Phaedra - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

PHAEDRA, in Greek legend, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae. With her sister Ariadne she was carried off by Theseus to Athens, and became his wife. On the way to Eleusis she met Hippolytus, son of Theseus by a former wife (Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, or her sister Antiope), and fell in love with him. Finding her advances rejected, she hanged herself, leaving behind a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of having made dishonourable proposals. The same story, in the main, is told of Bellerophon and Anteia. It formed the subject of tragedies by Sophocles, Euripides (two, one of which is extant), Seneca and Racine.