Act 2 misanthropic jeremaid in response to Nurse's plea to "follow nature as your guide to life. / Get out to the city more often, join in with the crowds" (481-482); traditionalist Roman anthropology (525ff.), from "Golden Age" (no war, greed or lust for power) to current decline of human beings
Phaedra 556-568 (climax to Hippolytus's moral history of humankind)
... the husband lies dead, killed by his own wife's sword,
and wicked mothers slaughtered their own young;
I will not talk of stepmothers—beasts are more kind.
But Woman is the root of all evil. Full of her wicked schemes,
she lays seige to men's minds. How many cities have burned
because of her adulteries! How many wars have been caused,
how many kingdoms overturned, how many enslaved!
Forget the rest, remember only Aegeus' wife,
Medea—proof enough that women are the devil.
Nurse
Why should you blame all women for the crimes of a few?
Hippolytus
I hate them all, I curse them, I shun them, I reject them.
Be it reason, nature, or passion which inspires me,
my pleasure is to hate them.