In an article based on an unpublished paper by Professor Cornford, Mr. I. M. Glanville returned to the suggestion that the words S0009838800011605_inline1 at the beginning of Chapter 11 of the Poetics , which are part of the definition of peripeteia, refer back to the phrase S0009838800011605_inline2 S0009838800011605_inline3 , thereby raising the question whose expectation it is to which events turn out contrary, that of the audience or of the characters in the play.

The character of Hippolytus, as it is drawn by Euripides, usually receives but half-hearted praise. His coldness, inherited, no doubt, from his Amazon mother, and his consciousness of virtue, inevitably allied to priggishness in the eyes of a society which tolerates any extreme of self-depreciation, are not attractive. It is, perhaps, more surprising that no surprise seems to be provoked by the dramatic portrayal of a disposition unique in Greek literature. The association of holiness with a life of celibacy is (...) so familiar from the history both of Christianity and of other faiths that it seems natural to us that one who aspires to the highest purity, like Hippolytus, should allow no place in his life for sex. Hippolytus is pure, we are apt to imagine, for the same reason that a monk is pure, because such purity is pleasing to the god whom he serves and favourable to the life of the spirit. (shrink)