The son of Theseus by an Amazon, a young man who scorned women and was destroyed when his stepmother Phaedra accused him falsely and his father's curse called up a bull from the sea.1
Hippolytus was the son Theseus fathered on the Amazon he carried off in the campaign against her people — Antiope, or as some say Melanippe, though Simonides calls her Hippolyte.2
Hyginus likewise names him son of Theseus by the Amazon Antiope, counting him among the famous charioteers who came to violent ends.3
When Phaedra, the Cretan wife of Theseus, had borne her husband two sons, she fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus and begged him to lie with her. He fled her embraces, for he hated all women; and fearing he would denounce her, she tore open her bedchamber doors, rent her garments, and falsely charged him with assault.4
Theseus believed the lie and prayed to Poseidon for his son's death. As Hippolytus drove his chariot beside the sea, the god sent up a bull from the surf; the horses bolted in terror, the car was dashed to pieces, and Hippolytus, tangled in the reins, was dragged to his death — and when the truth came out, Phaedra hanged herself. Hyginus tells the same fall through the false letter, naming Phaedra daughter of Minos and ending with the queen's noose; Ovid, in the dead youth's own voice, recounts how the daughter of Pasiphae tempted him and how he perished by his father's credulity.5
His story did not end in the grave. Apollodorus reports, on the authority of the Naupactica, that Asclepius raised Hippolytus from the dead — for which, Hyginus adds, Zeus struck the healer down with a thunderbolt — and Ovid has Diana hide the restored youth in her sacred grove and rename him Virbius among the lesser gods.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
