The woman most possessed by erotic desire in classical mythology, Phaedra, wife of Theseus, king of Athens, entrusted the Nurse with the task of revealing her unhealthy passion to her unsuspecting lover. Or perhaps it was the Nurse, moved by the sufferings of her Queen, who reported it on her own initiative. The consequences were atrocious, Euripides recounted in the tragedy Crowned Hippolytus who in 428 BC won first prize at Great Dionysia. After seven centuries a Roman sculptor depicted that myth on the front of a marble sarcophagus kept in the Sannio Museum in Benevento. Between female malice and never-noticed details, the scene leaves no room for suspicion that the impetus of love will lead to heinous crimes.
Phaedra’s beloved is Hippolytus, the son of her husband Theseus from a previous marriage. Very young, with her uncontrollable disturbances she does not feel like a Venus owned by her husband, much less like a stepmother conditioned by social norms. Sitting on the throne, she does not give up unregal gestures: one leg raised with the foot on her stool, the other’s knee spaced apart, her sumptuous dress which not surprisingly leaves her arms uncovered. She hands her a mirror and ampoules of cosmetics from a Handmaid behind her, so that the Queen can turn around so as not to let Hippolytus discover that she is spying on him, athletic, beautiful, walking around the palace with her quirks, her hunting, horses. A small winged Eros touches Phaedra, burns her limbs and heart. The devil is in the details, she says.
Telling in sequences, the unknown sculptor underlines the attempts to seduce Ippolito, chaste by choice. The artist and the Queen seem to wonder why the passion for a stepson with whom, after all, a stepmother has no parental relationship is so immoral. They know that in a marriage betrayal is illegal, scandalous if the betrayed person is a king, but that the limits not to be exceeded and the power of erotic passion cannot coexist. You shouldn’t cheat, but… you can. Thus the fate of Phaedra can be glimpsed in the scene of that sarcophagus created for who knows what high personality of the Benevento of the imperial Roman age.
The dramatic gesture of the Nurse who turns to Ippolito is the most significant. Phaedra has decided to give in to her desire and therefore lets her do it. In Euripides’ tragedy the Nurse strongly advises against cheating, but the sculptor goes back to places of the mind where, dreaming of a happy life, it is possible to find oneself among shadows lost in the dark interstices of the personality. He explores the profound reasons why Phaedra is about to do what she would rather not do, he evokes in the observer horrible memories of her adolescence. Phaedra was in fact the daughter of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos king of Crete who had fallen madly in love and given herself to a bull, generating the monstrous Minotaur (in the image The bull brought to Pasiphae. Fresco, House of the Vettii, Pompeii). That shocking event in her mother’s life remained rooted in Phaedra’s unconscious when she was married to Theseus who had killed her monster in the labyrinth of Knossos.
The Nurse leans towards Ippolito to tell him everything, but first asks him to swear that he will not talk about it to anyone. Intrigued, he swears and she becomes a pimp, he talks about her stepmother’s erotic deliriums, her total availability for physical relations. Scandalized, Ippolito – after his famous Euripides monologue against women (O Zeus, why did you bring women into the world, an evil full of deceit?) – he raises an arm, pushes her away and, among hunting companions, dogs and wild boars, flees away on horseback.
Subsequent events are missing from the Benevento scene. Furious Phaedra decides to take revenge on her in order to appear innocent: she commits suicide with a sword, leaving a note to her husband that Hippolytus raped her. Theseus reads about her, sees her corpse, takes pity on her and asks the god Poseidon for the death of her son who causes a monster to emerge from the sea. The horse rears up, the young man hits the rocks before his protector goddess Artemis manages to save him. Having been brought wounded to the palace, Hippolytus keeps the oath he made to his Nurse, does not accuse Phaedra and dies forgiving his father. In the end, Artemis will reveal truth and falsehood to Theseus.
The myth has passed through the ages, shaking the moral sense due to the lack of modesty with which the Queen confesses her irrepressible impulses. Among the infinite critical reflections, the offensive one by Aristophanes stands out, who in the comedy The frogs of 405 BC defined it a πόρνη (‘porne’, slut). But it has also inspired masterpieces of world literature and theatre.
However, there are few ancient reliefs that have handed down it. The most complete scene is at the Uffizi in Florence. Another in the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome, on a sarcophagus reused in an early Christian catacomb. The relief of the sarcophagus recently returned to display in the Cathedral of Agrigento is of great elegance. A fragment with Hippolytus fleeing on horseback it was identified by me in the Civic Archaeological Museum of Milan.
None of their scenes feature the sensual details of the Benevento masterpiece. Thanks to the anonymous Author who, without indulging in a narrative of horrors, invites us to penetrate its mysteries together with Euripides.
ELIO GALASSO
