Diana
Diana was an ancient Italian goddess whom the Romans identified with the Greek Artemis. She was a patroness of wild things and of birth, both human and animal. Apparently a fertility goddess of the 'mountain-mother' type, she was the patron goddess of the Roman plebians. At Rome Diana was the
goddess of the light: just as the sun represented the god of light, so Diana represented the goddess of light and was sometimes identified with the moon. The attributes of the Greek Artemis were afterwards ascribed to Diana.A virgin goddess of hunting, Diana was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and the sister of Apollo. She spent most of her time in hunting in the company of various nymphs whom she required to remain virgins like herself. Her virginity was endangered on numerous occasions, with disastrous results for her wooers. In spite of her reputation as a chaste huntress, scholars are agreed that she was not originally a virginal goddess. At Ephesus where her great temple was one of the seven wonders of the world, she was depicted grotesquely with many breasts, an obvious symbol of motherhood. The goddess' association with the moon was a widespread, but late, development. As a guardian of wild animals, she was naturally invoked by hunters.
In Seneca's Phaedra
Hippolytus and his companions pray to Diana in the Prelude. Described as
'Huntress Divine' they mention how all animals fear her bow and how her arrows
fly swiftly without missing any aimed animal. The Nurse is deeply doubtful if
Hippolytus will exchange his virgin exercises in honor of Diana for the illicit
rites of Venus. When Phaedra suffers from great torment the Chorus advises the
Nurse to invoke 'The virgin goddess of the wild' (i.e. Diana) by prayers.
Accordingly the Nurse asks her to lend 'the hard heart of the stern youth' by
calling her 'queen of the forests' and 'goddess alone among the lonely
mountains. It is clear that when she calls her 'great divinity of groves and
woods', 'bright lantern of the sky', and 'light of the world' the Nurse
identifies Diana with the Moon or Hecate.
Jove
Jove or Jupiter was the chief god
among the Romans, corresponding to the Greek Zeus. He was the eldest son of
Saturn and husband of Juno. The name 'Jupiter' is a contraction of two words
meaning ‘Heavenly Father'. A sky-god, he was the controller of the weather, his
chief weapon being the thunderbolt. In various places of Italy, he was
worshipped as the god of rain, storms, thunder, and lightning. His temple at
Rome stood on the lofty hill of the Capital. The Romans believed that he
determined the course an affairs and foresaw the future. He was invoked at the beginning
of every undertaking, whether sacred or profane. He was also regarded as the
guardian of law and the protector of justice and virtue. His justice often
consisted in punishing mortals for arrogating (claiming without right) to
themselves divine prerogatives. He punished traitors and persons guilty of
perjury (= making false statements after taking oaths) by throwing them off
high mountains. As a prince of light, his chariot was drawn by four whit
horses; his priests wore white caps, and the Consuls were attired in white on
the day they assumed their office.
In Phaedra, the
Chorus refers to Jupiter's assumption of animal disguises: he assumed the guise
of a swan when he fell in love with Leda and of a bull when he carried Europa
into the sea. While disapproving of single life, the Nurse reminds Hippolytus
how Jupiter, the Father of the Universe, took thought to find a way of
repairing loss by new creation. When Phaedra offers passionate love to
Hippolytus, the youth, in great disgust and anger asks why the Ruler of gods
and men on earth does not yet take his torch of triple fire to set the world
blaze and why does he not hurl yet his thunderbolt in order that he may be
consumed in instant fire. Finally, there is one instance where Phaedra, before
telling her husband how violence was used upon her body, asks 'God, Creator,
father of all the gods in heaven,' meaning Jupiter, to be her witness.
Venus
Originally, Venus was a goddess of the spring. She was later identified with Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. The worship of Venus was promoted by Julius Caesar, who traced his descent from Aeneas, supposed to be the son of Mars and Venus. He erected a splendid temple in her honor in Rome.
The Romans added various attributes of
Aphrodite to Venus. So she gained notoriety as a goddess of erotic love. Her
marriage with the lame fire-god Hephaestus could not keep her contented for
love.
For this she did not long remain
faithful to her unromantic husband. She carried on a protracted affair with
Ares or Mars, the god of war, who visited her in her husband's bed in his
absence. Hephaestus, warned by the Sun, trapped the lovers naked in bed at one
point and subjected them to the ridicule of the other gods. The list of her
lovers included gods like Dionysus, Hermes and Poseidon (i.e. Neptune) and
mortals like Anchises and Adonis. As she surpassed all other goddesses in
beauty, she received the prize of beauty from Paris. In works of art, she is
usually represented with her son Eros or Cupid.
Though this love-goddess never
tired of young lovers, she was often harsh towards those who defied her,
usually by refusing the pleasures of love. Her best-known victim was
Hippolytus. She caused his stepmother, Phaedra, to fall in love with him. This
ended with the death of both Hippolytus and Phaedra.
In Seneca’s Phaedra, the heroine
believes that her unnatural passion for woods and fields and the cause of her
distress all come from Venus, who hates the children of the sun and who takes
revenge for the chains that bound her in the arms of Mars. She also believed
that her mother’s love for the lecherous bull also sprang from the same source.
The nurse who does not see eye to eye
with her says that attribution of responsibility of love to Venus and Cupid is
nothing but false, and it is merely a vain fancy conceived by a crazy mind. She
again reminds Phaedra that Hippolytus will not give up his exercises in honor
of the virgin goddess Diana for the illicit rites of Venus. That Venus is
identified with Aphrodite is clear when the chorus calls her ‘the daughter of
the never gentle sea’, for Aphrodite had her origin from the foam of the sea.
Pasiphae
Pasiphae was a daughter of Helios
and Perseis. She married Minos, king of Crete, and became the mother of, among
others, Ariadne and Phaedra. When her husband offended Poseidon by failing to
sacrifice to him a handsome bull, the god caused Pasiphae to fall in love with the
beast. She induced the master craftsman Daedalus to construct a hollow wooden
cow, covered with hides. The cow was wheeled into the pasture, and Pasiphae hid
inside it. The false cow was so lifelike that even the bull was deceived, with
the result that Pasiphae was able to satisfy her sexual urges and in due course
gave birth to the inotaur, a monster with a man’s body and the head of a bull. The
king, in order to hide his wife’s shame, caused the Labyrinth to be erected
where the Minotaur was confined. The maze was so intricate that nobody who
entered her could find his way out. Every nine years a group of Athenian youths
and girls were sent to provide food for the monster. Theseus killed the
Minotaur and came out of the Labyrinth with the help of a ball of thread given
to him by Ariadne. Pasiphae did no object to her daughter's falling in love
with the Athenian youth. Later she grew annoyed at her husband's many amours
and bewitched him, causing him to impregnate his unfortunate paramours with
poisonous vermin. Much later, Pasiphae, like her daughter Ariadne, was treated
as a divinity in some places, including Crete.
In Seneca's Phaedra,
Pasiphae was an object of laughter or hatred to most characters, but to Phaedra
she was always treated with kindness and sympathy. In Act I, Phaedra expresses
the view that an evil spell bound her mother and made her unhappy. In an apostrophe,
she says: 'O mother,/I feel for you. I know how were forced/ By monstrous doom
into audacious love/ For that brute beast, bull of a roaming herd.' Suggesting
her mother's unnatural passion that gave birth to a monstrous offspring, the
Nurse, in a tone of taunt and anger, says to Phaedra: 'Go then!/Confound all
nature with your wicked passions! Let there be monsters still!' Even Hippolytus
described Pasiphae as 'the mother of a monster' whose sin was brought to light by the crossed offspring of
her womb.’ then he scolded Phaedra for
she, ‘too were born’ from ‘that mother’s womb’. Theseus indirectly expresses
his indignation against Pasiphae when he reviews that ‘even the beasts abhor
forbidden union.’
Ariadne
Ariadne was the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae. When Theseus
came to Crete with others as the intended victims of the Minotaur, Ariadne fell
in love with him and gave him the ball of thread using which he found his way
out of the Labyrinth. Theseus in return promised to marry her, and she
accordingly left Crete with him. According to Homer, on their arrival in the
island of Dia (Naxos), she was killed by Artemis because of something that
Dionysus told the goddess. According to another version, Ariadne was deserted
at Dia and she committed suicide from grief. According to the third version,
while she was at Dia, Dionysus kidnapped her or took her by force of arms. She
bore Dionysus a number of children, and after her death, Dionysus honored her
by placing in the sky the crown that he had given her at their wedding.
According to the final verson, Theseus brought Ariadne, pregnant, to Cyprus,
and she was carried away from the island in his ships by storms. Ariadne died
of grief and was worshipped in a grove as a goddess. Most modern authorities
believe that Ariadne was not merely a mortal character of mythology but a
Cretan goddess. She was worshipped in several widely scattered parts of the
ancient world.
In this play, there is an indirect reference to Ariadne when
Phaedra remarks that Venus 'lays a load of shame' on 'all the tribe of Phoebus'.
She further says that 'love lies not lightly on any daughter of the house of
Minos' and that they 'know no love that is not bound to sin'. In Act II Phaedra
says to Hippolytus that if he could have been there beside his father the day,
he crossed the sea to Crete, her sister, Ariadne, 'would rather have spun out
her ball of thread' for him. Referring to her position in the sky, Phaedra
passionately asks her sister to help her now 'from wherever in the starry sky',
her 'bright face shines' and come to her aid in her 'perplexity' about falling
a victim to the son of the same house to whose father she was a similar victim
earlier. Finally, the Chorus, while disparaging the beauty of Bacchus indirectly
refers to Ariadne thus: 'All the world knows/ Whom Phaedra's sister loved, who
loved not thee'.
Helios was a son of Hyperion and
Theia. Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn) were his sisters. He was conceived of as
driving his four-horse chariot through the sky during the day, accompanied by
Eos. At night, he returned, from west to east, riding the river Oceanus in an
enormous golden cup. Some poets assign him an additional palace in the west and
describe his horses as feeding upon herbs that grew in the Islands of the
Blessed. He is described as the god who sees and hears everything from his high
position in the sky. Because of this faculty, he could reveal Venus' affair with
Mars to her husband, Hephaestus. As an all-seeing god, he was regularly invoked
as a witness to oaths. The island of Thrinacia (Sicily) was favored by him
because in the pastures of that place his daughters tended the huge herds of
sheep and oxen. The island of Rhodes was sacred to him as he had worshipped here
since ancient times. The famous Colossus that stood near its harbor was a
statue of him.
Helios married Perse, who bore him
such notorious daughters as Circe and Pasiphae. He had children also by several
mistresses. His best-known child was Phaethon, who demanded, as proof that
Helios was really his father, the right to drive his father's chariot through
the sky for one day. Helios, having vowed to give his son what he asked, could
not refuse. Unable to control the horses, Phaethon flung from the chariot into
the river Eridanus.
In this play, Phaedra points out that her craze for unnatural love comes from Venus, who hates all children of her enemy, the Sun, as he revealed 'the chains that bound her in the arms of Mars'. She further alleges that it is Venus who 'lays a load of shame' on 'all the tribe of Phoebus'. The Nurse warns Phaedra that even if she succeeds in concealing her crime from all human eyes, there is her 'mother's father' who 'sheds his light upon the earth'. The Chorus also mentions that 'Phoebus came down to Thessaly, /To be a neat herd, left his lyre and quill, /And learnt to use a scaled reedpipe/ To call the cattle home'. Phaedra again refers to Phoebus, thus while taking an oath: 'And Thou, bright flame/Of heavenly light, progenitor of my house!’
Cupid was the Roman god of love
identified with the Greek god of love, Eros. According to Hesiod, Eros existed
from the beginning of time, being born out of Chaos. He was on hand to greet
Aphrodite (identified by the Romans with Venus), the goddess of erotic love, at
her birth. But later poets represented as the son of Aphrodite, by either Ares,
Zeus or Hermes. He was represented as a beautiful but playful boy. His weapons
consisted of arrows which he carried in a golden quiver, and of torches, which
no one can touch without risking punishment. He was sometimes represented with
golden wings, and as fluttering about like a bird. His eyes were sometimes
covered, so that he could act blindly. He was the usual companion of his
mother, Aphrodite.
Later poets depict Cupid as the
youngest of the gods, an archer whose gold-tipped arrows could make even gods
fall in love. According to Ovid, it was he who made the cold-hearted god Hades love
Persephone. On another occasion, annoyed because Apollo had advised him to
leave archery to men, he shot the god, making him fall in love with Daphne. At
the same time, he shot the nymph with one of the lead-tipped arrows that he
also carried, causing her to be immune to Apollo's pleas. His own love for the
Psyche is a wonderful literary creation.
In this play, Phaedra frankly
admits before the Nurse that 'a potent god' commands her heart. Referring to
Cupid, she further says that this 'invincible winged god, who rules all earth'
has shot Jove, Mars, Jupiter, and Phoebus and that 'he is everywhere menacing heaven
and earth'. The Nurse who does not see eye to eye with Phaedra, however, says
that 'Venus' divinity and Cupid's arrows' are 'all false'. The Chorus shows how
animals, mortals, and even gods
come under Cupid's power. It
further sings: 'two-fold is his power; with fire/And arrows sharp he plays/His
wanton game, /A smile upon his wicked face/As he prepares his bow/With never
erring aim.' It again adds: 'His wound makes little show, /But eats into the
secret soul. / He is a boy who gives his enemy/ No peace; the wide world over,
/Ever alert, he makes his arrows fly.' Finally, the Chorus declares: 'All
nature is his prey;/Nothing escapes; at the command of
Love/Old angers die, and enmity
gives way. /And .... This malady can take/ A hard stepmother's cruelty away.
Nereid was any of the fifty
sea-nymphs (jointly called the Nereids) who were the daughters of Nereus, the
ancient sea-god, and Doris, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. They were listed
by name, differently, by Homer, Hesiod and Apollodorus. Only three of the Nereids,
Thetis, Psamathe, and Galatea, have significant themes of their own. Thetis,
mother of Achilles, often appears as the unofficial leader of the nymphs. For
example, she directed their efforts to aid Dionysus when he was pursued into
the sea by Lycurgus and to conduct the Argo (=the ship led by heroes in quest
of the Golden Fleece) through dangerous waters. Like their father, described as
the wise and unerring old man of the sea, the Nereids too dwelt at the bottom
of the sea, either the Mediterranean or the Aegean. Like their father, they had
the power of prophesying the future and of appearing to mortals in different
shapes. In general, they seem to have been amiable nymphs, though their
complaint to Poseidon that Cassiopeia had boasted of being more beautiful than
they resulted in the god's sending a sea-monster to ravage the land of Cepheus,
husband of Cassiopeia and king of Ethiopia.
In Seneca's Phaedra,
there is a reference to the Nereids. In Act I, the Chorus, while speaking
about the powerful influence of Cupid, says the following: 'Under the waters
the blue Nereid hosts/Do not escape his darts.' The utterance proves impressive
when we consider that Cupid's power did not remain confined to the sky and the
earth, but that it also spread to areas remaining under the sea and thereby
the Nereids.
A daughter of Aeetes, king of
Colchis (on the east of the Black Sea), was noted for her skill in magic. When
Jason, the handsome leader of the Argonauts and son of Aeson, was overthrown by
Pelias, the king of Iolcus, came to Colchis to fetch the golden fleece. She fell hopelessly in love with him and helped him to steal the fleece by lulling
to sleep the dragon guarding the fleece. Afterwards, Medea fled with Jason to
Greece as his wife and prevented her father from overtaking them by cutting her
brother into pieces and throwing them into the sea to delay the pursuit of the
Colchians. When Jason appeared with the fleece, treacherous Pelias, as
expected, refused to hand over the kingdom to the former who did not have
enough manpower to take it by force. So, Jason turned to his wife for help.
During Jason's temporary absence Medea pretended before the daughters of Pelias
that she had quarreled with Jason and won their confidence by rejuvenating
Jason's old and feeble father by the application of some herbs and magic.
Seeing this they also wanted their father to come back to youth. She instructed
the daughters to cut their father into pieces and threw them into a boiling
cauldron. They overcame their hesitation when she dipped an old ram into such a
cauldron and then brought it alive as a frisking lamb. After throwing the cut
pieces into the pot, the daughters to their horror, discovered that Pelias did
not emerge alive. At a signal from Medea, Jason returned with the Argonauts and
occupied the kingdom. Afterwards, Jason and Medea went to Corinth, where they
lived happily for ten years, and the latter bore him two sons. Medea, however,
was not so welcome to the Corinthians, whom they distrusted for her powerful
magic. According to Greek law, his sons by a foreign wife could not be citizens,
so Jason was also not happy with her. At this time, when Creon, king of
Corinth, offered Jason the hand of his daughter Glauce, Jason was determined to
divorce her. At this, Medea took terrible vengeance on him by killing his two
sons and causing Glauce's death when she put on the poisoned robe, a present to
her from Medea. When the Colchians stormed Medea's house, she escaped into a
chariot to Athens, whose king had earlier promised to give her shelter. It is
believed that Aegeus, king of Athens, later married Medea.
In Phaedra, there
is a direct reference to Medea. When the Nurse tries to persuade Hippolytus to
feel attracted to the female sex, the youth replies that woman is the prime
mover of all wickedness and adds: 'Let one example speak for all: Medea, /Aegeus'
wife, proclaims all women damned.' On another occasion, thinking his father to
be standing before him, Hippolytus, indirectly referring to Medea, says the
following: 'Father, I envy you; you had a stepmother, /The Colchian woman, but
my enemy/Is one far worse, far deadlier than she.'
Phaethon
Phaethon was a son of Helios
(i.e., the Sun) and Clemene. Reluctantly, the Sun allowed Phaethon to drive his
chariot for one day. But the youth was unable to check the horses. Once they
shot upward into the sky and caused a sear (i.e. the Milky Way) in it; then
they came too near the earth and the equatorial countries were scorched black
and the springs and streams dried up. To save the world from destruction, Zeus
killed him with a thunderbolt. Phaethon's flaming body fell into the Eridanus River.
His sisters, who had yoked the horses to the chariot, wept ceaselessly for
their brother. They were finally changed into poplars and their tears into
amber.
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