THERAMENES What! You become her persecutor too! The gentle sister of the cruel sons Of Pallas shared not in their perfidy; Why should you hate such charming innocence? HIPPOLYTUS I should not need to fly, if it were hatred. THERAMENES May I, then, learn the meaning of your flight? Is this the proud Hippolytus I see, Than whom there breathed no fiercer foe to love And to that yoke which Theseus has so oft Endured? And can it be that Venus, scorn'd So long, will justify your sire at last? Has she, then, setting you with other mortals, Forced e'en Hippolytus to offer incense Before her? Can you love? HIPPOLYTUS Friend, ask me not. You, who have known my heart from infancy And all its feelings of disdainful pride, Spare me the shame of disavowing all That I profess'd. Born of an Amazon, The wildness that you wonder at I suck'd With mother's milk. When come to riper age, Reason approved what Nature had implanted. Sincerely bound to me by zealous service, You told me then the story of my sire, And know how oft, attentive to your voice, I kindled when I heard his noble acts, As you described him bringing consolation To mortals for the absence of Alcides, The highways clear'd of monsters and of robbers, Procrustes, Cercyon, Sciro, Sinnis slain, The Epidaurian giant's bones dispersed, Crete reeking with the blood of Minotaur. But when you told me of less glorious deeds, Troth plighted here and there and everywhere, Young Helen stolen from her home at Sparta, And Periboea's tears in Salamis, With many another trusting heart deceived Whose very names have 'scaped his memory, Forsaken Ariadne to the rocks Complaining, last this Phaedra, bound to him By better ties,--you know with what regret I heard and urged you to cut short the tale, Happy had I been able to erase From my remembrance that unworthy part Of such a splendid record. I, in turn, Am I too made the slave of love, and brought To stoop so low? The more contemptible That no renown is mine such as exalts The name of Theseus, that no monsters quell'd Have given me a right to share his weakness. And if my pride of heart must needs be humbled, Aricia should have been the last to tame it. Was I beside myself to have forgotten Eternal barriers of separation Between us? By my father's stern command Her brethren's blood must ne'er be reinforced By sons of hers; he dreads a single shoot