicates the visual aspect of performance. Monsters, shifting shapes, and changing colors, resonate strongly when read, but lack the same power when heard. An audience witnessing this Messenger’s speech would be required to imagine a reality separate from what is on stage, while Euripides’ audience would imagine a scene much closer to reality. Thus, Euripides’ Hippolytus may have less adventure but is better adapted to a stage, while Seneca’s Phaedra, is more supernatural, distorting imagery for an audience member, but enhancing it for a reader who can appreciate the fine, mystical details.
Euripides and Seneca’s approach to imagery is essential in dictating why Euripides’ Hippolytus is stronger performed and why Seneca’s Phaedra is stronger read. The two tragedians also utilize opposing types of perspective, further confirming why the tragedies benefit from being consumed in different mediums.
Euripides’ Messenger speaks in the first person, forcing the audience to experience Hippolytus’ accident from the Messenger’s perspective. The first perspective captures the audience, personalizing it and allowing them to hear the tale as though they were there: essential for an audience listening to the story in real time. The Messenger clings to the perspective “we” and “our”; describing the event he tells Theseus: “We servants, on the ground beside the chariot, accompanied our master”[7]. Only a few lines later he adds: “We struck deserted country”[8]. Who is we? The “we” is the Messenger, Hippolytus, other Greeks, and the audience. By using this perspective, the Messenger takes the audience on a journey alongside him. There is power when this perspective is used on stage as the audience begins to hear the story and experience it with the actors. Euripides’ curates these perspectives purposefully, having the Messenger end his story with: “I am, I know, a slave of your house, my lord but I shall never be able to believe that your son is guilty”[9]. The transition from “we” to “I”, enables the audience to not only experience Hippolytus’ accident alongside the Messenger, but then to resonate with his perspective. Thus, his use of “I”, forces the audience to agree with the Messenger, feeling just as passionate that Hippolytus is innocent. We, the audience, are then forced to reckon (from our own perspectives) with the death of Hippolytus, who comes upon stage, his limbs destroyed, and dies in front of the audience. Unlike in Seneca’s Phaedra, where Hippolytus is dead by the time of the Messenger’s speech, Hippolytus dies in front of the audience in Euripides’ version. Hence, the perspective of the messenger manifests on stage, in which the audience transitions from experiencing the accident alongside the Messenger, to witnessing the aftermath with their very own eyes. As Barlow states, “The full impact of pity and fear at […] Hippolytus’ accident […] cannot be felt until these characters appear and speak themselves”[10].
Seneca’s Messenger, on the other hand, speaks primarily in the third person, distancing the audience from the story. The Messenger tells Theseus of “Hippolytus, alone, quite unafraid, with tight reins holds fast his horses and, terror stricken though they are, urges them on with the encouragement of his familiar voice”[11]. This third person perspective invites the reader to picture the events that have taken place, but it does not invite them to experience the events on stage with the actors. It distances an audience member from feeling it firsthand yet enables a reader to visualize it. In Charles Segal’s journal article “Senecan Baroque: The Death of Hippolytus in Seneca, Ovid, and Euripides”, Segal articulates this idea well: “The narrative voice in these lines is less that of a messenger who has really seen such a thing than that of the poet himself who wants us to ‘see’ this object of terror with our inner vision of emotional participation”[12]. Thus, in Seneca’s Phaedra, the primary goal is not for the audience to hear and resonate with the events described, but rather to imagine, separate from what is explicitly stated on the page. Whereas in Euripides’ Hippolytus, the narrative voice is the Messenger’s, personalizing the speech and grounding it for members of the audience.
Although Euripides’ Hippolytus and Seneca’s Phaedra are both written to be performed, this paper argues that through the lens of the Messenger speech, Hippolytus is better appreciated on stage while Phaedra is better appreciated as a text. Seneca’s drama is designed to instill terror through its imaginative and psychological images. Euripides’ drama is designed for watching, grabbing the attention of the audience through real, tangible images. Euripides and Seneca manipulate the perspective of the Messenger, one through the first person and the other through the third person, as a means of either attaching or detaching the audience from the events detailed in the tragedy. The result is that Euripides’ Hippolytus metaphorically brings the audience members on stage, while Seneca’s Phaedra enables the reader to visualize the scene rather than experience it.
In a look into on screen adaptions of Phaedra, I watched the 1962 American-Greek film Phaedra. The purpose of the film was much less a look into Greek Tragedy than it was a look into forbidden love and lust. I observed one notable thing though; the film’s writers chose to have Hippolytus fall in love with Phaedra, making their love for one another a mutual experience. I found this interesting because it completely undermines the premise of both Euripides’ and Seneca’s version of the story. I wondered if perhaps they added this to make their love less taboo and more appealing to a larger audience? In other words, maybe it is too indigestible to have an older woman fall in love with her young stepson, but if he loves her too, then it is less disturbing. On a separate note, I also felt as though the actress who portrayed Phaedra had a snake like quality to her – how she spoke, how she moved, what she said. However, I could not determine whether or not this was a choice to demonize her and make her the antognist of the story, or if it was bad acting. Either way, I found it interesting as my inclination was to dislike her and disapprove, which has not been my reaction when reading Euripides and Seneca.
Bibliography
Barlow, Shirley A. The Imagery of Euripides: A Study in the Dramatic Use of Pictorial Language. 3rd ed. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2008.
Euripides., and David Kovacs. Euripides: Children of Heracles ; Hippolytus ; Andromache ; Hecuba. London: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Segal, Charles. "Senecan Baroque: The Death of Hippolytus in Seneca, Ovid, and Euripides." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 114 (1984): 311-25. https://doi.org/10.2307/284154.
Seneca. Tragedies I. Seneca VIII. Translated by Frank Justus Miller, Ph.D. N.p.: Harvard University Press / Heinemann, USA & London, 1968.
[1] Euripides. and David Kovacs, Euripides: Children of Heracles ; Hippolytus ; Andromache ; Hecuba (London: Harvard University Press, 1995), 241.
[2] Shirley A. Barlow, The Imagery of Euripides: A Study in the Dramatic Use of Pictorial Language, 3rd ed. (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2008), 71.
[3] Barlow, The Imagery, 73.
[4] Seneca, Tragedies I. Seneca VIII, trans. Frank Justus Miller, Ph.D (n.p.: Harvard University Press / Heinemann, USA & London, 1968), 403.
[5] Seneca, Tragedies I. Seneca, 407.
[6] Barlow, The Imagery, 72.
[7] Euripides. and Kovacs, Euripides: Children, 237.
[8] Euripides. and Kovacs, Euripides: Children, 239.
[9] Euripides. and Kovacs, Euripides: Children, 241.
[10] Barlow, The Imagery, 77.
[11] Seneca, Tragedies I. Seneca, 405.
[12] Charles Segal, "Senecan Baroque: The Death of Hippolytus in Seneca, Ovid, and Euripides," Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 114 (1984): 318, https://doi.org/10.2307/284154.