No—to credit your boasts

is to call the gods stupid.

Go ahead, exalt yourself, sell your story—

the vegetarian diet, the Orphic jargon,

all that Bacchic business and spooky writings!

You stand exposed. I tell the world:

avoid such men.

She is dead. You think that will save you?

No, you are caught, you thing of evil.

What kind of oaths, what words

could exonerate you?

Will you say she hated you, that a bastard

is always the enemy of legitimate sons?

She made a bad bargain, the way you tell it,

destroying her own dear life just to discomfit you.

Or do you claim that lust isn’t natural to men,

just women? I don’t see

young men are any more controlled than females

when Aphrodite mixes up their blood.

The fact of being male is good in itself but—

oh why do I bother to argue with you?

Isn’t her corpse right here the clearest witness in the world?

Get yourself out of this land as fast as you can.

You are exiled!

Don’t come near godbuilt Athens,

don’t cross any frontier I rule!

If after suffering this I am bested by you,

I’ll lose my reputation as a scourge of bad men,

they’ll say

no scoundrel ever felt my punishing hand.

CHORUS.

Who can call any mortal happy?

Look how beginnings are turned upside down.

HIPPOLYTOS.

Father, the passion and set of your mind are terrifying.

But the case you make, although elegant,

is wrong.

Now I boast no skill at public speaking

(I prefer to address a few of my peers,

and I guess this makes sense—

if you think what kind of people impress a crowd!)

still, there is a necessity. I must

loose my tongue. I’ll begin

from the first accusation you made,

which you presumed I could not answer.

You see this daylight, this earth?

Nowhere in it is there a man—

go ahead deny it!—more purehearted than I.

I know how to worship gods,

and I choose my friends from honorable people,

people ashamed to connive at evil

or do dirty favors.

I am not a man to mock my companions, father,

I am the same to friends absent or present.

And there is one sin that has never touched me—that sin

in which you think me caught—

my body is pure of sex to this day.

I do not know the deed except from hearsay, pictures.

Nor do I want to.

I have a virgin soul.

No doubt my chastity fails to persuade you—well,

explain then how I was seduced.

Was this woman’s body more lovely than any other in the world?

Or did I

take the heiress to bed to get your house?

Then I was a fool—mad, really!

But men who crave royal power are scarcely sane, are they?

No, never, never in the world! those who find