Earning of Their Fates or Innocent Victims? When arguing the statement, the character of Pentheus in the Bacchae is portrayed as earning his fate, whereas the character of Hippolytus in the Hippolytus is portrayed as an innocent victim of the god, I must both, agree and disagree with it. I would definitely agree with it on a shallow point of view, but would have to disagree with it upon dissecting both the stories. The stories tell of Hippolytus being killed for something he did not do, while Pentheus was killed for not accepting the god Dionysus. But when you look deep into the meaning of each story, the apparent black and white assumptions of innocents and guilt change from definitive to doubt to say the least. When reading the story of Hippolytus, it would be very easy to label him as an innocent victim. His step mother, Phaedra falls for him, while he promotes celibacy. Instead of being praised for this belief his step mother, who commits suicide was found with a note framing him, telling of his love for her. Upon reading the note, Theseus, his father banishes him and prays to Posiedon to kill him. As Hippolytus leaves, he prays to Zeus to strike him dead if he has sinned and then a wave controlled by Posiedon hits him, almost rendering him dead. Artemis then tells everyone of his innocence, but Hippolytus ends up dying anyway. This may seem like a very open and shut case for him being an innocent victim, but when you look at Hippolytus throughout the story, I tend to think that he wasn’t as innocent as he was made out to be. Sure he never was infatuated with Phaedra, but he may have just been a victim of his own pride. Earlier in the story, he is warned to not just devote all his time to worshipping the goddess Artemis, but to also worship the goddess Aphrodite. He ignores these warning and sees them almost as a hollow threat and intensifies his worship for Artemis. Further along in the story, he ends up blamin...
