Aphrodite and the Equivocal Argument: Hamartia in the Hippolytus

“The tongue is not to be trusted” (395),^[1] declares Phaedra as she describes her intention to hide her love for her stepson. “Be careful that your tongue does not trip you up,” Hippolytus warns his old servant (100), and several scenes later, he makes a similar statement to his father (924). Yet Phaedra has made her statement too late: she has already confessed her love for Hippolytus to the Nurse and the Chorus. Hippolytus, too, is tripped up by his own tongue in an angry exchange of words with the Nurse. All the characters in the play, in fact, do a great deal of talking.^[2] They speak when they should not, they speak to whom they should not, they speak in ways they should not; yet, for all the talking, communication is very poor. Throughout the play, the characters use bad arguments, make ambiguous statements, equivocate, speak in riddles, make false accusations, tell lies, and curse each other; in short, the characters are continually misusing logos. We see the truth distorted by the misuses of the logos until the shape of the truth is completely lost, to be restored only by the intervention of the goddess Artemis.^[3]

The word, logos—which includes such meanings as rational account, reason, word, language, and argument—expresses the principle that the world is ordered in such a way as to be understood by men. By the time of the New Testament, logos had become the principle of the order; in classical times logos was both the ability to comprehend the order and the expression of order in words and sentences, spoken and written. Aristotle says in the Politics (1253a9) that man is the only animal endowed by nature with logos. Logos sets forth “the expedient and inexpedient, and there­ fore likewise the both as the rational faculty which determines and distinguishes the just and unjust and as the expression in words of the expedient, the just, and so forth.”^[4]

Logos can be misused, however. Instead of using logos to manifest or make clear the order in things, words can be used to cloud the truth, to conceal intentions, and to confuse the distinctions between good and bad, and the like. Logos can “go wrong” at the level of basic misunderstanding; madness or wickedness or irrational passions can render a man temporarily or permanently incapable of distinguishing between good and bad and right and wrong. It is also possible for a man to fail to use his logos in a particular instance; a normal human being ordinarily acting in accordance with reason can suddenly do something irrational. A man cannot give a reason for his sudden instance of irrationality; if he could, the action would not be irrational. But he can give his irrational action a name. The Greeks called it hamartia, and we translate the word “mistake.” I refer the reader to other articles in this volume for a more thorough discussion of the term.^[5] I emphasize, however, that the very word, “mistake,” or hamartia, can only be used of something wrong done by one who was capable of doing the right thing in the situation; one cannot be said to miss the target if one does not know how to shoot. So also a madman, whose actions are usually irrational, cannot be said to experience one sudden instance of irrationality. A man must be rational in order to make a mistake. One cannot be said to have made a mistake, furthermore, if one is forced to do the wrong; that is, if the target-shooter is bumped as he is shooting, he does not miss his target by mistake. The responsibility for a mistake can rest only with the one who makes the mistake.

The existence of hamartia makes tragedy possible. Aristotle describes the most tragic stories as those in which a character goes from good to bad fortune, not because he is wicked or base, but because he has made some mistake (see the Poetics, 1453a8-10). The suffering of a character as the result of his own error arouses pity; the recognition that all men commit hamartiai and are thus similarly susceptible to suffering arouses fear.

Hippolytus’s tragedy is the story of a chaste youth whose righteous horror at the revelation of his stepmother’s passion for him prompts Phaedra, the stepmother, to bring on Hippolytus’s destruction at the hands of his father by accusing Hippolytus falsely of rape. Now, Professor Crossett’s specific definition of hamartia is simultaneous belief and disbelief in the same thing in the same respect at the same time. In the Hippolytus, we can see that misuses of logos lead to a confusion in which the three major characters commit hamartiai. Phaedra, exhausted by her nurse’s persistent attempts to learn Phaedra’s secret ailment, becomes confused and fails to make a distinction between giving the suppliant Nurse what she wants and giving the Nurse what is good for her. The result is that Phaedra tries simultaneously to confess and not to confess her love for Hippolytus. Hippolytus makes a false distinction between his tongue and his mind in an attempt to admit and deny simultaneously that he has sworn an oath of secrecy about the Nurse’s improper proposal. In fact, Hippolytus’s declaration that he will not maintain silence about the Nurse’s request is not true, but the untruth moves Phaedra herself to lie in the form of a suicide-note accusing Hippolytus of rape. Hippolytus’s father Theseus, then, presented with various forms of evidence, commits his hamartia in simultaneously believing and disbelieving that he could be deceived by false words. Theseus’s hamartia makes complete his deception, tying into a knot so many tangled lies, false assumptions, equivocations, and ambiguities that only by the intervention of Artemis her­ self can the threads be separated and Theseus see his own mistake.

Aphrodite introduces the play of lies and deception; she adduces the play about to be presented as proof of her opening statement that she “trips up” those who contemn her power (6). She explains how she has set up the situation by which she will get revenge on Hippolytus, who says that she is the worst of the divinities. Since she is a goddess, of course, she has both the power to make it possible for Hippolytus to be ruined and the foreknowledge to describe his ruin, without, in either case, interfering with his free will. Also, since she is a goddess, she does not lie; presumably, though, as gods predicting the future are wont to do, she provides us with a completely ambiguous statement. Phaedra suffers her love for Hippolytus in silence, Aphrodite tells us, but the love must not end in this way (41). “And I shall show,” she says next, “the business to Theseus and it will be brought to light” (42).^[6] What business will she show? What will be brought to light? If we suppose that Aphrodite intends to make known to Theseus Phaedra’s love, we must explain why Aphrodite would claim, in line 47, that Phaedra will die with her good reputation safe. Besides, by the second scene of the play, we know that Aphrodite does not reveal Phaedra’s love to Theseus; he never knows of it, in fact, until Artemis tells him, after Aphrodite has achieved her revenge. What business, then, will be brought to light? What could possibly prompt Theseus to curse his son with destruction from Poseidon? Aphrodite has promised to show us the truth of her opening statements (9); what we will see brought to light is the darkest of lies.

The action begins and we meet Hippolytus, as is fitting, singing a hymn to Artemis. He is so chaste, we learn from Hippolytus himself, as to be the only man to have the privilege of exchanging words with the goddess; surely his is the most noble use of the logos that can be. Then we see him exchanging words with a fellow man. What happens in the first scene, simply speaking, is that Hippolytus’s old servant warns the chaste Hippolytus against ignoring Aphrodite, and that Hippolytus rejects the advice. What also happens in the first scene is that neither of the characters speaks simply.

The old servant begins his advice cautiously, but with great promise; not only does he claim his advice is good, but he has also, in his very first words, made a distinction. He calls attention to the fact that he is distinguishing between “prince” and “lord” in addressing Hippolytus (88); obviously, one choosing his words so carefully is going to give good advice. The servant questions Hippolytus cautiously, trying to build a dialectical argument for Hippolytus’s need to honor Aphrodite, but neither does the answerer in this argument seem willing simply to affirm or deny, nor does the questioner seem able to ask precise questions. Having established that there is a precept (nomos) to hate one who is proud or haughty (semnos) and not friendly to all, the servant asks whether the same holds for the gods (97). The rather vague question elicits an equally vague response from Hippolytus: “If, indeed, mortals make use of the laws of the gods” (98). Hippolytus, a clever boy, is not going to be pinned down by an ambiguous question, nor does he miss the equivocation in the servant’s next question. “How is it, now, that you do not address a haughty, grand (semnê) goddess? (99)” As W. S. Barrett explains,^[7] semnos, meaning “reverend” or “august,” comes to be used of someone who considers himself august or worthy of reverence, having the negative sense of “haughty” or “proud. ”“What goddess? Watch out that your tongue does not get you into trouble,” Hippolytus warns, and with good reason. The servant, using semnos without a specific noun as the object of the verb in 93, has confused the matter by using the words, “the same,” again without a specific noun in 97, and now in 99 he demands that Hippolytus hold converse with a goddess who is semnos. The servant is either equivocating or making the contradictory demands that Hippolytus hate one who is semnos and be friendly to one who is semnos. Hippolytus seems not to have been taking the servant very seriously to begin with, but at this point he becomes quite flippant; when the servant finally names Aphrodite as the goddess to be held in reverence, Hippolytus jokes, “Oh, I kiss the goddess by long distance” (102). Often translated “greet,” aspazomai describes greeting someone with an embrace and a kiss. Hippolytus is not an idiot; he knows what respect for Aphrodite entails, and he has chosen a fitting word for addressing Aphrodite. He is claiming that he does address (prosennepein) the goddess, but since the phrase “I embrace from afar” is obviously an oxymoron, he actually denies having anything to do with Aphrodite. Hippolytus continues to enjoy his own clever remarks, and, with a final careless “ta-ta” to “your Cypris,” as he refers to Aphrodite, he is off, leaving the servant in fervent prayer to Aphrodite for Hippolytus’s sake, and leaving us wondering whether the servant or Hippolytus is more in need of the warning to watch his tongue.

The first scene is over. We know that, joking aside, Hippolytus actually claims that Aphrodite is the worst of goddesses (13) and that he is to die for the statement “this day” (22, 57). We also know that he is to die by the curse of his father. We know that, somehow, Phaedra’s secret love for Hippolytus will contribute to his ruin, and so the story begins.

Phaedra’s passion for her stepson creates for her a most difficult situation. Her duty as a woman is to avoid disgracing her husband or her young sons and to maintain her own honor and dignity. Since it is as dishonorable to have the passion as to act upon it (see 405), the only way Phaedra can maintain her honorable reputation is to conceal the truth about her passion. In addition, though Aphrodite has told us that Phaedra suffers in silence (40), we see, as the second scene opens, a Phaedra far from silent. Phaedra’s old nurse is trying to stop her mistress’s mad ravings on the very grounds that Phaedra’s wild words are unseemly. We recognize also, as the Nurse cannot, that Phaedra is very close to telling her dishonorable secret with her wild words; in her longing for the grassy meadows, the dogs, the hunt, and horses on the strand, we recognize the haunts of Hippolytus.

Phaedra soon gains control of herself and expresses shame for what she has said in madness. As she considers ruefully her alternative conditions of madness and straight thinking (247-49), she indicates that she is in her right mind. Her expression of shame is, in fact, assurance of her sanity; she takes responsibility for what she has said, rec­ognizes that she has violated a standard of behavior (244), and is concerned for others’ censure.^[8] It is necessary for us to see her gain control of her mind so that, when she does commit her hamartia, we know that it is truly a case of “missing the mark” and not ignorance of “the mark”—the failure to distinguish just from unjust and right from wrong which characterizes the madman.

The Chorus insists that the Nurse discover Phaedra’s ailment, so the Nurse employs logos to convince Phaedra to speak. She argues very reasonably that Phaedra’s disease must be known before it can be cured, but, of course, the Nurse presupposes, as Phaedra does not, that the “disease” can be cured. Phaedra maintains her silence.

The Nurse’s next appeal, to Phaedra as a mother, is more effective. Apparently, she has realized that Phaedra does intend to die of her disease, so she declares, “If you die, you betray your sons, who might not have a share in their inheritance but be ruled by the son of Theseus and the Amazon, the bastard who acts as though he considers himself a legitimate son—you know whom I mean—Hippolytus” (305-310).

Quite by accident, the Nurse has named a “cause” of Phaedra’s illness, and she interprets Phaedra’s cry of distress as a cry for the sake of her children, a cry which would be proof that both Phaedra’s heart and her mind are in the right place.

The silence is broken at last. Phaedra will observe that the tongue is not to be trusted (395); the ambiguity in the immediate lines demonstrates the observation. Lines 315-35 are full of plays on words as Phaedra, drawn into an interrogation after her outburst, tries to answer the Nurse’s questions without giving her any information. The Nurse finally goes so far as to seize Phaedra’s hand in supplication, prompting Phaedra to complain that the Nurse is forcing her secret from her. The Nurse declares that she intends to cling to Phaedra’s knees as well as her hand until Phaedra tells her what she wants to know. Phaedra, pro­testing repeatedly that the knowledge of her secret will only bring the Nurse’s ruin, talks entirely too much; the Nurse seizes on her comments and twists them, confusing Phaedra and weakening her resolve not to confess her love.

Phaedra reaches the breaking point and begs the Nurse to let go of her hand. The Nurse refuses, insisting that Phaedra must grant the request of her suppliant, and Phaedra gives in, out of reverence, she says, for the sacredness of a suppliant hand (335). “I’m already silent,” says the Nurse, who has, after all, been talking almost constantly since the beginning of the scene; “the logos from here is yours.”

Phaedra certainly does say things to the Nurse at this point, but she tells the Nurse nothing as she makes oblique references to the unfortunate love affairs of her female relatives. “Would that you could say what I must say!” she sighs. Finally dropping enough hints for the Nurse to realize that Phaedra is in love, she describes her beloved as the son of the Amazon. “Hippolytus?” gasps the horrified Nurse. Phaedra’s answer: “You heard these things from yourself, not from me” (352). The circumlocutions, the hints, the oblique references, were all Phaedra’s attempts, on the one hand, to avoid saying what will ruin her and the Nurse. Phaedra, on the other hand, has granted the Nurse’s request; her secret has been revealed. Her claim in 352 is that the Nurse has, in fact, said “what I must say.” Phaedra is claiming not to have told her secret. How can she admit that only she can tell her secret and yet claim that she is not the one who has revealed her secret? Hamartanei. Phaedra, capable of reason, in full command of her wits, has committed a hamartia.

Phaedra considers the problem of wrongdoing in her next speech. Men do wrong, she claims, not from igno­rance, but from laziness or by preferring some pleasure to right action. Naming some specific pleasures, she observes that pleasures are double and that only one “half” of the doublet is bad. Oddly enough, she includes in her list of pleasures aidos, the sense of shame or fear of disapprobation that keeps one from doing what is bad or unseemly. We must remember that she has claimed, in 335, to give in to the Nurse because she feels aidos. The Nurse has managed to emphasize Phaedra’s obligation to give in to the demands of a suppliant. Unfortunately for Phaedra, the suppliant’s demand is such that Phaedra’s respect for the suppliant’s request involves not only bringing shame on herself, but also, as Phaedra herself has observed (327, 329), bringing ruin on the suppliant. In the confusion of the word plays between Phaedra and the Nurse, Phaedra has chosen to grant the Nurse’s request as a suppliant rather than to avoid harming the suppliant. Now reflecting on the double nature of aidos and the “other” pleasures, Phaedra declares that the distinction between the good and evil “halves” is a difficult one to make. If the kairos were clear, that is, if it were easy to judge the right moment at which the aidos ceases to be the right one and becomes the wrong one, then the distinction between the good and bad “halves” would be reflected in the language: there would be two different words (387). But as it is, Phaedra has been tripped up by a failure of the logos; she complains that. the logos has masked rather than made clear an essential distinction.

Phaedra falls silent at last, but not so the Nurse. Her stunned horror upon Phaedra’s revelation is replaced by “wiser second thoughts” (436). In a speech full of equivo­cations, generalizations inappropriate to the circumstances, and bad advice, she tries to convince Phaedra to submit to her passion, seduce Hippolytus, and thereby save her life. The Nurse insists that Phaedra’s being in love is completely natural and declares that things have come to a pretty pass if people in love must die for it. Phaedra should have been born under other gods in a different world, if she finds the idea of sex so disturbing. The Nurse’ argument, of course, does not consider that the object of Phaedra’s love is the son of her husband. The Nurse warns Phaedra that Aphrodite abuses the mortal who tries to be special and has high thoughts; it is a warning of ominous irony, recalling Aphrodite’s own words regarding her treatment of mortals (5-6). The Nurse claims that, among the wise, “things that are not noble escape notice” (466-67). The statement is nearly an exact quotation of Phaedra’s wish that what is not noble in what she does might escape notice (403). But the Nurse has equivocated on lanthano (escape notice). Phaedra meant, of course, that she would not have any witnesses of her base deeds or thoughts; the Nurse claims that wise men pretend not to have seen the base deeds of those to whom they are close (philoi).

The Nurse’s conclusion is that Phaedra dare to love since a god has willed it (476). The Chorus and Phaedra remain unconvinced, and Phaedra delivers a short statement of the danger of “too-fine logoi.” The Nurse continues to work on Phaedra, accusing her of pretentiousness (490), and insisting that Phaedra does not need words now, but the man. The Nurse does finally “call a spade a spade,” admitting that she suggests a course of action that is shameful, but necessary if Phaedra’s life is to be saved.

Phaedra finally begs the Nurse to stop making improper suggestions, admitting that her own resolve is weakened and she is afraid that she will do what she has been avoiding with such effort. The Nurse seemingly honors Phaedra’s request, saying, “if it seems best to you” She launches into a series of suggested prescriptions for cures of Phaedra’s ailment. But all of her talk of charms and spells and putting an end to the passion is completely ambiguous; the Nurse could mean either that (507). She launches into a series of suggested prescriptions for cures of Phaedra’s ailment. But all her talk of charms and spells and putting an end to the passions is completely ambiguous; the Nurse could mean either that she plans to cure Phaedra with some anti-aphrodisiac charm, or that she intends, by means of some aphrodisiac, to seduce Hippolytus to go to bed with Phaedra.^[9] The exhausted Phaedra tries to force the Nurse to make clear her intentions by asking specific questions about the charm, but the Nurse evades her questions. Phaedra voices her fear that the Nurse will betray her to Hippolytus, but she is ignored by the Nurse, and the second scene ends as the first scene did, with a prayer to Aphrodite.

We learn very quickly in the third scene that Phaedra’s fears are realized. Soon Hippolytus himself bursts upon the scene shouting that he has heard the unutterable utterance (601-602). The Nurse follows, pleading for silence. “It is not possible for me to be silent!” cries Hippolytus, “I have heard dreadful things!” We find out later that it is possible for him to be silent, even when his silence will bring about his ruin, but in his anger now, he speaks as if he intends to broadcast his information; in effect, he lies. The scene here with the Nurse enjoining Hippolytus to be silent mirrors the previous scene with the Nurse enjoining Phaedra to speak; here, as with Phaedra, the Nurse reaches for Hippo­lytus’s hand in supplication, but Hippolytus spurns the Nurse as Phaedra did not. We are reminded also of Hippolytus’s encounter with his own servant; Hippolytus shows the same penchant for wordplay, but here he is much fiercer. “Don’t ruin me!” begs the Nurse (607). “Why worry, if indeed, as you claim, you have said nothing evil?” Hippo­lytus responds. The Nurse’s defense is that the matter is not such as to be ordinary dinner-table conversation (609). “But fine things are made finer when spoken of among many men,” is Hippolytus’s reply, based on the erroneous assump­tion that things that are not base or evil are necessarily fine and noble.

The Nurse tastes a bit of her own medicine as Hippo­lytus angrily twists her words to use them against her, but we learn that she is still “one up on” Hippolytus. She has sworn him to silence with an oath: “Oh my child, do not disregard your oaths!” (611). Hippolytus’s angry answer: “The tongue swore, but the mind is not bound” (612). Phaedra, reflecting on her hamartia (372-87), has decided that she made her mistake because she had failed to make a distinction between “good” and “bad” aidos. Hippolytus is certainly in no danger of failing to make distinctions. Here we see him make a subtle distinction between his mind (phren) and his tongue, a distinction so subtle as to allow him to admit that the oath was sworn (“the tongue swore”), but that he would not have sworn the oath if he had actually known about what he was swearing to be silent. The distinction is false, of course; in no way can his tongue be distinct from himself. In making such a distinction, Hippo­lytus is trying at the same time to claim that he did take the oath and that he did not take the oath. As we have seen, he is a clever fellow with a good command of the logos. Even in his anger, he is shrewd enough to make distinc­tions, but a distinction by which he simultaneously admits and denies that he swore is not a distinction. It is a hamartia.

Unlike Phaedra, Hippolytus is unaware of his mistake. The Nurse questions him about his intentions, trying to con­vince him not to ruin her and Phaedra. Hippolytus evades her questions by equivocating on her words. She asks whether he intends to destroy phi/oi. Instead of under­ standing the word in the sense of “kinsmen” (those with whom one is associated by ties of blood or marriage), Hippo­lytus uses the words in another sense, answering that no friend of his is unjust (614). The Nurse, in good rhetorical fashion, distinguishes between wrongdoing (adikein) and making a mistake (hamartanein), claiming that Hippolytus should forgive her and Phaedra, since men tend to make mistakes.^[10] Hippolytus promptly equivocates on the word for man (anthropos) which the Nurse has used generically, and begins to denounce women as a source of evil for men (anthropoi), in the specific sense. He does finally promise to keep his oath, but with the additional assurance that he will watch in holy and chaste silence while the women, hiding their disgusting secret, encounter Theseus face to face (660-63).

Hippolytus exits, enraged. Phaedra is left wondering how she can find a logos to deal with the situation. But what is the situation? Hippolytus, in his anger, has at different times refused and promised to keep silent. Phaedra assumes that he will not be silent (689-92). Only later do we find out that her assumption is false. Now we are inclined to agree that Hippolytus is angry enough to break his oath; he has, after all, committed a hamartia regarding his swearing of the oath. His abusive speech and his original angry outburst are the result of his false assumption that Phaedra has sent the Nurse to make the request. His assumption is not unreasonable. The Nurse could not know of Phaedra’s passion if Phaedra had not taken the Nurse into her confidence, and, if Phaedra had not wanted the Nurse to make an improper suggestion, she could, as the Nurse’s mis­ tress, simply have forbidden the Nurse to do so. Hippolytus cannot know that Phaedra told the Nurse “By mistake.” Hippolytus also cannot know that Phaedra could not be sure of the Nurse’s intention, couched as it was in ambiguities, and that she allowed the Nurse to take control of the situation because she was desperate for some kind of cure for her passion.

Hippolytus’s reasonable though false assumption of Phaedra’s complicity has prompted his natural but unreasonable anger. Now Phaedra’s reasonable though false assumption that Hippolytus will malign her name prompts her natural but unreasonable desire for revenge. The Nurse’s logoi having proved disastrous, Phaedra seeks new logoi. She silences the Nurse and sends her away, swears the Chorus to silence, and announces her intention to die for the sake of her children’s honor. She also announces her intention to derive some benefit from the present situation. Her last words, in response to the Chorus’s questions, are riddles: “My death. shall prove someone else’s misfortune; he will know better than to be haughty over my misfortunes; sharing the disease in common with me, he will learn to be moderate (sophron, temperate)” (728-31). We know to whom she refers, although of course she has not named him. How can Hippolytus share her disease? Nosos is the word used so far to name Phaedra’s passion; what does she mean here? Is nosos metaphorical for death, or for the “disease” of being accused of a lack of chastity, or even simply the “dis­ease” of being falsely accused? Likewise, the declaration that he will learn to be sophron requires one to understand sophron to mean something other than “chaste,” though it has meant “chaste” throughout the play so far. The word has the general sense of “moderate”, “discreet,” “self-controlled”; is he going to learn self-control with respect to anger, or discretion in keeping shameful knowledge to himself? The statement is an ironic echo of Hippolytus’s own insistence that women be taught sophrosyne (moderation or temperance) before he will stop insulting them (667-68).

Phaedra exits after her riddling line and, one choral ode later, she is dead. The truth about her death lies buried beneath equivocations and ambiguities, two hamartiai, two false assumptions, two oaths of silence, and a couple of lies, and a final lie is tied in a deltos (a writing-tablet) to Phaedra’s lifeless wrist. Theseus enters, totally unsuspecting of any mischance. The Chorus, denying full knowledge of the circumstances, must lie to keep its oath of silence, and soon enough Theseus finds the ultimate lie: Phaedra has tied a note to her wrist, in which she accuses Hippolytus of raping her. Qualis filius, talis pater. Theseus immediately explodes in anger, calling down upon Hippolytus one of three curses once granted to Theseus by Poseidon. He has a strange way of cursing, however. He prays to Poseidon not to let Hippolytus outlive the day, then adds, “if, indeed, you promised me three reliable (sapheis) prayers” (890). Saphes means “clear, distinct, sure, certain.”^[11] Theseus is here questioning the reliability of Poseidon’s promise, supposing that he may have been deceived by Poseidon. When the horrified Chorus bids Theseus call back the prayer, he even adds exile to Hippolytus’s sentence, a second sentence “just in case” the first one does not take effect. The Chorus has warned Theseus to call back the prayer because he is falling short, or making a mistake (892). They know, of course, that the deltos is a lie, and obviously they accept as true Poseidon’s promise to grant the curses. Theseus, on the other hand, suspects that he could be deceived by the promise of Poseidon, a god, but has no doubts about the deltos.

Hippolytus approaches and the Chorus, relieved, observes that he comes at the kairos. Accurate judgment of the kairos, the “right moment” of an action or process, is the difference between hitting one’s mark and committing a hamartia. Phaedra attributed her failure to distinguish between good and bad aidos to the difficulty of recognizing the kairos; the kairos was not clear, she says (386). Indeed, at the kairos of her encounter with the Nurse, when the Nurse claimed that Phaedra’s obligation was to give in to her suppliant (334), Phaedra failed to realize that avoiding the shame of denying a suppliant meant incurring the double shame of harming her suppliant and ruining her own reputation; she agreed to give in and committed the hamartia of trying at once to tell and not to tell. So here, the Chorus recognizes that, with Hippolytus still alive, Theseus can still call back the prayer; surely Theseus will question Hippolytus about this most unlikely accusation and be convinced of Hippolytus’s innocence.

Theseus, however, will not even look at Hippolytus. Once again, we see one character questioning another whose responses are vague or oblique. The irony of the situation is not lost upon us, when the exasperated Hippolytus accuses his father of logic-chopping and gives to his father a familiar warning to beware lest his tongue trip him up. Theseus’s response is to wish that men had two voices, one of which would always tell the man’s true intentions so that men would have certain evidence of true friends and never be deceived (925-31). Theseus presents the deltos and declares that Hippolytus is thus “clearly accused by the deceased as the basest of men” (944-45). Theseus proceeds to denounce his son bitterly; then he asks, “But now—why do I strive against your arguments when there is a corpse present, the most reliable witness? Get out of this land …” (971- 73).

Hippolytus’s initial reply to such a vehement accusation is the observation, “Father, the anger and harshness of your mind is awesome” (983-84). Indeed, Theseus is so angry as to be rather imprecise. He seems to have forgotten all about his original prayer to Poseidon to destroy Hippolytus that very day; he dwells only on the sentence of exile which he himself will enforce. He refuses to contend with “your arguments” (971), referring not to any real arguments of Hippolytus but to the “straw men” Theseus himself has set up. More importantly, turning from Hippolytus’s logoi, which are not really Hippolytus’s, Theseus appeals to a wit­ness (martys) which is not really a witness: “A corpse is present, the most reliable witness” (972).^[12]

Theseus has been preoccupied with the reliability of evidence ever since his statement of doubt concerning Posei­don’s promise. He has lamented the lack of a reliable proof of one’s true friends. He has defied Hippolytus to produce evidence in his defense stronger than the evidence of the deltos against him. Now he turns to a corpse, declaring not just that it is reliable evidence (tekmerion or martyrion), but that it is the most reliable witness. In his grief and his anger at the thought of his utter deception by his son, The­seus has become completely confused as to the nature. of his evidence. Hippolytus, bound by an oath of silence, must defend his innocence before a confused and angry judge. He resorts to a sort of riddle: “Certainly, the business has fine logoi, but if someone should unfold it, it is not fine at all” (984-85).The obvious distinction here is between logoi and the truth of the matter. The main logos is the deltos; without actually stating that the deltos is a lie, Hippolytus tries to suggest to Theseus that Theseus may be deceived.

“You thought to catch me off guard with nothing to say in my defense,” Hippolytus begins 992-93), and he proceeds to make the straightforward statement of the truth that no man on earth is more chaste than he. He proceeds to a two-part explanation of his assertion. First, he claims to know how to worship the gods and to have as friends those who do not attempt to do wrong but would be ashamed both to send evil messages and to perform shameful services as a favor. The comments seem strange until, remembering that, in the previous scene, Hippolytus has just rejected the Nurse and Phaedra as friends, we recognize that he is here describing what he assumed was the case when Phaedra “sent” the Nurse, who agreed to “help” Phaedra seduce Hippolytus. “I am completely innocent,” Hippolytus says in the second part of his explanation, “of the one thing in which you think you capture me. I do not know the deed except in hearing it in speech (logos) and looking on it in writing (graphos)” (1004-1005). General as the statement is, we realize here that Hippolytus has just heard “the deed” in speech and seen it in writing; that is, Theseus has just accused him of it in speech because the accusation was written in the deltos. If Theseus were in any condition to ponder the statement, moreover, he would recognize, in Hip­polytus’s denial of experiential knowledge the suggestion that logos and graphos are not always sufficient for knowledge of a thing.

Finally, after challenging Theseus to produce a motive for Phaedra’s rape, Hippolytus swears an oath that he is innocent. To the end of his speech, Hippolytus continues to hint that the matter requires more careful scrutiny, and he closes his speech with a riddle: “She was temperate who did not have it in her to be temperate, but I, having temperance, did not use it well (kalos).” From the opening play on kalos logos to the last riddle, Hippolytus has chosen his words so as to suggest what has happened without actually stating the truth and breaking his oath. He is, in effect, trying to tell and not to tell the same thing simultaneously, though he is quite aware that he cannot do both. His situation, in which he uses ambiguity to try to say what he must not, is the inverse of the situation in which Phaedra uses ambiguity to avoid saying what she must not. The Nurse, on the contrary, has used ambiguity to avoid saying what she should; that is, Phaedra needed to know the Nurse’s intention regarding Hippolytus. In each case, the use of ambiguity is an irrational use of the logos, an attempt to speak and not to speak at the same time.

Hippolytus has done his best to suggest to Theseus that the situation is not what it seems, and the Chorus points out the strength of an oath as an object of belief (pistis). The­seus, it seems, has perceived the ambiguities in Hippolytus’s defense, but his angry action is to accuse Hippolytus of being a witch with words, trying to charm Theseus and win him over with euorgēsia, (gentleness, or mildness of temper). Challenged by Hippolytus to kill him on the spot if he is clearly guilty, Theseus responds that quick death is too easy; he has forgotten, as we have not, that he himself has prayed to Poseidon to kill Hippolytus that day. Evidently, the angry Theseus is thoroughly confused, and a state of confusion, as we have seen, is conducive to the commission of hamartiai. Hippolytus has come at the kairos, as the Chorus has pointed out, and, having given his defense, he asks in his last desperate questions whether Theseus intends to carry out the sentence without any test of the evidence (1051-56). Theseus claims simply that “this deltas here” is all that is needed, and thus he commits his hamartia. He has doubted the reliability of the god’s promise; he has lamented the lack of a true voice in men to refute the voice that lies; he has accused Hippolytus of trying to deceive him in words. Throughout the scene, he has been obsessed with the difficulty of getting at the truth of a logos. Yet here he holds the deltas, a written logos, before Hippolytus as absolute proof of his guilt, proof which admits of no test, no divinations, no contrary oath; it is a true statement to which the witness is a corpse.

Hippolytus knows at this point that he is lost. He briefly considers breaking his oath, but he realizes that Theseus, having committed such a hamartia as he has, will not believe him anyway. Hippolytus despairingly calls on the house itself to bear him witness, and Theseus taunts him with the statement that it is a clever idea to call voiceless witnesses, but the deed itself reveals him as an evil man. The jibe is all the more terrible for its unwitting irony; not only is there no “revealing deed,” nor has Theseus caught Hippolytus in the act, but also Theseus is the one who has called a voiceless witness. After the Chorus laments Hippo­lytus‘s departure, we learn through a messenger of the suf­ferings of Hippolytus under the curse of Poseidon. Though Theseus is now convinced that he has been vindicated, he is mindful of the fact that the man he has cursed is his own son, and the scene ends as Theseus bids the messenger bring the dying Hippolytus before him.

The final choral hymn to Aphrodite is followed immedi­ately by the entrance of Artemis. Artemis has come to reveal all, to clear up the confusion, to untangle the lies. She proceeds to lay out the story from beginning to end, finally reproaching Theseus for not realizing, on the one hand, that Poseidon’s promise to grant his prayers was reli­able (1315), yet, on the other hand, that the deltos was unreliable (1289). Artemis says that, because Theseus nei­ther searched for more believable proof nor consulted a seer nor allowed time for an investigation, she and Poseidon both consider Theseus a base man (1320-24). “I am ruined,” moans Theseus (1325). Here is the essence of tragedy.^[13] Theseus, though he is neither mad nor wicked, has deliberately killed his own son. He is ruined because of the hamartia he committed in anger. His action was irrational—a sort of instantaneous insanity—but it was his own action; only he can take the responsibility for it.

Artemis has made clear that the gods consider Theseus responsible for the deed, but, in her next speech, she says that Theseus’s ignorance frees his hamartia of evil. She adds that, since Phaedra had killed herself, it was impossible to examine the matter with logoi, and so Theseus was persuaded. The statements conclude her explanation that, though Theseus has done a terrible thing, forgiveness is possible since Aphrodite wanted things to happen in this way. Aristotle writes, in Book Ill of the Nicomachean Ethics, that

on voluntary passions and actions praise and blame are bestowed on those that are involuntary pardon, and sometimes also pity…. Those things, then, are thought involuntary, which take place under compulsion or owing to ignorance; and that is compulsory of which the moving principle is outside….^[14]

Artemis has not, in announcing the will of Aphrodite, denied Theseus’s free will. Pardon is possible because of his igno­rance and not because he was compelled by Aphrodite.^[15] Hippolytus is brought in at this point, and Artemis reveals to him also that Aphrodite has set up the situation in which these terrible things have happened (1400). Artemis, Hippolytus, and Theseus together consider Theseus’s hamartia and the fact that the gods can trip up men in their thinking (1413). Artemis tells Theseus that he has killed his son involuntarily, and she bids Hippolytus forgive his father. As she points out, “It is reasonable to expect men to commit hamartiai when the gods give them the opportunity” (1433-34). Artemis must leave the dying Hippolytus to avoid the taint of mortality in the air, and the play ends as Hip­polytus frees Theseus of the guilt of the murder and dies in his father’s arms.

Both Phaedra and Hippolytus have committed hamartiai in their irrational attempts to speak and not to speak at the same time. All uses of ambiguity and equivocation have such irrationality in common, and the play demonstrates the con­fusion resulting from misuse of the logos. Theseus’s hamartia, the last hamartia to be committed in the play, is quite naturally, then, a hamartia concerning the nature of evidence. Once the distinction between truth and falsity has been lost, only a god is able to restore order. In addition, only a god can truly know to whom forgiveness is due. Hippolytus has refused to listen to the Nurse’s plea for forgiveness (615), but he forgives his father at the bidding of Artemis (1442-43). Hypocrisy cannot truly be detected by men; because it is possible to lie, only a god can distinguish sincerity from hypocrisy.

But Artemis tells us that men commit hamartiai in situ­ations set up by the gods. She says repeatedly in the final scene that the situation has come about as Aphrodite desired it to. Why would a god want men to lie to each other and to misuse the logos as the characters do here?^[16]

Aphrodite is the goddess of sexual passion; the Chorus, singing about Eros in the first stasimon, tells us that Eros holds the key to Aphrodite’s bedchamber (540). Sexual passion is not just a powerful force; it is a force essential to life. Aphrodite’s sole concern, as the guardian goddess of such an important force, is that sex take place. Aphrodite’s goal is accomplished quite efficiently by means of the instinct to mate which exists in all animals. But man is an excep­tional animal. Unlike any other animal, man can choose not to act upon the impulse of the sexual drive. The rational faculty unique to man enables him to control the impulses of the animal part of his nature, so that he can subordinate his instinctual drives to other ends. Man has a civilization, in fact, because he has subordinated animal impulses to other ends.

There are rules governing human sexuality, then; it is sometimes appropriate and sometimes inappropriate for men to act upon the desire to have sex. Man decides whether or not his desire is appropriate by using logos. But, as we have seen, logos can be misused. Men can make mistakes in understanding arguments, and men can misuse the language, lying or equivocating instead of describing things as they truly are. For Aphrodite, the way to ensure that the rational animal submits to irrational sexual passion is to see that logos is misused so that the distinction between proper and improper sex is blurred. What is seduction, after all, but the process of convincing another person to engage in sex inappropriately, at the wrong time, for instance, or with the wrong person? The rational faculty by which one appre­hends logoi (arguments) against sex under certain circum­stances can also mistakenly accept false logoi—equivocal arguments—in favor of sex under inappropriate circumstances. Phaedra, for example, accepts the logos that one should not commit adultery. The Nurse, seeking to convince Phaedra to reject the logos, begins with the premise that one should not throw away one’s life. Phaedra, the Nurse argues, is dying because she is not indulging her desire to have sex with Hippolytus. The Nurse concludes that Phaedra must have sexual intercourse with Hippolytus to save her life and that, therefore, Phaedra should commit adultery. The Nurse equi­vocates on “should”; the “utility” of the adultery does not justify the action any more than the obvious “utility” of throwing away one’s arms and fleeing from battle justifies such action.

Hippolytus, the one man in Troezen who has chosen to abstain from sex altogether, has naturally incurred the wrath of Aphrodite. He would also seem to be the only man who is impervious to her power, since he has decided always to master the animal impulse of sexual passion by means of his rational faculty. Aphrodite does overpower Hippolytus; in fact, she destroys him, but not directly by means of sexual passion. It is Phaedra who suffers from sexual passion in the situation that Aphrodite arranges. Hippolytus is destroyed by logos: Theseus’s curse in response to Phaedra’s lie, which lie is itself a response to Hippolytus’s own misuse of the logos in making the false distinction between his mind and his tongue. The very facility with logos which enables Hippolytus to resist passion is finally responsible for his destruction.

The paradox of Hippolytus’s tragic situation is the par­adox of the human condition. Man, the only animal capable of reason, is the only animal capable of acting contrary to reason. Sexuality, the source of man’s life, is a natural function of his animal nature, but sexual passion, an instinctive force over which man must exercise his control, is contrary to his rational nature. Only for man is it true that sex is irrational, and yet it would be irrational b deny that sexuality is a necessary and natural element of man’s nature.

The rational animal is, at the very base of his existence, irrational, and he is irrational by virtue of his rational nature. Men alone are “mastered” by passion; only men can equivocate; men alone commit hamartia.