A tragedy about Hippolytus, a young man devoted to the goddess Artemis who scorns love and the goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite resolves to punish him, and her plan draws in his stepmother Phaedra, who is struggling with a forbidden passion, and his father Theseus. The play examines desire, shame, pride and the fatal cost of rigid purity. It is admired for its psychological depth and its portrait of a woman torn between honour and feeling.