PHÆDRA, in fabulous history, was a daughter of Minos and Pasiphae; she married Theseus, by whom she was the mother of Acamas and Demophoon. They had already lived for some time in conjugal felicity, when Venus, who hated all the descendants of Apollo, because he had discovered her amours with Mars, inspired Phædra with the strongest passion for Hippolytus the son of Theseus, by the amazon Hippolyte. This passion she long attempted to stifle, but in vain; and therefore, in the absence of Theseus, she addressed Hippolytus with all the impatience of desponding love. He rejected her with horror and disdain. She, however, incensed by the reception she had met, resolved to punish his coldness and refusal; and at the return of Theseus she accused Hippolytus of attempts upon her virtue. He listened to her accusation; and without hearing Hippolytus's defence, he banished him from his kingdom, and implored Neptune, who had promised to grant three of his requests, to punish him in an exemplary manner. As Hippolytus fled from Athens, his horses were suddenly terrified by a sea monster, which Neptune had sent on the shore; and he was thus dragged through precipices and over rocks, trampled under the feet of his horses, and crushed under the wheels of his chariot. When his tragical end was known at Athens, Phædra confessed her crime, and hung herself in despair, unable to survive one whose death her extreme guilt had occasioned. The death of Hippolytus, and the infamous passion of Phædra, is the subject of one of the tragedies of Euripides and of Seneca. She was buried at Troezen, where her tomb was still to be seen in the time of the geographer Pausanias, near the temple of Venus, which she had built to render the goddess favourable to her incestuous passion. Near her tomb was a myrtle, whose leaves were full of small holes, which, it was reported, Phædra had done with a hair pin, when the vehemence of her passion had rendered her melancholy and almost desperate. She was represented in a painting in Apollo's temple at Delphi, as suspended in the air, while her sister Ariadne stood near to her, and fixed her eyes upon her.