Euripides, "Hippolytos" 1120-30 Huxley, George Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Fall 1971; 12, 3; ProQuest pg. 331

Euripides, Hippo!ytos 1120-30 

George lluxley 

1120 " , 8' J.. I' " , ~, " I~' '" 1 OVKETL yap Ka apav <fJpEV EXW, 7Tapa 0 EI\7TW a I\EVCCW' 
, \ \ tE" , 'J.. 1 , "'A 8 1 

E7TEL TOV l\I\aVLac <fJaVEpWTaTOV aCTEp avac 

E'{SO/LEV E'{SO/LEV EK 7TaTpoc opyac 
1125 ", , ".,. t 1 al\l\av E7T a Lav LE/LEVOV. 

Jj VJ(x/La8oL 7TO'\L~TLSOC aKTac, 

Jj Spv/Loc OPELOC, OeL KVVWV 
clJKV7T6Swv /LETa 8fjpac €VaLpEV 

1130 L1 {KTvvvav a/Lc/>'t CE/LVcXV. 

SCHOLARS have been reluctant to obelize or to expel the banal 
words tEAAav{ac ... 'AlJavac, but both Professor H. Lloyd-Jones! 
and Mr W. S. Barrett in his edition2 call the expression «puz­

zling," and the latter says that it is perhaps corrupt. Lloyd-Jones sug­
gests that tEAAav{a may be a cult title of Athena at Troizen, otherwise 
unrecorded. ' AecXvac cannot mean Attica here, as one paraphrase has 
it;3 and, as Barrett also remarks, Poseidon, not Athena, is the principal 
deity of Troizen. If tEAAav{ac is intended to signify both Troizen and 
Athens, the reference is doubly vague. There is another difficulty in 
, Aeavac. The chorus admires Hippolytos, but the fact remains that 
the brightest star of Athena (in Athens and in Troizen) is Theseus, for 
he is king of Athens. Hippolytos, however, has no special devotion to 
Athena; it is Artemis who is the prime object of his veneration. 

Hartung's aCT€pa ya{ac, accepted in his edition by Wilamowitz, 
does not greatly disturb the transmitted text, and it is consistent with 
one of the paraphrases in the scholia: TOV (TfjC) tEAA'r}VLKfjC yfjc c/>avEpw­
TaTOV aCTEpa.4 But with aCTEpa ya{ac the claim made on behalf of Hip­
polytos is fulsome. We look here for an allusion to Artemis-Diktynna, 

1 Rev. of Barrett's edition (infra n.2), atJHS 85 (1965) 171. 
2 Euripides, Hippolytos, ed. W. S. Barrett (Oxford 1964) p.373 ad loc. The strophe quoted 

above is cited from this edition, pp.138-39. 
3 Schol. NBt 1123 (2.120, 19-20 Schwartz). 
4 Schol. NAB 1122 (2.120, 16-17 Schwartz). 

331 



332 EURIPIDES, HIPPOLYTOS 1120-30 

because throughout the play Hippolytos is her brightest star. A little 
later we are again reminded that he hunts .JlKTvwav afL4>l cEfLvav. 
Hippolytos is devoted to her, and her presence behind the corrupt 
tEMavlac ••. 'AOavac can be recognised if we alter two letters. 

Correct the line to 

, \ \ tE" , ',/,. , " "A'/" , 
E1TEt TOV lV\aVLaC ..,.,aVEpWTaTOV aCTEp ..,.,aLac. 

Euripides identifies Diktynna implicitly with Artemis in Hippolytos 
145-47 and in 1130. In IT 126-27 the identification is explicit: 

A , ", 
L.J LKTVVV OvpELa. 

Artemis and Diktynna were also identified with Apha or Aphaia. 
Hence the entry in Hesychios s.v. 'A4>ala (a 8533 Latte) ~ .JlKTvwa, Kat 
"ApTEfLLC. A slightly different series of identifications is given by Pau­
sanias (2.30.3), who associates Diktynna and Aphaia with Britomartis 
and says that Artemis made Britomartis a goddess. In Antoninus Lib­
eralis (40.4 pp.66-67 Papathomopoulos) Aphaia is Britomartis from 
Crete in Aiginetan guise, and her g6avov appeared in the sanctuary of 
Artemis in Aigina : €V S€ TijJ iEpijJ TijC 'APTEfLLSOC d4>aJl"f} g6avov>. 

Euripides, I suggest, identified Artemis not only with Diktynna, but 
also with Aphaia, in Hippolytos 1120-30. In writing tEMa"lac .... A4>alac 
he is simply using another name of Hippolytos' adored deity of the 
wilds. A copyist, by mistake or conjecture, expelled Aphaia in favour 
of the more familiar Athena. It follows that the puzzling (EMavlac, far 
from being banal, has a specific local reference. For a prominent 
sanctuary of the Saronic Gulf was the temple of Aphaia in Aigina, and 
in Aigina the epithet Hellanios is peculiarly at home. The island was 
dominated by the mountain of Zeus Panhellenios, whom Pindar in 
Paian 6.125 calls Hellanios; beside the road to his mountain lay the 
sanctuary of Aphaia,5 for whose festival Pindar composed a prosodion.6 

Thus in the Saronic context of the Hippolytos <EMavlac .•. 'A4>alac 
means specifically Aiginetan Aphaia. Aigina is Hellenic or Panhellenic 
because Aiakos brought rain for all the Greeks by sacrificing to Zeus 
during a drought, according to a locallegend.7 

5 Paus. 2.30.3; see further W. Fauth, in Der kleine Pauly 2 (1967) 28 S.V. DIKTYNNA; and 
especially Wilamowitz, Pindaros (Berlin 1922) 274-76. 

6 Fr.80 Bowra. 
7 Paus. 2.29.8. 



GEORGE L. HUXLEY 333 

Barrett notes the connexion of the title ·E/t).d.JlLOC with Zeus in 
Aigina, but does not discuss the relevance of Aphaia to Hippolytos in 
the context. She is Aiginetan, but, because she is identified with 
Artemis-Diktynna, not exclusively so. Euripides thinks of Hippolytos 
in Troizen as a star of Aphaia and a companion of Diktynna, in two 
consecutive sentences. Pindar calls Aphaia Ooav L7T7TWV El\.arEipav,8 and 
for Euripides to say that Hippolytos the charioteer is her brightest 
star is entirely apt.9 

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST 

June, 1971 

8 Fr.80 Bowra. 
9 I am grateful to Dr Robert Ussher for his comments on a draft of this paper.