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Hippolytus was the last ancient Christian in Rome to write in Greek, but the status of some of the writings attributed to him is controversial. The Church Order attributed to him defines the shape of the liturgy, but shows that at this time in the third century, it had not yet acquired a fixed form. The interrogations and answers he provides for the ceremony of baptism provide the basis for the later so‐called Apostles’ Creed, the baptismal confession of the western Church.

This chapter explores how Greek tragedy evokes hymenaios. The chapter begins with a discussion of the role that choral song played in the Greek wedding, and a discussion of Sappho's hymenaioi and poetry by other authors which imitated hymenaeal forms. The second part of the chapter looks at how tragedy makes use of hymenaios, including the so‐called ‘marriage‐to‐death’ motif, whereby a young girl's death is described as a form of marriage. The chapter also investigates mixed‐sex choral performance as a hymenaeal trope, and examines two plays (Euripides' Hippolytus and Aeschylus' Suppliant Women) where mixed‐sex choruses are used to highlight themes of marriage and of dysfunctional sexuality.

Eusebius attributes to Dionysius of Alexandria (249–65) both the earliest known assertion of a rule that Easter can be observed only after the equinox and the use of an eight‐year cycle (octaeteris) for Paschal calculations. The Coptic tradition, however, remembers Demetrius of Alexandria (189–232) as ‘the inventor of the epacts’ and Ethiopic texts attribute to him a Paschal computus beginning in AD 214. The earliest extant Paschal cycle is a 112‐year period attributed to Hippolytus, beginning with the full moon of 13 April in AD 222. The cycle of Hippolytus is based on the octaëteris and probably represents the adaptation of the cycle of Demetrius to the Roman calendar. Another 112‐year cycle is extant, composed in 243, but beginning with the full moon of 1 April in the year 242. Its authorship and provenance are unknown.

The author shows that of all theologians charged with Patripassianism or Sabellianism, only Noetus held strict Patripassianism, i.e. the claim that the Father was identical with the Son and suffered on the cross. Callistus and Praxeas, on this reading, eschewed this extreme position and identified the Father with the divine aspect of Christ participating in the sufferings of his flesh. The church’s rejection of various forms of Patripassianism led to a sharper distinction between the Father and the Son.

This chapter discusses two theories: the view of Hippolytus of Portus and the hypothesis of two ancient Christian writers named Hippolytus. A Byzantine tradition grew from the seventh century onwards associating particular works of the corpus with a Hippolytus of Portus Romanus, near Rome. The hypothesis originates in liturgical and chronographical sources of the east. The case is strong that ancient legends of a martyr Hippolytus of Portus not only initiated the line of ascription, but also served to embellish it as the centuries unfolded, including the traditions of the ‘holy island’ on the Tiber near Ostia. This chapter looks at the medieval origins of the Portus hypothesis, including Byzantine sources such as chronicon paschale, Anastasius Apocrisarius and Nicephorus of Constantinople, Georgius Syncellus, Johannes Zonaras, and Nicephorus Callistus. Modern studies of the subject, including the hypothesis of emigration to Portus Romanus, are also discussed, along with recent analyses of the Hippolytan eschatology.

This chapter discusses Murray's work as a translator of Greek tragedy, examining the linguistic and dramatic aspects of his translations, and emphasizing the scale of his achievement in bringing tragedy to an greater audience. The chapter mentions his translations of Euripides' Hippolytus, Electra, and the The Trojan Women.

Spencer Barrett in many ways seems to have been an old-style Oxford classics don. He did not move very far from his base. He did not lecture outside England (although he was certainly invited to speak in America) and not very often outside Oxford. He did not even visit Greece until middle age, and that was partly to confirm some details of the topography of Trozen about which, essentially, he had already made up his mind. His published work, though superb in quality, was modest in quantity, considering that he had such a long career. In 1964 his book Hippolytus was published, which became essential reading for any scholar working seriously on Greek Tragedy. Apart from Hippolytus, Barrett's most important publication was a sixty-five-page discussion of Sophocles' Niobe (and other plays on the same theme) in Richard Carden's book, The Papyrus Fragments of Sophocles.

Chapter 6 considers writing tablets as metatheatrical props that symbolize and embody the process of composing tragedy out of competing possible plotlines. Trachiniae’s oracular deltos (writing tablet) serves as a mise-en-abîme refraction of the entire play. Phaedra’s writing tablet is more akin to a defixio (a curse tablet) than a letter and is used by the heroine preemptively to silence her stepson in Euripides’ Hippolytus. The letter Iphigenia reads aloud in Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians provokes a playful scene of recognition, while Agamemnon’s revised letter, revoking his earlier decision to sacrifice his daughter, becomes the catalyst for a burlesque tug-of-war in the Iphigenia at Aulis; in that play, it is particularly clear that control of the girl—and consequently of the plot—is what is at issue. But because of their general tendency to thematize plotting as a tragic concern, these props more than others solicit metatheatrical interpretations.

The documentation of the vast array of evidence bearing on the problem of Hippolytan identity and provenance has improved considerably over the years. The evidence is diverse, ranging from archaeological artefacts, shrines, and ancient churches, to hagiographical and liturgical traditions, patristic sources, and the extant corpus itself. This chapter explores linguistic and chronological presuppositions of Hippolytan studies, as well as the earliest and most significant archeological and literary sources outside the extant texts, including the statue discovery claimed by Pirro Ligorio, the ancient hagiographical evidence, and the literary testimonies of Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome, and subsequent church fathers. The aim is to clarify the Hippolytus question as it has evolved over the centuries. The relationship to the New Prophecy, including doctrines of eschatology and attitudes towards women, is also examined, along with the traditions of the ante-Nicean martyrs named Hippolytus.

The earliest literary sources for the study of the Hippolytan corpus stem from the fourth century, harking back to traditions of the third. They include Eusebius of Caesarea, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Jerome. Eusebius and Jerome report that a Hippolytus of the early third century composed a significant dossier of Greek texts; texts, however, which offered no indication of a community of origin. The Hippolytan manuscript group underlying the statements of Eusebius and Jerome are referred to as the non-provenance manuscript tradition. A study of the references of non-provenance, beginning with Eusebius and extending into the medieval period, casts into relief the hypothetical character of the manuscript traditions to be examined in subsequent chapters, traditions that affix specific locations to particular works. The strength of the Eusebian evidence in particular is its early date. It is the most ancient opinion of the church on the Hippolytus question.

Our greatest source of knowledge of the corpus in the early period is Jerome. His bibliophilia and emigrations through the lands of the Mediterranean in the latter half of the fourth century placed him in a unique position to collect, read, and discuss the literature of the ante-Nicean period, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Syriac sources. As a historian of literature and as a commentator, Jerome's familiarity with, and use of, the Hippolytan text surpasses Eusebius. He refers to the corpus in the liber de viris illustribus, letters, and commentaries. His interest in the works of Origen, both before and after the Origenist controversy, provides him with a knowledge of the connection between Origen and the commentator Hippolytus, which Eusebius does not mention.

The explicit supposition of a prolific, eastern author appears in sources of the ancient and medieval periods. The first is Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who designates Hippolytus a father of ‘the east’. Claims of eastern provenance are geographically diverse, emanating from Rome, Cyrrhus (Antioch), and Armenia. They affix the origins of texts in Arabia, Bostra, Aden, and Antioch. Eastern theories do not approach critical fruition until the seventeenth century. As noted, the earliest hint of an eastern author is in Eusebius. The Eusebian reference does not provide a clear indication of the identity and permanent locality of Hippolytus, the associate of Dionysius of Alexandria. Other ancient and medieval sources of claims of eastern provenance include Gelasius of Rome and Armenian manuscripts referring to Bostra as a provenance. Modern studies of Hippolytus range from a proposed Arabian provenance, especially Aden, the ancient port city in southern Arabia, to Pierre Nautin's thesis.

The hypothesis of a single ante-Nicean author in Rome or its environs has exerted a strong influence on Hippolytan studies since the beginnings of patristic scholarship. At present, it is one of several views meriting consideration. Solid evidence and arguments on its behalf were not produced until the second half of the sixteenth century. Prior to the sixteenth century, particular theologians and chroniclers adopted a Roman provenance for specific works of the traditional corpus with little direct analysis of the texts. The supposition of a prolific Roman author can be traced to the early manuscript tradition of Apollinarius of Laodicea, as well as the manuscript tradition of the contra Noetum, Leontius of Byzantium, Eustratius of Constantinople and Oecumenius, Anastasius of Sinai, and Germanus of Constantinople and the liturgical commentary. References in the ninth through twelfth centuries are also considered. The statue discovered by Pirro Ligorio in Rome in the mid-sixteenth century is another evidence cited in support of a Roman provenance for Hippolytus.

In 1841, Minoides Mynas discovered a Greek manuscript of Mount Athos containing a work now known as the refutatio omnium haeresium. The text became the basis of subsequent scholarly activity on the Hippolytus question. The find supplied books 4–10 of an ancient anti-heretical treatise. Although the colophon ascribed the text of Mynas to Origen as well, scholars soon attributed it to Hippolytus Romanus. According to Pierre Nautin, Jacobi was the first to propose such a thesis. The overall effect of the discovery was the creation of a new optimism regarding the biography of a western, Greek author Hippolytus. Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890) rejected the Portus Romanus provenance of Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen and depicted the author as a schismatic Roman bishop of the early third century. This chapter also looks at the commentaries that followed Döllinger's hypothesis and their preservation of the Hippolytan eschatology, along with Allen Brent's revision of the hypothesis and Objections to the biography of the Döllinger-Brent hypotheses.

This present study does not aim to reconstruct a complete dossier of the works of Hippolytus the commentator. The current state of scholarship is, however, able to supply a list of the extant commentaries forming the core documents of provenance and authorship studies. This catalogue constitutes the remains of the Hippolytan exegesis after nearly two millennia and is for the most part fragmentary. The two major extant texts of the list, the works de antichristo and commentarium in Danielem, provide a basis for present-day studies. The treatise on the antichrist is a compendium of biblical texts, rather than a commentary per se. It embodies, however, a primary source of Hippolytan interpretation and was included in the commentary lists from earliest times.

As a developmental phenomenon, the Oedipus complex is constructed of illusion and unidirectional desire. Compared to men, who either punish themselves or face retribution from those who govern their existence, transgressions and psychic turmoil by mothers are not easier to see. This chapter scrutinizes the motif of incestuous love between mothers and sons in its more oblique manifestations, the mythology of Phaedra and her stepson Hippolytus (dramatized in two ages—by the classical Greek Euripides and two thousand years later by the Jansenist Racine), and an Indian tale of incest often told by women to their daughters. If the pregenital seductions of parent and child, transpiring before consummation if possible, are disquieting enough, the genital tensions of adolescence are even more perilous.

The Hippolytan composition on the parousia of the antichrist provides general indicators of an eastern character. The high view of the Apocalypse presupposes a community of origin in which the book was received without controversy and utilized as a source of theology and history. The addressee of the treatise, whose historicity has been questioned, matches the profile of three eastern bishops known to Eusebius. Manuscript research supports the inclusion of the document in the non-provenance tradition. The theology of the treatise differs from the Jerusalem tradition, in so far as Cyril is an exemplar of that tradition, in that the Apocalypse is a central source. The Cyrilian rejection of the Apocalypse, despite the acceptance of an antichrist doctrine, distinguishes the later Palestinian view from the Hippolytan. The treatise reflects the Asian legend that John, the son of Zebedee, the apostle of Jesus, was the author. The antichrist treatise is addressed to Theophilus. The manuscnpts are united in ascribing the treatise to a Hippolytus.

In the in Canticum canticorum, Martha and Mary are viewed as the principal witnesses of the resurrection. Other women are not mentioned and men are not referred to by name. The Hippolytan narratives represent a theology of Martha and Mary, a carefully shaped explanation of their significance in Christian tradition. They are the primary figures of female redemption. The high status of women in the community of the author is apparent in the expression of female apostolic vocation. In general terms, the elevated status of women reflected in the commentary on the Song blends well with the milieu of Montanism. While it is unthinkable to most Hippolytan scholars to associate Hippolytus the commentator with the New Prophecy, on this issue he shares a basic sense of direction.