Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T07:21:37.105Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Euripides, Hippolytus 732–751

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

C. W. Willink
C. W. Willink
Affiliation:
Highgate, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The centrally-placed second stasimon of Hippolytus, following Phaedra's exit (to die) at 731, is one of the finest features of Euripides' finest play, with complex imagery. The wish to become a bird and to fly away to a mythical far-western paradise is in line with a familiar topos as an ‘out of this world escape-wish’, here vicarious – echoing (while also transmuting) the desires for concealment, escape and death expressed by Phaedra. ‘Bird-transformation’ and ‘flight to the far west’ are funereal motifs, notably developed (recently?) by Sophocles, and the image of Phaedra as a ‘vanished bird’ will recur at 828 . Then in the second pair of stanzas Phaedra's fate, with the predicted death by hanging, is integrally linked with the ‘white-winged Cretan ship’ that as a doubly bad ὄρνις brought her ‘through beating sea-waves’ from Crete to Athens, with ‘fastening of ropes’ for the ‘going ashore’ at the end of the voyage.

Much has been sufficiently discussed (most recently by Halleran); but many points of detail, in both pairs of stanzas, invite further consideration. I give a modifed text, after Diggle, with modifications also of his apparatus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 53 , 2007 , pp. 253 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barrett, W. S. (ed.) (1964) Euripides: Hippolytos, Oxford.Google Scholar
Barthold, T. (ed.) (1880) Hippolytus, Berlin.Google Scholar
Bond, G. W. (ed.) (1963) Euripides Hypsipyle, Oxford.Google Scholar
Chandler, H. W. (1881) Greek accentuation (2nd edn.), Oxford.Google Scholar
Dale, A. M. (1971) Metrical analyses of tragic choruses, BICS suppl. 21, London.Google Scholar
Diggle, J. (ed.) (1970) Euripides: Phaethon, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Diggle, J. (1981) Studies on the text of Euripides, Oxford.Google Scholar
Diggle, J. (1984) Euripidis fabulae, OCT, vol. 1, Oxford.Google Scholar
Diggle, J. (1994) Euripidea, collected essays, Oxford.Google Scholar
Diggle, J. (1998) Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta selecta, Oxford.Google Scholar
Eden, P. T. (1990) ‘Some skewered gobbets in Euripides’, in Craik, E. M. (ed.) Owls to Athens, Oxford, 25–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halleran, M. R. (ed.) (1995) Euripides: Hippolytus, Warminster.Google Scholar
Herwerden, H. van (1878) ‘Novae lectiones Euripideae’, RPh 2, 19–57.Google Scholar
Itsumi, K. (1984) ‘The glyconic in Greek tragedy’, CQ 34, 68–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kovacs, D. (1995) Euripides, Loeb classical library, vol. 2, Harvard.Google Scholar
Luzac, I. (1792) Observations … II Spec. 8, Lugduni Bat.Google Scholar
Maas, P. (1911) review of Schroeder, , Cantica Euripidea, BPhW 11, 329.Google Scholar
Murray, G. (1902) Euripidis fabulae, OCT, vol. 1, Oxford.Google Scholar
Musgrave, S. (ed.) (1756) Hippolytus, Oxford.Google Scholar
Padel, R. (1974) ‘The imagery of the elsewhere’, CQ 24, 227–41.Google Scholar
Parker, L. P. E. (1976) ‘Catalexis’, CQ 26, 14–28.Google Scholar
Seidler, A. (1811–1812) De versibus dochmiacis tragicorum Graecorum, Leipzig.Google Scholar
Stockert, W. (ed.) (1994) Euripides: Hippolytus, Stuttgart and Leipzig.Google Scholar
Wecklein, N. (ed.) (1900) Euripidis fabulae, vol. 3.2, Leipzig.Google Scholar
West, M. L. (1982) Greek metre, Oxford.Google Scholar
West, M. L. (1990) (ed.) Aeschyli tragoediae, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (ed.) (1986), Euripides: Orestes, Oxford.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (1988) ‘Sleep after labour in Euripides' Heracles’, CQ 38, 86–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willink, C. W. (1990) ‘Euripides, Supplices 71–86 and the chorus of “attendants”’, CQ 40, 340–8.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (1999) ‘Further critical notes on Euripides' Hippolytus’, CQ 49, 408–27.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (2001) ‘Critical studies in the cantica of Sophocles: I’, CQ 51, 65–89.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (2002) ‘Critical studies in the cantica of Sophocles: II’, CQ 52, 50–80.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (2004) ‘Euripides, Hecuba 905–22, Ion 763–803, Bacchae 402–33, text and metre’, Mnemosyne 57, 45–79.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (2005a) ‘Critical notes on the cantica of Euripides' Andromache’, Philologus 149, 187–208.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (2005b) ‘The second stasimon of Euripides' Electra’, ICS 30, 11–21.Google Scholar
Willink, C. W. (2006) ‘Phaedra and “chorus” in Euripides' Hippolytus’, Quad. Urb. 82, 13–19.Google Scholar