The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy.

[1] Euripides first treated the myth in a previous play, Hippolytos Kalyptomenos (Ἱππόλυτος καλυπτόμενος – Hippolytus Veiled), which is lost, and survives only in fragments.

[2] It is thought that the contents to the lost Hippolytos Kalyptomenos portrayed a woman, Phaedra, reduced to shamelessness by a god, and not given the dignity of being able to resist the spell that Aphrodite has placed on her.

Athenians may have been offended by a determinedly lustful heroine of a tragedy offering herself directly to Hippolytus.

[3]: 3 Euripides revisits the myth in Hippolytos Stephanophoros, its title refers to the garlands Hippolytus wears as a worshipper of Artemis.

At the opening of the play Aphrodite, Goddess of love, explains that Hippolytus has sworn chastity and refuses to revere her.

The chorus, consisting of young married women of Troezen, enters and describes how Theseus's wife, Phaedra, has not eaten or slept in three days.

However, the nurse quickly retracts her initial response and tells Phaedra that she has a magical charm to cure her.

To execute the curse, Theseus calls upon his father, the god Poseidon, who has promised to grant his son three wishes.

Taking Phaedra's letter as proof, Hippolytus proudly defends his innocence, saying that he has never looked at any woman with sexual desire.

She brutally tells him the truth and that Aphrodite was behind all their suffering, because she felt disrespected by Hippolytus's pride in his chastity.

Hippolytus describes the goddess' purifying power in terms of the ancient Greek concept of sophrosyne, which is translated in the script variously as the situation requires–"wisdom, chastity, moderation, character".

[3] Scholar Rachel Bruzzone argued in 2012 that Pygmalion in Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Hippolytus share certain characteristics.

But Pygmalion unlike Hippolytus does desire a woman, just one he deems as perfect which is one that does not speak, is nameless and compliant.