Artemis Prologizes

Artemis Prologizes by Robert Browning

Artemis recounts how Aphrodite stirred Phaidra’s desire for Hippolutos, whose rejection led Phaidra to kill herself and falsely damage his reputation in a scroll. Theseus believed her and invoked Poseidon against his innocent son; a sea-monster terrified Hippolutos’s horses, which dragged him to his death. Artemis reveals the truth, carries Hippolutos’s body to her forest retreat during his funeral, and awaits the outcome as Asclepios treats him.

By Robert Browning · Genre: Dramatic Monologue, Mythological Poetry · 1,422 words

First lines

I am a goddess of the ambrosial courts, / And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed / By none whose temples whiten this the world. / Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along; / I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace; / On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard / Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, / And every feathered mother's callow brood, / And all that love green haunts and loneliness. / Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns / Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem, / Upon my image at Athenai here; / And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, / Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step / To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways, / And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts / Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low, / Neglected homage to another god: / Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke / Of tapers lulled, in jealousy dispatched / A noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings, / Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself / The son of Theseus her great absent spouse. / Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage / Against the fury of the Queen, she judged / Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart / An Amazonian stranger's race should dare / To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord: / Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll / The fame of him her swerving made not swerve. / And Theseus read, returning, and believed, / And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath, / The man without a crime who, last as first, / Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth. / Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained / That of his wishes should be granted three, / And one he imprecated straight -- "Alive / May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands! " / Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince / Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car / That give the feet a stay against the strength / Of the Henetian horses, and around / His body flung the rein, and urged their speed / Along the rocks and shingles of the shore, / When from the gaping wave a monster flung / His obscene body in the coursers' path. / These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled / Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him / That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole / Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed, / Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast, / Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein / Which either hand directed; nor they quenched / The frenzy of their flight before each trace, / Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car, / Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell, / Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sands / On that detested beach, was bright with blood / And morsels of his flesh: then fell the steeds / Head-foremost, crashing in their moonèd fronts, / Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed. / His people, who had witnessed all afar, / Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos. / But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced / (Indomitable as a man foredoomed) / That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer, / I, in a flood of glory visible, / Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed / By deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth. / Then Theseus lay the woefullest of men, / And worthily; but ere the death-veils hid / His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed / To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.

Genres

Tags

Greek mythology · divine rivalry · false accusation · chastity · paternal remorse · healing

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