Finished: Hippolytus (Euripides). Oh what snitty little beings those gods and goddesses were! So, just because Hippolytus wouldn't bow down to Aphrodite, goddess of love, she goes and causes a tragedy. Isn't that how most of these mythological stories go? I must say that I enjoyed the writing of Euripides more than Sophacles. Like when Phaedra, who has been struck by Aphrodite to fall helplessly in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, decides to starve herself to death rather than to bring dishonor upon herself by giving into her passion says:

"I am struggling to pluck honor out of shame."

Or, this from the nurse failing in her solution to ease Phaedra's pain:

"I tried to heal your pain. But failed to reach
What I had hoped for. If I had, ah then
How wise you would have called me? Wisdom's credit
Hangs merely on the luck that crowns the issue."

Then, after the nurse tells Hippolytus of Phaedra's desire, is there any sympathy or understanding? Nope there was this declared hatred for women from the chaste and honorable Hippolytus himself. Of course, I found him to be rather prickish, and his honor to be in question if he could feel so disdainfully for women.

"Ah God, why has Thou set beneath the sun
This curse of man, this counterfeit called "woman"?
If Thy will was to multiply mankind,
It should have been by other means than that!
Better if men made offering in Thy temples---
Gold, iron, or massy bronze---and bought thereby
Offspring to match its value. Then their homes
Could have been free from women's tyranny."

Ha! Believe me Hippolytus, we would have found a way to tyrannize a man like you. :-)

Then Theseus, the father of Hippolytus, and husband of Phaedra, returns home to find that Phaedra has killed herself rather than live with the dishonor of this love she doesn't understand. Theseus, thinking that Hippolytus forced himself on Phaedra causing her to take her own life, has this exchange with Hippolytus:

Theseus: Then was the time to weep and fear the future,
When first you dared to shame your father's wife.

Hippolytus: Ah walls of home, could you but cry aloud
In witness whether I am vile or no!

Theseus: Wisely you call to witness speechless things.
But without tongue the facts denounce you guilty.

Hippolytus: Ah, were I you, judging my son before me,
How I should weep for what that son endures!

Theseus: Always self-worship! That you have learnt far better
Than the honour due to those that gave you life!

And, in the end...Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, who loved Hippolytus but could not interfere with another goddess's follies, declared that even though Hippolytus had to die (which he did), she would get her revenge on the next human that Aphrodite loved! Oh those tricksters.