Seneca's Phaedra

Men are despicable. But then again, so are women. I found it detestable that Phaedra had such a love for her son-in-law, Hippolytus. Then, throughout the text, I felt like Phaedra was not so much in love with Hippolytus as she was lonely. Her husband was off getting into the dresses of every woman he found to be desirable and she was left at home, alone. Women have desires too. I think her hunger for these desires overtook her and created in her a sort of madness. She then transferred this madness into a sort of maniac-like love for Hippolytus.

In my opinion, Theseus did indeed love Phaedra a great deal. I feel like he slept with the other women because it fulfilled his carnal desires, not because he did not love Phaedra. I do not think he thought of his affairs as anything despicable or geared towards Phaedra. This does not change the action, but still, the motive was not entirely bad. He was willing to kill his son for Phaedra when she lied to him about Hippolytus trying to rape her. This was also about honor and loyalty, but I feel like he was still passionate towards his wife; that is to say that he still loved her a great deal. The greatest hatred comes from great love. That is shown in the ending when he finds out his wife lied to him and wishes her body just be dumped into the ground with earth laid on top of it. His trust in her was vanished, he watcher her take her own life over her own wrongdoings and I believe that mixed with his grief over the loss of his son (at his own hand) created in him a very broken man.

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/sen.phaedra.shtml