20§1. The key word for this hour is telos, ‘end, ending, final moment; goal, completion, fulfillment; coming full circle, rounding out; successfully passing through an ordeal; initiation; ritual, rite’. We have already seen this word in many of the contexts that fit the translations that I give here (1§49, 5§119, 9§29, 13§§10-22, 16§8). A verb derived from this noun telos is teleîn, which I have been translating as ‘carry out the fulfillment’ (2§44) or ‘bring to fulfillment’ (11§34, 19§29) or ‘make a ritual act’ (11§47). As we will see in the course of this hour, the many different ways of translating the word telos have one thing in common: each translation conveys, in its own way, the idea of a transition from one phase of human experience into another. And, toward the end of this hour, we will see that the world of ancient Greek myth and ritual tends to differentiate, like it or not, the experiences of men and women from each other.

20§2. In the Hippolytus of Euripides, we find two occurrences of this word telos. As we will see, the contexts of both these occurrences are relevant to the myths and the rituals concerning Hippolytus.

20§3. I start with the second of the two contexts, at line 87 of the drama. The word telos in this context – and I am about to quote the text – can be understood in two different ways. In terms of what the speaker intends – and this speaker is none other than Hippolytus – we may translate telos as ‘the end’. In terms of what is really meant by the myths and the rituals concerning Hippolytus, however, such a translation is overly restrictive. I say that because the myths {542|543} concerning Hippolytus, as we will see later, are directly linked with rituals of female initiation. And, in terms of such a link between myth and ritual, the subtext of the word telos here is ‘initiation’.

20§4. So, now, I proceed to a close reading of the text where we find this occurrence of the word telos in the Hippolytus. As we join the action, near the beginning of the drama, we find the young hero Hippolytus in the act of praying to the goddess Artemis while offering her the gift of a garland of flowers that he consecrates for her blond hair:

20§5. In expressing his desire to be a devotee of the virgin goddess Artemis from the beginning of his life all the way to the end, the militantly virginal hero Hippolytus speaks the language of metaphor: accomplished charioteer that he {543|544} is, he thinks of his life as the course of a chariot race, and he thinks of the finish line of the race as the end of his life. After Hippolytus rounds the turning post for the last time in the course of his life, the finish line will be waiting for him. But this metaphor can lead to other meanings of the word telos. After all, the rounding of a turning post in a chariot race takes the charioteer back to the starting point, where the rounding continues back to the turning post and then back to the starting point and then back to the turning post, over and over again – until the charioteer rounds the turning post for the last time. Then, after the last rounding of the turning post, he will be heading down the home stretch, eagerly rushing toward the finish line. But the finish line becomes a finish line only after the last turn around the turning post.

20§6. For Hippolytus, the end of life is the finish line of a chariot race. That is all there is to it. He does not see, in terms of his own metaphor, that the finish line can also be a coming full circle. After all, as I have just pointed out, the finish line is truly the finish line only when the turning post has been rounded for the very last time. Otherwise, the finish line can still become a re-starting, that is, the starting point of a new round.

20§7. So, we find here an unintended meaning in the words spoken just now by Hippolytus. Still, the intent of the young athlete is clear: he wants to go through life, from beginning to end, as a devotee of the virgin goddess Artemis. And, by implication, he desires to reach the end of his life the same way as he had begun it, as a virgin. The thinking of Hippolytus is linear here: for him, telos is the end of a line.

20§8. But there is also the idea of telos as a coming full circle, and this alternative idea cannot be evaded in the Hippolytus of Euripides. Such an idea, which is most compatible with the metaphorical world of ritual, leads to a further idea – initiation. A telling sign of this further idea can be found in the context of the second of the two attestations of the word telos in the Hippolytus of Euripides. In this other context, the idea of initiation is overtly expressed. It happens in a story told by Aphrodite, goddess of sexuality and love, at the very beginning of the drama. As we are about to see, there is a moment in the story when the beautiful young queen Phaedra, married to an older man, the king-hero Theseus, first lays eyes on the beautiful young bastard son of the king, Hippolytus. At that moment, as we see from the narration of Aphrodite, this goddess of erotic desire arranges for Phaedra to fall instantly in love with Hippolytus. In the version of the story that is told here by Aphrodite, Phaedra first falls in love with Hippolytus in Athens, not in Troizen, which is the native city of {544|545} the hero. [2] Hippolytus has traveled from Troizen and has just arrived in the territory of Athens, described as the land of Pandion, who was a primeval ruler of the territory. The young hero has come to Athens because he desires to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, described at line 25 as telē, the plural of telos, which I will translate for the moment as ‘rituals’. So, we are about to see an overt reference to initiation, as expressed by the word telos:

20§9. As we have just seen, the onset of the passionate love experienced by Phaedra when she first catches sight of Hippolytus happens in the territory of Athens, where the young hero is visiting in his quest to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. As we will now see, this mention of Athens indicates that the story of Hippolytus as it plays out in the tragedy of Euripides stems from a complex of myths and rituals that are grounded in two locales, one of which is Troizen but the other one of which is Athens. And, as we will also see, these myths and rituals concern Hippolytus as a cult hero who was worshipped both in Troizen and in Athens. I will concentrate first on Athens.

20§10. I start by observing that Athens is the dramatic setting of another tragedy of Euripides about Hippolytus, which has not survived except for a few fragments. [4] Here I turn to relevant information provided by external evidence. Surviving along with our text of the Hippolytus is the text of an accompanying {545|546} Hypothesis that stems from Aristophanes of Byzantium, Director of the Library of Alexandria in the early second century BCE. From the external evidence of this Hypothesis, we learn that the surviving Hippolytus of Euripides was produced in 428 BCE, winning first prize in the competitions at the dramatic festival of the City Dionysia in Athens. And we learn also from the same Hypothesis that the lost Hippolytus was an earlier production.

20§11. That said, I come back to the reference in Text B, lines 24-28 of the surviving Hippolytus – back to the moment when Phaedra falls passionately in love with the virgin hero during his pilgrimage in Athens. I will now consider these lines in combination with lines 29-33, which immediately follow and which I now quote here:

20§12. Viewing these lines in Text C together with the immediately preceding lines 24-28 in Text B, we can see that the reference to Phaedra’s falling in love with Hippolytus in Athens is really a cross-reference to the lost Hippolytus. In the complex wording of Text C as I just quoted it, the persona of Aphrodite herself narrates how the lovesick young queen Phaedra established a nāos or ‘shrine’ (31) in honor of the goddess before departing from Athens and journeying to Troizen, never again returning to Athens. The details about the establishment of the shrine of Aphrodite in Athens must have derived from the lost Hippolytus, since, as I already noted, Athens was the dramatic setting for Phaedra’s {546|547} love in that other tragedy. Only the detail about the departure of Phaedra from Athens belongs to the present tragedy, which relocates her death from Athens to Troizen.

20§13. I will now start to examine more closely the details we find in Text C about the story of Hippolytus in Athens – and about the myths and rituals that are linked to it. The nāos or ‘shrine’ (31) of Aphrodite in Athens, as the goddess says, is located ‘on the side of the Rock of Pallas’ (30). The ‘Rock’ is the Athenian Acropolis, which was sacred primarily to Pallas Athena. Where the wording describes the establishment of this shrine of Aphrodite at the initiative of Phaedra, the goddess refers to herself ostentatiously in the third person as the divinity who has been ‘installed’ there (33).

20§14. In this same Text C, the wording of Aphrodite quotes the expression epi Hippolutōi, or ‘in compensation for Hippolytus’ (32). I say that Aphrodite is engaging in an act of quotation here because this expression epi Hippolutōi is actually part of the traditional nomenclature for a historically attested nāos or ‘shrine’, sacred to Aphrodite, which was located on the south slope of the Athenian Acropolis. According to the Athenian version of the myth of Hippolytus, it was this shrine that Phaedra established epi Hippolutōi, that is, ‘in compensation for Hippolytus’. And the same expression epi Hippolutōi is actually attested in an Athenian inscription dated to 429/8 BCE or thereabouts, where we read … αφροδ]ιτες ε|[πι ιπ]πολυτο, ‘… of Aphrodite, [in the place] for [epi] Hippolytus’ (IG I³ 310.233-234). In another Athenian inscription, dated to 426/5 BCE, we read αφροδιτες εν hιππολυ[τειοι] …, ‘of Aphrodite, in the precinct of Hippolytus [= the Hippoluteion] …’ (IG I³ 369.66). Both of these inscriptions are referring to Aphrodite as she was actually worshipped in her shrine located on the south slope of the Acropolis. Further, as we see from the contexts of these and other inscriptions, there was a hero cult of Hippolytus within the precinct or sacred space that contained the shrine of Aphrodite, and the name of this precinct, as we see in the second of the two inscriptions I just cited, was the Hippoluteion. [6] So, the cult of the hero Hippolytus was the sacred framework for the cult of the goddess Aphrodite in her shrine, which was located inside the hero’s precinct. In the course of his tour of important sights to be seen in Athens, Pausanias (1.22.1) took note of this precinct of Hippolytus, observing that he saw there a mnēma or ‘memorial marker’ that had been built for the hero. {547|548}

20§15. I have saved for this moment what I think is the most important fact about the expression epi Hippolutōi, ‘in compensation for Hippolytus’, as we have seen it attested in the Hippolytus of Euripides and in one of the two Athenian inscriptions I have just mentioned. The fact is, even the syntax of this expression shows that Hippolytus was a cult hero in Athens. We have already seen other contexts where the syntactical combination of the preposition epi with a hero’s name in the dative case indicates the historical existence of a hero cult that was meant to be an eternally recycled compensation for a given hero’s death (8§19, 8a§10, 11§8).

20§16. In the same context where Pausanias (1.22.1) remarks that he saw a mnēma or ‘memorial marker’ of the hero Hippolytus in Athens, he goes on to say (1.22.2) that there is ‘also’ a taphos or ‘tomb’ of this hero in Troizen. Pausanias goes out of his way to emphasize that this relatively small city, located at the northeast corner of the Peloponnese and about thirty miles across the sea from Peiraieus, the main harbor of Athens, is known for a different set of myths and rituals concerning Hippolytus. According to the traditions that are local to Troizen, the first time that Phaedra laid eyes on Hippolytus was in Troizen, not in Athens. Pausanias makes this detail quite explicit: καὶ Φαίδρα πρώτη ἐνταῦθα εἶδεν Ἱππόλυτον, ‘it was first here that Phaedra saw Hippolytus’ (1.22.2).

20§17. In the same context, Pausanias (1.22.2) reports another detail that is local to Troizen. This detail comes from an aetiological myth explaining why one particular myrtle bush that Pausanias saw in Troizen showed holes evenly distributed all over all its leaves: as our traveler retells the local traditional story, these leaves originally did not have holes in them, but then, once upon a time, Phaedra experienced such a ‘saturation of passion’ or asē in her irrational love for Hippolytus that she took out a peronē or ‘pin’ that was holding up her hair and started to prick holes into every single leaf of that myrtle bush. Only at a later point in the reportage of Pausanias, however, do we see the fuller significance of this aetiology explaining why the holes in the leaves of the myrtle bush are really pinpricks originating from the heroic age, and now, in my own eagerness, I will immediately shift ahead to that later point. The context is most suggestive. Pausanias is in the middle of describing a place in central Troizen that features a nāos or ‘shrine’ of Aphrodite: {548|549}

20§18. So, this myrtle bush is a most visible marker of local Troizenian traditions about both Hippolytus and Phaedra. We have already seen in Hour 14§29 the erotic symbolism of myrtle flowers, and we now see that such symbolism is localized in Troizen by way of associating the myrtle bush of Phaedra with her tomb – as also with the tomb of Hippolytus. These two tombs were contained within an overall peribolos or ‘enclosure’, as we have just seen from the description given by Pausanias, who at an earlier point of his description actually equates this enclosure with the overall temenos or ‘sacred space’ of Hippolytus:

20§19. As we see from the wording of this description by Pausanias, the temenos or ‘sacred precinct’ of Hippolytus that is mentioned at the beginning of Text E here (2.32.1) is the same thing as the overall peribolos or ‘enclosure’ mentioned at the end of this same Text E (2.32.2). We can also see from this wording {550|551} of Pausanias that the peribolos he mentions here at the end of Text E (2.32.2) is the same thing as the peribolos he mentions at the beginning of Text D (2.32.3), so that the entire enclosure is the same thing as the temenos or ‘sacred space’ of Hippolytus mentioned at the beginning of Text E (2.32.1). So, practically, all the sacred sites that are inventoried by Pausanias in both Texts D and E belong to the overall temenos or ‘sacred space’ of Hippolytus.

20§20. Among the sites contained by the temenos or ‘sacred space’ of Hippolytus is a nāos or ‘shrine’ that belongs to Aphrodite kataskopiā, ‘the one who is looking down from on high’, as we saw in Text D, Pausanias 2.32.3. This stance of the goddess of love and sexuality is duplicated by the stance of the beautiful mortal Phaedra when she herself was ‘looking down’ from her vantage point on high, next to the myrtle bush, and saw Hippolytus exercising naked.

20§21. This same nāos or ‘shrine’ in Troizen belongs not only to Aphrodite but also to Hippolytus himself, as we saw not once but twice in Text E. Similarly in the myth-ritual complex of Hippolytus in Athens, as we saw in Text C when we were reading lines 31-32 of the Hippolytus of Euripides, there is a nāos or ‘shrine’ of Aphrodite, and the goddess herself says that this nāos was established epi Hippolutōi or ‘in compensation for Hippolytus’. Retrospectively, what is being compensated here is the death of the hero, caused by his antagonism with Aphrodite. And, as I already argued in §§14-15, this expression epi Hippolutōi or ‘in compensation for Hippolytus’ indicates the existence of a hero cult of Hippolytus, anchored in the same place where the nāos or ‘shrine’ of Aphrodite is located. So, in both the Athenian and the Troizenian evidence, we see a pattern of coexistence or symbiosis between Aphrodite and Hippolytus inside a ritual space that corresponds to the myth about their mutual antagonism. For other examples of such a symbiosis linking a divinity and a hero in ritual, correlated with a pattern of antagonism that links them in myth, I refer back to Hour 11§§45, 51-52, 56, and Hour 12§21.

20§22. The striking parallelism we have just seen between the Troizenian and the Athenian versions of the Hippolytus tradition does not mean that the Athenian version, which is less rich in detail, was merely a borrowing from the Troizenian version. In making this point, I am following a general methodology that I have developed over the years while analyzing the comparative evidence {551|552} of myths and rituals. [9] Applying this methodology, I now argue that the points of comparison we see in the Hippolytus traditions of Troizen and Athens are primarily a matter of common inheritance. Granted, we can find examples where the Athenian version of the Hippolytus tradition involves borrowings from the Troizenian version, but I argue that such examples are secondary. In other words, the parallelisms we see in the Troizenian and Athenian traditions concerning Hippolytus are for the most part cognate features that survive independently of each other. Even if the surviving features of Hippolytus in Athens may at first seem less compelling than what we see in Troizen, they are still important pieces of evidence for reconstructing the myths and rituals concerning this hero.

20§23. Pursuing this argument, I now take a second look at the relationship between the shrine of Aphrodite and the precinct of Hippolytus in Athens. The wording that expresses this relationship, epi Hippolutōi, or ‘in compensation for Hippolytus’, is surely independent of what we see in the Troizenian tradition, where the relationship between the shrine of Aphrodite and the precinct of Hippolytus is expressed differently – by way of the epithet kataskopiā, ‘the one who is looking down from on high’.

20§24. This line of argumentation cannot be blunted even if we concede that the overall myth of Hippolytus was to some degree appropriated by the state of Athens, which had reshaped the figure of Theseus, father of Hippolytus, as an idealized hero-king of Athens. Such an idealization is clearly at work in the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, for example. In that drama, as we saw in Hour 18§26, Theseus is pictured as a prototype of the Athenian democracy of the fifth century BCE. We may also concede that such a prominent status for Theseus in Athens cannot be reconstructed much further back in time than the sixth century BCE. [10] And we may even concede that Theseus too, like Hippolytus, was a figure deeply rooted in the myths and rituals of Troizen: for example, it is universally acknowledged that Theseus was born in Troizen, and that his mother was Aithra, daughter of the king of Troizen, Pittheus (as we see for example in lines 207-209 of the Herakleidai of Euripides). But I maintain that the rootedness of Theseus in the local mythmaking traditions of Troizen cannot justify the inference that this hero was simply appropriated from there into Athenian mythmaking. And my point remains that the parallelisms we find in the Troize- {552|553} nian and Athenian versions of myths concerning both Hippolytus and Theseus indicate mostly cognate rather than borrowed features.

20§25. That said, I return to the testimony of Pausanias concerning the hero cult of Hippolytus in Troizen. In Text E, which I have already quoted, Pausanias accentuates two conventional patterns of thinking about this cult hero:

20§26. For the people of Troizen, one way to formulate the mystical immortalization of Hippolytus after his death was to picture the tīmē or ‘honor’ that he gets as a cult hero in the form of a catasterism, which is the transformation of a mortal human into an immortal star or constellation that dwells in the heavens. Such a catasterism of Hippolytus is evident in the wording I already quoted from Pausanias 2.32.1 in Text E: ‘As for the constellation in the heavens that is called the Charioteer [hēniokhos], they [= the people of Troizen] have a customary way of thinking [nomizein] that this one [houtos = the Charioteer] is that one [ekeinos], Hippolytus, who has this [hautē] honor [tīmē] from the gods’. {553|554} The houtos or ‘this one’ who appears as the constellation of the Hēniokhos or ‘Charioteer’ in the starry skies at night (the Latin word for this constellation is Auriga, which likewise means ‘Charioteer’) is identical to the ekeinos or ‘that one’ who is Hippolytus, receiving ‘this’ (hautē) tīmē or ‘honor’ of hero cult in Troizen.

20§27. In my brief introduction to Greek tragedy, Part III (§10), I cited a most revealing observation made by Aristotle (Poetics 1448b17): he says that the formula houtos ekeinos, meaning ‘this one is that one’, is the essence of mīmēsis or ‘representation’, which is the mental process of identifying the representing houtos or ‘this’ – in the ritual of acting the drama – with the represented ‘that’ or ekeinos in the myth that is being acted out by the drama. And now we see the same formula in the case of Hippolytus, cult hero of Troizen: every time the constellation known as the hēniokhos or Auriga or Charioteer appears in the starry skies at night, this constellation re-enacts or even acts out the hero Hippolytus himself. So, the houtos or ‘this one’, who is the Charioteer in the night sky, becomes identical to ekeinos or ‘that one’, who is the hero Hippolytus, prototypical charioteer of the Troizenians.

20§28. A comparable example is the hero Orion, a prototypical hunter, whose constellation in the heavens is mentioned in Odyssey v 121-124, a mystical passage referring to the antagonism between Orion and Artemis, the goddess who presides over the ritualized activity of hunting. [12] And I should add that Hippolytus himself is a prototypical hunter as well as a prototypical charioteer, as we will see presently. Moreover, not only is Hippolytus connected with a nāos or ‘shrine’ of Aphrodite in his own precinct, as we saw in Pausanias 2.32.1, quoted in Text E, but he is also said to have established a nāos or ‘shrine’ of Artemis elsewhere in Troizen:

20§29. Another way to formulate the mystical immortalization of Hippolytus as a local cult hero was to picture a resurrection of his body through the agency of the hero Asklepios, son of Apollo. We see a retelling of such a myth at an earlier stage in the travels of Pausanias, when he visits the peribolos or ‘precinct’ of Asklepios on the outskirts of the city of Epidaurus:

20§30. In this retelling of the Hippolytus myth, Asklepios as the son of Apollo possesses extraordinary skills as a physician, and he uses these skills to bring Hippolytus back to life after that hero dies in a chariot crash caused by the ārai or ‘curses’ hurled at him by Theseus. From another retelling of the myth, however, we learn that the resurrection of Hippolytus, engineered by the skills of Asklepios, was not only the result of his death: it was also the cause of another death. And the one whose death was caused by the resurrection of Hippolytus was Asklepios himself. As the story goes, Zeus incinerated Asklepios with his divine thunderbolt, and he did so precisely because this hero had used his extraordinary skills as a physician to resurrect Hippolytus after that hero’s death (scholia for Pindar Pythian 3.54). This version of the myth seems to be quite ancient, datable at least as far back as the sixth century BCE. [15]

20§31. In the wording of Pausanias 2.27.4, as I quoted it in Text G, we see that Hippolytus had expressed his gratitude for his resurrection by making an offering of twenty horses to Asklepios, who is described in this context as a theos or ‘god’. In terms of traditional language used in referring to cult heroes, the title of ‘god’ is appropriate here because Asklepios too, like Hippolytus, is destined to be immortalized after his own death. As we last saw in Hour 18§43, heroes who die by the thunderbolt of Zeus are made eligible for immortalization after death.

20§32. The earliest attested phases of the cult of Asklepios, localized in Epidaurus, can be dated as far back as the sixth century BCE, and the cult then spread to places like Troizen and Athens in the fifth century. [16] By the time of Pausanias, in the second century CE, the cult had spread even farther, including {556|557} places like Pergamon, Smyrna, and Cyrene (2.26.8-9). Moreover, as time went by, “Asklepios seems to have made a habit of supplanting local heroes [who also had] healing powers.” [17] And, in the process, Asklepios became less and less of a hero and more and more of a god. We have already seen this kind of historical process in Hour 15§33, where we considered the widespread worship of cult heroes like Amphiaraos, Trophōnios, and Protesilaos in the second century CE – which was the era of Pausanias himself. Similarly, by the time we reach this era, the cult of this Asklepios had become so widespread – and commensurately elevated – that people could think of him as a god who had always been a god. And that is precisely how Pausanias thought of Asklepios (2.26.10).

20§33. Although the myths and rituals that we have just examined concerning the special relationship of Hippolytus to Asklepios are localized not in Troizen but in nearby Epidaurus, there is reason to think that these myths and rituals apply to Troizen as well, since the cult of Asklepios is strongly attested in Troizen as well as in Epidaurus. In fact, archaeologists have found that the precinct of Asklepios was actually embedded within the precinct of Hippolytus in Troizen. [18] Moreover, the myths and rituals concerning Asklepios in Troizen had become so tightly integrated with the myths and rituals of Hippolytus that it became a challenge for Pausanias even to distinguish between some of the visual representations of Asklepios and Hippolytus that he saw on display in that city – even though he claims to have the expertise to make such distinctions (2.32.4).

20§34. I return here to the description of a ritual that we have already read in Pausanias 2.32.1, as quoted in Text E. This ritual, which was performed on the occasion of a seasonally recurring festival at Troizen, was linked with the nāos or ‘shrine’ that was sacred to both the hero Hippolytus and the goddess Aphrodite. Here I quote again the relevant wording:

20§35. Toward the end of the Hippolytus of Euripides, we find a passage that makes an explicit reference to the same ritual – as it already existed well over half a millennium earlier. As we are about to see, the speaker in this passage is the goddess Artemis, and she is addressing Hippolytus, who is going through his final agonizing moments of dying as a result of the horrific injuries he suffered when his chariot crashed – a fatal crash caused by the curses unjustly hurled at him by his father Theseus. The goddess tells Hippolytus that he will have, after death, the tīmai or ‘honors’ of a cult hero, and that these honors will take the form of seasonally recurring choral lyric performances of unmarried girls who will cut their hair and then present severed locks of that hair to the hero as a compensation for his sufferings. And the wording of the prediction makes it clear that the ritual acts of cutting the hair and then presenting the severed locks of that hair to the hero in his shrine are part of an overall ritual activity of choral performance. Here, then, are the relevant words spoken by the goddess:

20§36. With these words, the entire myth concerning Hippolytus and Phaedra as dramatized in the Hippolytus of Euripides is transformed into an aetiology of the seasonally recurring ritual event that is being described. Euripides is well known for making the literary gesture of equating the myths that he dramatizes with local myths that function as aetiologies for rituals that are actually attested in the traditions of various locales. [20] In using the term aetiology here, I return to my original working definition in Hour 7a§15: an aetiology is a myth that motivates an institutional reality, especially a ritual.

20§37. As I have argued in my earlier work on this passage in Euripides Hippolytus 1423-1430, as quoted here in Text I, the performing of the song about Hippolytus and Phaedra by unmarried girls is a ritual of female initiation, formalized as choral singing and dancing that takes place at a seasonally recurring festival in the city of Troizen. And, in synchronization with this choral singing and dancing, local girls cut their hair and then present severed locks of that hair to Hippolytus, lamenting the death of this beautiful hero as a formal sign of their own coming of age. [21]

20§38. The myth about the death of Hippolytus and about the unrequited love of Phaedra will be perpetuated in choral singing and dancing, as we have just seen in Euripides Hippolytus 1423-1430, Text I. And the seasonally recurring performance by choruses of Troizenian girls is described here as a sad love song, ‘a troubled thought that comes along with songmaking’ (mousopoios … merimna 1428-1429). [22] But this love song is also a song of laments (penthē 1427). As I already noted in Hour 3§13, love songs can modulate into laments, just as laments can modulate into love songs. And I return to the question I asked back then in Hour 3: why should a traditional love song be sad the same way as a lament is sad? We can see the answer more clearly now, in the light of the myth about Hippolytus and Phaedra. And the answer is this: most traditional love songs are preoccupied with the themes of unrequited love. Also, in most song cultures, love songs about unrequited love are felt to be deeply erotic. {559|560}

20§39. For purposes of comparison, I cite here some empirical observations made by the folklorist Vladimir Propp about love-songs in Russian folk traditions. [23] He notes that “the songs are about unhappy love more often than about happy love.” [24] He goes on to note that traditional Russian women’s songs at weddings, including the bride’s songs, include instances of formal lamentation; [25] in fact, “the wailing of the bride is one of the richest and artistically complete forms of ancient peasant poetry.” [26] Given that weddings are elaborate rites of passage in Russian folk traditions and that “many wedding songs were never performed outside the wedding ritual,” [27] we stand to gain a wealth of comparative insights from detailed descriptions of women’s songmaking in the context of weddings, especially in view of Propp’s conclusion that traditional Russian wedding songs “are so closely related to love and family lyrics that they cannot be studied outside the framework of women’s folk lyrics in general.” [28] Of special interest for the study of archaic Greek choral traditions is the Russian tradition of the ritual unplaiting of the maiden’s braid as a preparation for the wedding, where the unplaiting is accompanied by songmaking, and where the bride’s girl-friends sing in the name of the bride. [29]

20§40. There are further points of comparison to be found in modern Russian folk lyric, and some of these points prove to be most valuable for understanding what exactly is “choral” about ancient Greek choral lyric. [30] For example, we may note in Russian folk lyric a performative distinction between singing combined with dance and singing without dancing. [31] And here is another example: in certain forms of songanddance in Russian folk lyric, it is presupposed that one girl in a given performance will be selected, in the dynamic context of the actual performance, as better in beauty or skill than the other girls, so that the song becomes in effect her praise song by virtue of formally making an admission or acknowledgment of her poeticized superiority. [32] We saw a comparable mentality in ancient Greek choral lyric poetry when we were reading the Maiden Song of Alcman in Hour 5§59. {560|561}

20§41. Here I return to the basic idea in Euripides Hippolytus 1423-1430, Text I. The choral singing and dancing of unmarried girls, together with the gesture of offering locks of shorn hair to Hippolytus in his shrine, is an act of ritual that matches the myth about the death of this hero – and about the unrequited love of Phaedra. This myth, I have argued, is an aetiology of a ritual, and the ritual is in turn a re-enactment of the myth. And this ritual, I now argue further, is an initiation from one phase of life into another. The girls who are initiated by way of participating in the ritual are transformed into women who are now ready to get married. So, now, these girls can make a transition from a phase of virginity, as represented by the goddess Artemis, into a phase of heterosexuality, as represented by the goddess Aphrodite. In terms of the ritual, there should be no trouble for the female initiands in making a transition from Artemis to Aphrodite. In terms of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra, on the other hand, the transition is most troubled. And this troubled transition will cause troubled thinking even for the female initiands. As Artemis says to the dying Hippolytus, ‘for all time there will be a thought [merimna] that comes along with the songmaking directed at you by virgin girls, | and it will be a troubled thought’ (1428-1429). So, what is the trouble with Hippolytus? The answer is, Hippolytus himself simply cannot make the transition from the phase of virginity into the phase of heterosexuality.

20§42. Whereas the transition from virginity into heterosexuality is facilitated in the ritual of initiation, leading to social equilibrium, this same transition is blocked in myth, leading to personal disequilibrium for the hero and, ultimately, to catastrophe. In the light of these observations, I now offer this formulation: equilibrium in ritual is matched by disequilibrium in myth, and this disequilibrium leads to catastrophe for the hero. [33]

20§43. Because Hippolytus cannot make a transition from the phase of virginity to the phase of heterosexuality, he must remain a devotee of Artemis while avoiding any devotion to Aphrodite. And he must remain an antagonist of Aphrodite in myth, while Aphrodite follows up on her own antagonism toward Hippolytus by becoming the ultimate cause of his violent death in a chariot crash – {561|562} even if the immediate cause is a horrific bull that emerges from the sea, sent by the curses of Theseus to panic the speeding horses that draw the chariot of the hero. Nevertheless, the antagonism of Aphrodite toward Hippolytus in myth translates into a symbiosis of the goddess and hero inside the ritual complex of the precinct sacred to Hippolytus, which as we have seen actually encloses the shrine of Aphrodite herself. And this symbiosis, as we will now see, indicates a basic pattern of complementarity between Aphrodite and Artemis.

20§44. As I have already argued, the ritual that is described in Hippolytus 1423-1430 as quoted in Text I is an initiation from one phase of life into another. The girls who are initiated by way of participating in the ritual are transformed into women who are now ready to get married. And, as I also argued, these female initiands are making a transition from a phase of virginity, as represented by the goddess Artemis, into a phase of heterosexuality, as represented by the goddess Aphrodite. Moreover, as I argued already in Hour 5§111, the nuptial goddess Aphrodite and the prenuptial as well as postnuptial goddess Artemis reveal, as a pair, different phases of erotic engagement in the life cycle of a woman, determining when she is attainable – and when she is unattainable. The two goddesses are complementary in human life as controlled by ritual, even if they are at odds in the superhuman life of a hero like Hippolytus – a life that is controlled by myth.

20§45. In my earlier work on the Hippolytus of Euripides, I argued that the choral lyric performances of real-life girls in the real-life community of Troizen were appropriated by this master poet and director in the creation of his own drama. [34] What these girls experienced as their real-life initiation by way of singing and dancing the death of Hippolytus and the unrequited love of Phaedra was thus translated into the stylized ritual experience of Athenian State Theater. In other words, the songs of initiation as performed at a seasonally recurring festival in Troizen were dramatically replayed as songs performed by a chorus of young men in the tragedy of Euripides. [35] And this chorus of young men, as they sang and danced the choral lyric songs of the Hippolytus in Athenian State Theater, would be re-enacting a chorus of young women in Troizen as they sang and danced their native songs of initiation. [36] {562|563}

20§46. Such re-enactment is evident in the parodos or introductory choral performance of the Hippolytus. I quote here some of the wording, which shows that the content of what the chorus of singers and dancers is performing here could match the content of a corresponding chorus performing in Troizen:

20§47. It remains to be seen whether the choral performances at Troizen in the days of Euripides featured a full-scale dramatic re-enactment of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra, including actors as well as a chorus. If there were no actors, then the wording that starts at line 170 in the passage I just quoted would not be compatible with the singing and dancing performed by the female initiands of Troizen, since the wording here in the Hippolytus introduces a speaking actor, namely, the Nurse. But the wording that precedes line 170 could in any case be suitable for a choral performance featuring no actors.

20§48. A distinctly choral aspect of the wording I just quoted from the Hippolytus is the variability of references to women’s experiences of the most intimate kind. Between lines 161 and 170, the collective voice of the chorus refers to the pains suffered by women at the moment of childbirth, and there may be an added reference to the pains of menstruation in the wording that I translate this way: ‘right through my womb I once felt a rush of this | burst of wind [aurā] here’. [38] Whether or not the referent of the added reference is the experience of menstruation, the basic idea here is that the goddess Artemis controls all the functions of the uterus, and that the metaphor telling of an aurā or ‘burst of wind’ applies to these functions. I find it relevant to mention here the passages we have already seen in Hour 16 where the goddess Artemis is said to control the winds, as in Aeschylus Agamemnon 214-215 (16§6), 150 (16§13), and 1178-1182 (16§37).

20§49. Mention of the pains of labor in the choral passage of the parodos in the Hippolytus has led some interpreters to think that the chorus of this tragedy must be imagined as an ensemble of “young married women.” [39] I disagree. In choral performances by women, as we have seen before, the experiences of life can vary from woman to woman. A striking example is the lament of Briseis for the death of Patroklos in the Iliad (XIX 287-300), along with the framing narrative concerning the antiphonal responses of the stylized chorus of women attending Briseis (XIX 301-302). As I noted in Hour 5§105, this example re-enacts most accurately the morphology of a genuine choral lyric lament, indicating a wide variety of personal experiences that merge into the collective choral voice. In the Hippolytus of Euripides, we see a comparably wide variety of personal experiences expressed in another choral lyric song (third stasimon, 1102-1150), {564|565} and in that case the expressions seem typical of unmarried girls, not of matrons. [40]

20§50. In the choral lyric passage we have just read, Text J, we saw at line 173 a most profound declaration of empathy: ‘To know what on earth is happening – my soul [psūkhē] passionately desires [erâsthai] to know this’. Once again I translate psūkhē as ‘soul’, as I did in Hour 19 Text B, where Oedipus at line 94 of the Oedipus Tyrannus speaks of the collective pain that he feels in his own psūkhē for the whole community of Thebes; likewise in Hour 19 Text E, Oedipus at line 64 says that his psūkhē mourns for the collective pain felt by every single person in the city. And now, in the passage I quoted from the Hippolytus of Euripides, Text J, we see that the collective psūkhē of the chorus desires passionately to know the troubled thinking of one single person, Phaedra.

20§51. The empathy that is felt by the chorus for the experiences of Phaedra in Text J is an empathy for female experiences. Without knowing what is wrong with Phaedra, the chorus projects its own female experiences, focusing on pains in the uterus. Presiding over these pains is the goddess Artemis.

20§52. By contrast, as I will now show, Phaedra feels an empathy for the experiences of Hippolytus, which are male experiences. Her wandering mind focuses on the hero’s two primary activities – now on one and then on the other:

Presiding over both these activities, as we will see, is the goddess Artemis. Her role, as we will also see, is essential. Here, then, is the relevant passage, where we join an ongoing dialogue between Phaedra and her Nurse:

20§53. From the wording of this exchange between Phaedra and her Nurse in Text K, it is revealed that the female experiences that we saw being projected through the feelings of the female chorus in Text J have come true in the feelings of Phaedra herself. In lines 161-168 of Text J, we saw a metaphor that connects a woman whose uterus is in pain and a stringed instrument that is out of tune – as when the harmoniā (162) or ‘accordatura’ or ‘tuning’ of a lyre is dus-tropos (161), ‘having bad modulations [tropoi]’. [42] So also in line 199 of Text K, the words of Phaedra herself declare: ‘the fastenings [sun- desma] of my dear [phila] limbs [melea] have come apart’. The form melea here is the plural of the word melos, which is in fact not one word but two. One of these two words means ‘limb’ but the other means ‘tune’. So, there is another possible meaning that comes out of Phaedra’s wording, and it is this: ‘the fastenings [sun-desma] of my dear [phila] tunes [melea] are unstrung’ – as if the woman were a stringed instrument that had lost its harmoniā or ‘tuning’ (162). Phaedra is now like a lyre that is out of tune, since the tuning is dus-tropos or ‘badly modulated’ (161). So, Phaedra herself is out of tune. A more literal translation of her wording would be: ‘I have come apart [le-lū-mai] in all the places where the tunes [melea] dear [phila] to me are connected with each together’ – or ‘…where my dear [phila] limbs [melea] are connected with each together’. These two meanings can even come together in Text J when the members of the chorus are dancing with their own ‘dear’ limbs while singing their feelings of disconnectedness. And just as the collectivized female voice of the chorus of women in Text J feels an amēkhaniā or ‘helplessness’ (163), shouting out the name of Artemis in hopes of relief (167-168), so also Phaedra in Text K shouts out the name of the goddess (228-230) in her own moment of utter helplessness.

20§54. The troubled thinking that a woman experiences is blamed on her uterus in the choral song of Text J (165), but there is no such direct blaming in the words uttered by Phaedra herself in Text K. She does not understand the cause of her troubled thinking – why her mind wanders. But her own wording, without her intending it, does show the cause. She is ‘out of tune’, and that is a metaphorical way of blaming the uterus after all. In the words of the chorus, as quoted in Text J, a woman’s bad tuning is caused by an inner amēkhaniā or ‘helplessness’ (163), which is in turn caused simultaneously by ōdīnes or ‘pains of labor’ and by aphrosunē or ‘lack of sensibility’ (164). So, a ‘lack of sensibility’ is {567|568} supposedly just like a pain in the uterus, which a woman can feel rushing through her insides like a sudden burst of wind (165-166).

20§55. Such disturbingly troubled thinking, which is surely troubling even for modern readers, emerges from the empathy felt by the chorus for the female experiences of Phaedra. But then Phaedra herself shows the empathy she feels for the male experiences of the one with whom she is madly in love. As we have seen in Text K, the wandering mind of Phaedra conceives a passionate desire to be a hunter just like Hippolytus (215-222, 233-234) and, the next moment, to be an athlete just like Hippolytus (228-230, 234-235).

20§56. Artemis presides over these male experiences of Hippolytus just as surely as she presides over the female experiences of Phaedra. After all, Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, and she is also the goddess who presides over the athletic exercises of Hippolytus. So, Phaedra is really at one with Artemis when this troubled woman lets her mind wander off – first to the mountains where Hippolytus would do his hunting (215-222, 233-234) and then to the sheltered long beach where Hippolytus would speed around in his racing chariot (228-230, 234-235).

20§57. I focus for a minute here on a most telling detail, already quoted in Text K, about the passionate desire of Phaedra for the hunt. Here is how she says it: ‘I swear by the gods, I have a passionate desire [erâsthai] to give a hunter’s shout to the hounds, | and, with my blond hair and all (in the background), to throw |₂₂₁ a Thessalian javelin, holding (in the foreground) the barbed |₂₂₂ dart in my hand’ (219-222). In repeating my translation here, I have now added within parentheses the cues “in the background” and “in the foreground.” That is because, in her painterly imagination, Phaedra even poses here in the act of hurling a hunting javelin that is foregrounded against the golden background of her blond hair flowing in the wind. Holding this pose, Phaedra can become the very image of Artemis.

20§58. The tragedy in all this is that Artemis, who presides over both the male experiences of Hippolytus and the female experiences of Phaedra, makes it impossible for a woman like Phaedra to share in the male experiences that Artemis reserves for Hippolytus. Only Aphrodite allows female and male experiences to merge, but that merger can happen only in the adult world of heterosexuality, not in the pre-adult world represented by Hippolytus. In the pre-adult world, activities like hunting and athletics can already become part of male experiences, but the experience of heterosexual relationships must wait until adulthood is reached. {568|569}

20§59. Earlier in §44 and even earlier in Hour 5§111, I described Artemis as a prenuptial as well as a postnuptial goddess in comparison to Aphrodite as a nuptial goddess. My purpose was to highlight the complementarity of these goddesses in the lives of women. And by now we have seen the most obvious example of complementarity in the case of Artemis: she presides over a woman’s uterus both before and after marriage, but the heterosexual experience of intercourse and becoming impregnated is reserved for Aphrodite. As for the lives of men, the complementarity of these two goddesses is less clearly defined. For example, although Artemis presides over the activities of hunting and athletics as ritualized preliminaries to adulthood, these activities are clearly not restricted to pre-adults. It is only in the case of mythological figures like Hippolytus that the linking of these activities with pre-adulthood is accentuated.

20§60. I began this hour by noting that the world of ancient Greek myth and ritual tends to differentiate, like it or not, the experiences of men and women from each other. Now we see the cost of such differentiation, as expressed in myth: Phaedra must die because the experiences of men and women must be kept distinct.

20§61. In another choral lyric passage of the Hippolytus (second stasimon), which I will now quote in its entirety, Phaedra is committing suicide offstage while the chorus sings and dances, showing once again the empathy of collective female experiences:

20§62. As I argued in the Introduction to Part III (§9), the larger-than-life pathos or primal ‘suffering’ experienced by heroes (like Phaedra: §4) becomes identified with the pathos or ‘emotion’ experienced by the audience of Athenian State Theater, and such identification is achieved through the empathy activated by the performance of the chorus. [44]

20§63. In the choral song that I have just quoted, Text L, there is a fleeting reference to the hero Phaethon (737-741), whose sisters mourn his death every sunset by shedding amber tears from their celestial dwellings. I have spent much time and energy studying this figure, and I have already published elsewhere the main results of my study. [45] Here I propose to undergo the mental exercise of retelling, in the briefest possible way, the relevant part of the Phaethon myth – without even citing any primary sources. Here, then, is my own retelling:

This myth, at its core, recapitulates virtually everything that is essential to know about the ancient Greek hero. We have by now seen a vast array of variations, but it all comes down to this: heroes keep trying to prove to themselves that they belong somehow to a world of immortals, but, after all is said and done, heroes only end up proving that they deserve to die for trying.

20§64. There is a lesson here for Phaedra, whose wandering mind desired passionately to go to forbidden places where only Hippolytus could go. What was she trying to do? She desired to be like the goddess Artemis. And she conceived this desire because she loved Hippolytus, who loved Artemis and who therefore angered Aphrodite. So, why did Phaedra love Hippolytus? It was only because Aphrodite made her love him in order to punish him with death.

20§65. So, there is an even bigger lesson here for Hippolytus, who tried to love Artemis in a way that could never be reciprocated. What he got for his pains was death, caused by the love of Phaedra, which in turn was caused by the anger of Aphrodite. And this death of Hippolytus took the form of a spectacular chariot crash that had not yet happened when Phaedra was killing herself – and when the chorus was singing a song that evoked the ultimately spectacular chariot crash of Phaethon. {571|572}