Even so, Hippolytus; I love the face that Theseus wore, in the days of old while yet he was a boy, when the first down marked his bright cheeks and he looked on the dark home of the Cretan monster and gathered the long magic thread along the winding way. Ah! how then he shone upon my eyes. A wreath was about his hair and his delicate cheeks glowed with the golden bloom of modesty. Strong sinews stood out upon his shapely arms and his countenance was the countenance of the goddess that thou servest or of mine own bright sun-god; nay, rather 'twas as thine own. Even so, even so looked he when he won the heart of her that was his foe, and lofty was his carriage like to thine. But in thee still brighter shines an artless glory, and on thee is all thy father's beauty. Yet mingled therewith in equal portion is something of thy wild mother's fairness. On thy Greek face is seen the fierceness of the Scythian. Hadst thou sailed o'er the sea with thy sire to Crete, for thee rather had my sister spun the magic thread. On thee, on thee, my sister, I call where'er thou shinest in the starry heaven, on thee I call to aid my cause. Lo! sisters twain hath one house brought to naught--thee did the father ruin, me the son. Lo! suppliant at thy knees I fall, the daughter of a king, stainless and pure and innocent. For thee alone I swerve from my course. I have steeled my soul and stooped to beg of thee. Today shall end either my sorrow or my life. Pity, have pity, on her that loves thee. Then the storm of Hippolytus' anger breaks. Here at least Seneca has used his great rhetorical gifts to good effect. The passion may be highly artificial when compared with the passion of the genuinely human Phaedra of Euripides, but it is nevertheless passion and not bombast: crudity there may be, but there is no real irrelevance.