Fragmented Self and Fragmented Responsibility: Pasiphae in Euripides’ Cretans

This chapter analyses the particularly complex representation of responsibility and selfhood present in the speech of Pasiphae in Euripides’ Cretans, in which the queen defends her act of falling in love with the bull. The chapter shows how Pasiphae is able to dissociate herself completely from her past actions by appealing to divine intervention, the role of her husband Minos, and an understanding of human morality and motivation that is rooted in hedonistic principles. Pasiphae’s defence thus relies on a concept of the fragmentation of the self that reveals her as one of Euripides’ most philosophically sophisticated female speakers.