Storied light in the Hippolytus

σὲ τὸν εὐπατρίδην Αἰγέως κέλομαι
παῖδ᾽ ἐπακοῦσαι:
1285Λητοῦς δὲ κόρη σ᾽ Ἄρτεμις αὐδῶ.
Θησεῦ, τί τάλας τοῖσδε συνήδῃ,
παῖδ᾽ οὐχ ὁσίως σὸν ἀποκτείνας
ψευδέσι μύθοις ἀλόχου πεισθεὶς
ἀφανῆ; φανερὰν δ᾽ ἔσχεθες ἄτην.

Artemis addresses her first words to Theseus, whom she calls the "well-fathered [εὐπατρίδην] son of Aegeus":

Artemis
Nobly-born son of Aegeus! Listen, I order you! [1285] It is I, Artemis, Leto's daughter, who address you. Why, unhappy man, do you take joy in these things? You have godlessly killed your son, persuaded of things unseen by the false words of your wife. But all too clearly seen is the ruin you have won for yourself! [1290] Why do you not hide yourself beneath the earth's depths in shame or change your life for that of a bird above and take yourself out of this pain? For among good men [1295] you possess no share in life.

It is not that Artemis rejects Theseus's claim to be the son of Poseidon, but here she chooses to underscore, with a kind of built-in irony, his human lineage. She is stating nothing out of the ordinary, but in calling him the child of Aegeus, she is reminding Theseus of his human origin at the very moment his all-too-humanness is coming to light.

Artemis potnia theron

The goddess's language is compressed, but not opaque: Theseus's error is to have been persuaded (πεισθεὶς), by his wife's lying tale, of something unseen, obliterated -- ἀφανῆ -- which in turn makes visible -- φανερὰν -- his ἄτην.

"By lying stories of your wife you were persuaded of the unseen; seen is your blinding."

The well-fathered Theseus here intersects with the common man, who is, according to the Nurse, always semi-blinded, and always borne along by stories.

Recall the Nurse's words coming at the end of her first speech in the play, at the opening of Scene 2:

μύθοις δ᾽ ἄλλως φερόμεσθα.  (197)

We are borne along foolishly by mere tales (μύθοις)

The lying stories of Phaedra are ψευδέσι μύθοις. A longer piece of the passage is worth citing:

ἀλλ᾽ ὅ τι τοῦ ζῆν φίλτερον ἄλλο
σκότος ἀμπίσχων κρύπτει νεφέλαις.
δυσέρωτες δὴ φαινόμεθ᾽ ὄντες
τοῦδ᾽ ὅ τι τοῦτο στίλβει κατὰ γῆν
195δι᾽ ἀπειροσύνην ἄλλου βιότου
κοὐκ ἀπόδειξιν τῶν ὑπὸ γαίας,
μύθοις δ᾽ ἄλλως φερόμεσθα.

Anything we might love more than life is hid in a surrounding cloud of darkness, and we are clearly unhappy lovers of whatever light there is that shines on earth [195] because we are ignorant of another life, since the life below is not revealed to us. We are borne along in vain by mere tales.

The Nurse's words lack lucidity -- and any paraphrase should be true to that -- here's one effort:

Any other thing more dear to us is held back, hidden in cloudy gloom. Yet our inexperience of that other life we do not see makes us unhappy lovers of the light we have. Neither knowing nor not knowing, we are borne by stories.

The Nurse's speech repeatedly interweaves forms of the word ἄλλος -- "other." Some opacity (making us unable to see other than what we see) makes us unhappy lovers of light.  We know there is something we do not see, because seeing some thing -- anything -- is also not-seeing some other. To see is to be blinded to an otherness the seen thing's opacity prevents us from seeing. If the damned light would only get out of the way, we'd see . . .

If the Nurse has grasped the plight of human seeing, then we are all caught in this common predicament, even well-born kings. Artemis echoes that in her condensed summation of Theseus's error. We might keep this in mind as we look at the "death" of Hippolytus, and at what death means in a world borne by stories. If it is the cessation of mortal functions, that's one thing. If it is the obliteration of a name in story, that's another.

{Update} The term used by Artemis to address Theseus, εὐπατρίδην, has a storied past of its own that goes to the origin of Athenian classes:

Eupatridae (literally "good fathered", i.e. "offspring of noble fathers" or "the well-born") refers to the ancient nobility of the Greek region of Attica.

Tradition ascribes to Theseus, whom it also regards as the author of the union (synoecism) of Attica round Athens as a political centre, the division of the Attic population into three classes, Eupatridae, Geomori and Demiurgi. 

Theseus is thus implicated in the very structure of Athenian society, in particular with the aristocracy. Clearly this has interesting implications for the political dimension of the Hippolytus.