Phaedra

So much, then, is worthy of mention regarding the Amazons.

For the insurrection of the Amazons, written by the author of the Theseid, telling how, when Theseus married Phaedra, Antiope and the Amazons who fought to avenge her attacked him and were slain by Heracles, has every appearance of fable and invention.

Theseus did indeed marry Phaedra, but this was after the death of Antiope, and he had a son by Antiope, Hippolytus, or, as Pindar says, Demophone.

As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and the son of Theseus by Antiope, since there is no conflict here between historians and tragic poets, we must suppose that they happened as represented by the poets uniformly.

There are, however, other stories also about marriages of Theseus which were neither honorable in their beginnings nor fortunate in their endings, but these have not been dramatized.

For instance, he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a maiden of Troizen, and after slaying Cynis and Cercyon, to have ravished their daughters, also to have married Periboea, the mother of Aeus, and Phereboa afterwards, and Aiope, the daughter of Iphicles, and because of his passion for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said, he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honorable nor even decent.

It appears also that not even Thessaly was traversed by the Amazons without opposition, for Amazonian graves are to this day shown in the vicinity of Scotusa and Cynocephalae.

So much then is worthy of mention regarding the Amazons, for the insurrection of the Amazons, written by the author of The Theseid, telling how, when Theseus married Phaedra, Antiope and the Amazons who fought to avenge her attacked him and were slain by Heracles, has every appearance of fable and invention.

Theseus did indeed marry Phaedra, but this was after the death of Antiope, and he had a son by Antiope, Hippolytus, or, as Pindar says, Demophone.

As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and the son of Theseus by Antiope, since there is no conflict here between historians and tragic poets, we must suppose that they happened as represented by the poets uniformly.

There are, however, other stories also about marriages of Theseus which were neither honorable in their beginnings nor fortunate in their endings, but these have not been dramatized.

For instance, he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a maiden of Troizen, and after slaying Cynis and Cercyon to have ravished their daughters, also to have married Periboa, the mother of Aeus, and Phereboa afterwards, and Iope, the daughter of Iphicles, and because of his passion for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said, he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honorable nor even decent.

Toyota, let's go places.

Elsewhere in Herodes, one waits in vain for the thrill of tragic pity and fear, even in the letters of Medea, Deianira, and Phaedra, heroines that figure in well-known masterpieces of the attic stage.

Ovid subjects the characters of tragedy to his art of metamorphosis, as his predecessors in the Hellenistic age had done.

heroic figures were made over for romance then as in the middle ages he was a startling inventor who in ovid's phrase made fierce achilles sentimental Ovid liked the novelty and tried his hand at it, but there is not the faintest breath of romantic quaintness in his Lettre de Dame du Temps Jadis.

This sentiment is Helen's in her reply to Paris.

The answer to the second question, what was the poet's worst, is no less satisfactory.

The lines recanted by the poet come from Phaedra's epistle.

Pleasure is truth, truth pleasure.

Section four of Ovid's Heroides, translated by an unknown translator, first published in eighteen thirteen.

Phaedra to Hippolytus.

Phaedra of Crete wishes to Hippolytus, born of an Amazon, that health which, if he will not give it, she herself must want.

Read this at least.

How can the reading of a letter hurt you? Perhaps, too, you may meet with some things in it that will be agreeable.

It was then chiefly, yet even before that time you had charmed me, that the penetrating flame of love raged in my bones.

White was your robe, your hair was adorned with a garland, a modest blush had overspread your comely face.

That countenance which appears to others stern and fierce was in Phaedra's eyes noble and full of manly courage.

Again, as in Briseis, the undertone is pathos, with an approach to tragic irony, for Protesilaus was to leap forth first, not last, and fall by Hector's spear.

the strands of grave and gay fail to unite in the heroides when gayety brings us from the heroic age plump into that of augustus tell-tale reminiscences of the amores are all too plentiful penelope apprehends from her husband the dreadfully ovidian reproach of rusticity briseis slips from her tent quite in the manner of corinna eluding the concierge phdra has studied an advanced copy of the art of love the heroine of euripides to be sure is as adroit and hippolytus delivers a kind of anti ovidius siwe de arte non amandi but all this finesse is in the play caught up in a tragedy with its deep questionings of divine justice and human fate when in the letter jove is displayed as the first augustine and critic of rusticity illusion takes wings and the atmosphere of the amores is about us that ancient piety doomed soon to die lasted through saturn's rustic dynasty jove called things righteous if they pleasant be wedded his sister and made morals free Ovid does not quite turn Phaedra's appeal into comedy.

Would that he had done so, he has merely out-Euripidized Euripides.

poems of the herodes despite their artificialities lapses in taste and the presence of jocoseness where one looks for grief are alive to-day for the reason that ovid has accomplished the chief purpose for which he wrote them we should regard them not as unsuccessful attempts at tragic monologue but as thoroughly competent studies of woman's moods to catullus and the other predecessors of ovid in love elegy woman is an unsolved riddle the poet can analyze his own emotions but back of them is the impenetrable cause from which he moves uneasily away lesbia is vividly a person because her worshipper is we can reason back theologically from effect to cause and have no doubt that she very much exists we know that she is beautiful and passionate and wicked she bites but what the inner workings of her soul are catullus cannot tell he can get no farther than sentio et excrucior tibullus and propertius are still less capable of an answer we doubt the reality even of their own feelings their mistresses fade into the background of literary conventions it matters not whether plania was really hostia or who she was nor has ovid in the amores much place for an analysis of woman's moods his chief amusement is in the invention of his myth and in the ridicule of the romantic lover who figures in it but ovid is equipped by a superfeminine acuteness i speak as a man to understand women he is a member of that small coterie to which euripides before him chaucer boccaccio shakespeare and meredith after him had right of entrance it is in the heroides that our poet blithely embarks upon the great adventure in

This sentiment is Helen's in her reply to Paris.

The answer to the second question, what was the poet's worst, is no less satisfactory.

The lines recanted by the poet come from Phaedra's epistle.

Pleasure is truth, truth pleasure.

term when it gets weird online.

Okay, next we have the, and I'm not going to go through the stories of this one, but there's the Phaedra complex.

That is the step-parent with sexual attraction towards a step-child.

And it can also be extended into like just having a very tight or close or intimate relationship, not necessarily a sexual one.

So I don't, I don't study that stuff, but it's kind of interesting that it,

I mean, I don't

study like porn addiction or, or the Phaedra complex specifically, you know, just,

Yeah.

One day one of them walks in the light, and the other lies in the dark, and the next day they trade, so that neither is ever wholly lost, and both are honored like gods.

There was Iphimedea, who bore to the god of the sea two sons, the tallest and the fairest, that the grain-giving earth ever fed, after great Orion only, two boys who grew a hand wider and an arm taller with every year that passed, and who, while they were still only boys, made the bold bright boast that they would pile the tall mountains one upon another and climb them into heaven itself and would have tried it the old song say had they only lived to be men there was one whom the fire will name only softly and let go by a queen of Thebes in the deep past who was caught at last in a grief too heavy for any song to lift and her shadow passes quickly tonight honored and unspoken for this is a night of the loved and the missed and not of the old dark stories and there was Ariadne the daughter of a king of Crete, out of another bright sorrowful tale, the songs tell on other nights, and Phaedra near her, and Procris, and Maera, and Fair Clyman, name after name after name, in the old rocking rhythm, mothers of heroes, and loves of gods and daughters of kings, More of them than any listener awake or asleep was ever meant to hold, and one last shade at the very edge of the count, whom the songs remember only for taking gold to sell her own husband, let go past quickly too, into the grey.

And they rose into the little warmth of the offering, each in her turn, and spoke her name, and gave way, and sank back, a whole vanished world of women passing one at a time through a small light at the edge of everything.

And the man stood and received them, and did not try to keep them, for they could not be kept, and the counting ran on.

That's nice.

He sees his mother, and then just a slew o- of, you know, famous mythic figures, like Sisyphus, and, uh, Heracles, and Ariadne, and Phaedra, Oedipus's mom, Epikaste, as they call her here.

And you know, this...

And, and Tantalus.

near him is the seat of the priest of apollo the laurel bearer and again of the priest of the asclepius and of the priest of olympian zeus and so on round the whole front semicircle it is as though at his majesty's the front row of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops with the archbishop of canterbury enthroned in the central stall the theatre at athens is not open night by night nor even day by day dramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of dionysos in winter and spring it is again as though the modern theatre was open only at the festivals of the epiphany and of easter our modern at least our protestant custom is in direct contrast we tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our theaters another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the performance we give to the theater our after-dinner hours when work is done or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon the theater is for us a recreation the greek theater opened at sunrise and the whole day was concentrated to high and strenuous religious attention during the five or six days of the great dionysia the whole city was in a state of unwonted sanctity under a taboo to distrain a debtor was illegal any personal assault however trifling was sacrilege most impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on the eve of the performance by torchlight accompanied by a great procession the image of the god dionysus himself was brought to the theatre and placed in the orchestra moreover he came not only in human but in animal form chosen young men of the athenians in the flower of their youth amphiboi escorted to the precinct a splendid bull it was expressively ordained that the bull should be worthy of the god he was in fact as we shall presently see the primitive incarnation of the god it is again as though in our modern theatre there stood sanctifying all things to our use and us to his service the human figure of the saviour and beside him the paschal lamb but now we come to a strange thing a god presides over the theatre to go to the theatre is an act of worship to the god dionysus And yet, when the play begins, three times out of four of Dionysus we hear nothing.

We see it may be Agamnon returning from Troy, Clemtenestra waiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Phaedra for Hippolytus, the hate of Medea, and the slaying of her children, stories beautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be.

But scarcely we feel religious.

the orthodox greeks themselves sometimes complained that in the plays enacted before them there was nothing to do with dionysos if drama be at the outset divine with its roots in ritual why does it issue in an art profoundly solemn tragic yet purely human the actors wear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the eleusinian mysteries Why, then, do we find them not executing a religious service, or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating mere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to give us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks down, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves us with our problem on our hands.