In the fifteenth book, before Caesar rises among the stars, Ovid retells how Phaedra falsely accused Hippolytus and Poseidon sent a bull from the sea to wreck his chariot — and how Diana hid the restored youth as Virbius in her sacred grove, a chaste hunter destroyed by a stepmother's lie.1
The chaste hunter
Hippolytus son of Theseus and an Amazon — Antiope or Hippolyte in the rival lists — served Artemis and scorned Aphrodite's realm. He would not look on women; he hunted on the shore and kept his heart for the goddess of the chase. The full Theseus arc lives on the Theseus shelf; Metamorphoses keeps the tragedy as penultimate Greek inset before Rome's apotheosis.2
Phaedra's lie
Theseus wedded Phaedra daughter of Minos, and she fell in love with her stepson. When Hippolytus fled her embraces, she opened her chamber doors, tore her robe, and told the king the youth had assaulted her. Theseus prayed to Poseidon for his son's death — the curse that no mortal could recall.3
Virbius
A bull rose from the sea; the horses bolted; Hippolytus was dragged entangled in the reins. Phaedra hanged herself when the truth emerged. Apollodorus adds that Asclepius raised him — for which Zeus struck the healer — and Ovid has Diana hide the restored youth in her grove under the name Virbius, forever chaste, forever hers.4
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How the centuries saw it
Hippolytus Saved from Death (Virbius)
Antonio Tempesta, 1606
Tempesta's Metamorphoses plate — Aesculapius restoring Hippolytus at Diana's bidding, the youth renamed Virbius as Ovid's Book XV inset ends.
Hippolytus Saved and Named Virbius
Vieira Lusitano, c. 18th century
Vieira Lusitano's Ovid scene — Diana's impulse, Aesculapius' revival, and the new name Virbius in the sacred grove.
The Death of Hippolytus (La mort d'Hippolyte)
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Elder, 1715
Lemoyne's Louvre marble — Poseidon's sea-bull wrecks the chariot, the death Ovid's inset must reverse before Virbius rises.
The Death of Hippolytus
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1860
Alma-Tadema's shore — the bull from the waves and the wrecked hunter, Phaedra's lie completed before Diana's rescue.
In play
Hippolytus (play)
Euripides
Euripides' tragedy of the chaste hunter and the stepmother's desire — the Greek source Ovid retells before Virbius' grove.
Phèdre
Jean Racine
Racine's French classic remakes Hippolytus' doom for the neoclassical stage — passion as fatal clarity, still the inset's afterlife.
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Book XV's Virbius inset — Poseidon's bull, the wrecked chariot, and Diana hiding the restored youth in her sacred grove.