PHÆDRA, in fabulous history, was a daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who married Theseus, by whom she became 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. Incensed at the reception which she had met, she resolved to punish his coldness and refusal; and on the return of Theseus she accused Hippolytus of attempts upon her virtue. He listened to her accusation, and, without hearing Hippolytus's defence, 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 became known at Athens, Phædra confessed her crime, and hung herself in despair, unable to survive one whose death had been occasioned by her licentiousness and falsehood. The death of Hippolytus, and the infamous passion of Phædra, form the subject of a tragedy of Euripides, and also of one by Seneca. She was buried at Trazene, where her tomb was still to be seen in the time of the geographer Pausanias, near to the temple of Venus, which she had built to render the goddess favourable to her passion. Close by her tomb was a myrtle, the leaves of which 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 the temple of Apollo at Delphi, as suspended in the air, whilst her sister Ariadne stood close by, with her eyes fixed upon Phædra.