The scene of the Hippolytus is laid in Troizen, in S.E. Argolis, the realm of Pittheus, the maternal grandfather of Theseus, King of Athens. Thither Theseus has come, because, says Euripides, he was sentenced to one year’s exile for the slaying of Pallas and his sons. Aphrodite says[280]:
But from Cecropia’s realm since Theseus fled
To expiate his pollution, with the blood
Of Pallas’ sons distained, and with his queen
Sailed for this coast, to punishment of exile
Submitting for one year.
Now Pausanias informs us[281] that ‘justifiable homicide was the plea of Theseus when he was acquitted for killing Pallas and his sons.’ We have pointed out[282] that Pallas and his sons were slain in a civil war in Attica. As they were technically rebels, and unjust aggressors, seeking to dethrone Aegeus (the father of Theseus), who was the reigning monarch, it was quite natural that from one point of view the act of Theseus should have been morally regarded as justifiable homicide. It would not have required a court of justice to have established the validity of such a plea. Had not Eteocles been automatically ‘acquitted’ for the slaying of Polyneices? But why does Euripides speak of a sentence of one year’s exile? This penalty in relation to kin-slaying (Pallas was a brother of Aegeus) can only have one meaning. Plato assures us[283] that if a kinsman slays a kinsman in a passion, and if the deceased before he expires shall have ‘forgiven’ him and absolved him from blood-guiltiness, the deed shall be regarded as involuntary homicide for which the normal penalty was one year’s exile. To explain this reference in Euripides, therefore, Theseus must be conceived as guilty of extenuated kin-slaying which was ‘forgiven.’ But we are nowhere told that the Pallantidae forgave their slayer! We have said[284] that there was a legal affinity between the conceptions of justifiable and of extenuated slaying. Yet the two kinds of homicide were never identified, and it would be all the more difficult to identify them when the deed concerned a King of Athens. Hence we must suppose either (1) that Euripides has here abandoned the tradition mentioned by Pausanias, or (2) that the legal aspect of the slaying of the Pallantidae had become confused in the legends, before Euripides, with the legal aspect of some other deed of blood with which the name of Theseus was associated.
During the sojourn of Theseus at Troizen, where his son Hippolytus was being brought up, Phaedra, the second wife of Theseus, sought to seduce into adulterous intercourse her step-son, Hippolytus. Euripides represents Hippolytus as an Orphic votary,[285] and we will condone the anachronism[286] because it emphasises the probability of Hippolytus’ repudiation of Phaedra’s suggestions. Phaedra, in shame and anger, committed suicide,[287] but in revenge for the puritan’s rejection of her love, she left behind her a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of forcible violation.[288] Such an accusation, followed by suicide, would be sufficient to convict Hippolytus in either ancient or modern times. It would have convicted him of attempting an ‘indecent assault,’ and of attempted adultery. But would it have convicted him of having caused the death of Phaedra? Theseus believed him guilty of all these crimes, and decided to banish him from Troizen, pronouncing against him, in addition, a virulent curse which, in the religious atmosphere of the ancient world, was as dangerous to the life of Hippolytus as the σήματα λυγρά were which were sent, in analogous circumstances, by Proitus to the King of Lydia, in the legend of Bellerophon.[289] He says[290]:
O Neptune, O my sire,