The problem is, of course, that Phaedra can be used to legitimize the myth that many women lie about being raped. The truth is very different, however. Accusations of rape that are found or suspected to be false are about 4 per cent in the UK, according to Home Office figures.16 So 96 per cent of rape allegations are therefore considered – by the Home Office – to be true, even though only a tiny minority of those truthful allegations result in convictions. And these numbers matter: according to the Office of National Statistics, approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men experience rape or attempted rape in England and Wales each year. Only 15 per cent of them report it to the police. In other words, 85 per cent of those who experience sexual assault and rape never report it. And that shocking statistic should occupy a lot more of our energy than the tiny percentage of false allegations made to the police. For every one false allegation made, 199 rapes or assaults occur, of which roughly 170 go unreported. We should talk about Phaedra, but we cannot allow her to let us lose sight of reality. Which is that rape is experienced and not reported many, many times more often than it is falsely reported.
*
Now we have some context, let’s get back to Phaedra. And specifically, let’s get back to her portrayal in Euripides’ play. It was, in fact, his second version of Hippolytus: the first version does not survive.17 We do have references to it, however, and these imply that the character of Phaedra was quite different in the two plays. In the first version, it seems that Phaedra was presented as a seductress and adulteress, a villainous woman who harbours a strong sexual desire for a man and acts upon it.18 But the play was not well received and Euripides rewrote. In this second version, he paints a far more sympathetic picture of a woman tormented by an affliction she did nothing to deserve.
The play begins with the goddess Aphrodite, who explains that, as gods like to be honoured, she shows favour to those who revere her while crushing those who don’t.19 She has a particular problem with a young man named Hippolytus, son of Theseus and the Amazon, because he calls her kakistēn daimonōn – ‘the worst of the gods’。 He spends his days with Artemis instead, who is famously virginal. Because he has wronged me, she continues, I will have vengeance on him today.20 I’ve taken care of most of it already, there’s not much more to do.
She goes on to explain the details: two years earlier, Phaedra saw Hippolytus for the first time and, in accordance with Aphrodite’s plans, was seized by a terrible love for him.21 Phaedra built a temple to Aphrodite, naming it after Hippolytus. The wretched woman is now dying from the agony of love, and doing so in silence.22 No one knows what her sickness is. But Aphrodite will reveal everything to Theseus so that he kills his son himself with three curses （or prayers） which he has been given by Poseidon. She describes Hippolytus as her enemy. Phaedra will keep her good name but be killed too. Aphrodite notices that Hippolytus is about to arrive onstage and concludes: the gates of Hades are open for him, this day’s light will be the last he sees. With this, she leaves the stage.
It is a blistering way even for Euripides to begin a play. What are we – as a modern audience – to make of this petulant, petty goddess? And what would an Athenian audience in 428 BCE have made of her? A puny mortal doesn’t want to get married, or have sex, and this is the mighty goddess’ response: total destruction. And destruction at the hands of his own father. And what of the claim that she made at the very start, that she favours those who honour her and punishes those who don’t? A few dozen lines later, she is cheerily explaining that Phaedra – who has honoured Aphrodite by building a temple to her – will die as a consequence of the goddess’ revenge on Hippolytus. In fact, Phaedra has already been punished with two years – years – of agonizing love. Perhaps this seems like a trivial complaint, but only if we have forgotten the soul-sucking agony of wanting someone we cannot have.
And all of this suffering has been imposed on Phaedra from outside, by Aphrodite. The gods play multiple, layered roles in Greek tragedy, and one of those roles is essentially psychological. While we might say that we have fallen in love or developed a crush on someone unsuitable, the Greeks tended to externalize the causes of such experiences. We fall in love, they were struck by an arrow shot by the god Eros, for example. A sophisticated language of psychology simply didn’t exist at the time that Euripides was writing, so things which are internalized for us were often launched upon a Greek from without.
We learn from this opening speech that Aphrodite is absolutely vicious and highly organized in her plans for revenge. She has spent two years preparing to destroy Hippolytus, with no concerns for the secondary victims of her revenge: Phaedra and Theseus. They are simply collateral damage that cannot be avoided. We also learn, much as it may pain those who want to decry Phaedra as a villain, that she is a victim in this plot, just as Hippolytus is. In the whole heartless monologue, there is no more agonizing word than sigē – ‘she keeps silent’。 Could Phaedra not have told her slave-women or a friend （not her sister, obviously, who is one of her husband’s exes, if she’s still alive） what she was going through? She has not done so, but has suffered in silence, alone. We can surely conclude that Phaedra is profoundly ashamed of her unwanted emotions: this is not the behaviour of a seductress, a scarlet woman. She is not enjoying her infatuation, she is in physical pain. Pain which is killing her.