Both Euripides' drama "Hippolytus" and the poems of Sappho take as one of their major dramatic themes the ideal of thwarted love. Both ancient Greek works use metaphors of burning and longing to express various speakers' desires for objects of affection he or she cannot obtain. But while the emotional intensity of both works may be equally heart rendering, Sappho's poetry adopts a more balanced, and ultimately healthier perspective of love in relation to the divine and human words than do the protagonists of Euripides' tragedy. Both Phaedra and Hippolytus feel unbalanced and unwholesome affections for people they desire on earth or in the heavens, and this become their undoing.

             In "Hippolytus," the title character's stepmother pines for her stepson. Not only is their sexual union prohibited by Phaedra's marriage to Theseus, Hippolytus' father but Hippolytus is also a sworn adherent of the cult of Artemis. He refuses to impinge upon his chastity for any woman's sake. He is particularly horrified at the prospect of flaunting the honor of the father whom he loves. Breaching filial devotion was a great transgression for the ancient Greeks. Phaedra's desire only makes him more revolted at the prospect of sexual relations. Hippolytus desires a life of purity, as is evidenced by his giving his patron goddess a garland from a virgin meadow at the beginning of the play. In contrast, Phaedra rages at the gods of how she burns for love, and also rages that she cannot possess her stepson.

             The poet Sappho is a woman who also pines for a woman she cannot have-or, rather a series of women over the course of her many poems. In contrast to Phaedra's single-minded affections, Sappho pines for the young women whom she knows that will later marry after they discontinue their youthful affections for the female poet. These young women's devotional adherence is not to a single virgin goddess, like Hippolytus but to conventional martial relations.