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Title: Euripides: Hecuba, the Trojan Women, Andromache by Euripides, James Morwood, Edith Hall ISBN: 0-19-815093-8 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $100.00

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Summary: Three plays by Euripides on the fate of Troy's women
Comment: This volume brings together three of the extant plays of Euripides that focus on the characters made famous in Homer's epic poem the "Iliad," which tells of the wrath of Achilles and the Trojan War. All three plays take place after the fall of Troy and tell of the fate of the city's noble women:

In "Hecuba" Troy's queen has become the slave of Odysseus, who takes away her daughter Polyxena to be slain on the grave of Achilles. However, in this drama it is the earlier death of another child, Polydorus that provides the motivation for what comes to pass. This was a child who had been sent (according to Homer, there are various versions of this tale) for safety to the Thracian Chersonese. But now, after Hecuba hears of the death of Polyxena, the body of Polydorus washes up on shore. Apparently Hecuba's son-in-law Polymnester murdered the boy for the gold that King Priam had sent to pay for his education. Agamemnon hears Hecuba's pleas, and Polymnester is allowed to visit the queen before she is taken away into captivity.

The most fascinating aspect of "Hecuba" is that it gives us an opportunity to contrast the character of the queen of fallen Troy with that in his more famous work, "The Trojan Women." This play was performed ten years earlier and its events take place right before the other play as well, although there is some overlap when Talthybius informs Hecuba of the death of Polyxena. In both dramas Hecuba is a woman driven by a brutal and remorseless desire for vengeance; however she proves much more successful in this drama than she does in "The Trojan Women." This play also makes reference to the myth that Hecuba would meet her own hideous death, which reinforces the idea that there is much more of a moral degradation of her character in this play (set up by much more humiliation and degradation in the first half).

"The Trojan War" was written as a plea for peace after the Athenians had slaughtered the men and enslaved the women and children of the island of Melos for refusing to aid Athens in the war against Sparta, and as preparations were being made for the ruinous expedition against Syracuse. Consequently there is a strong rhetorical dimension to the play, which prophesies that a Greek force would sail across the sea after violating victims and meet with disaster. However, there the play also has a strong literary consideration in that the four Trojan Women--Hecuba, Queen of Troy; Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba and Priestess of Apollo; Andromache, widow of Hector; and Helen--all appear in the final chapter of the "Iliad," mourning over the corpse of Hector, retrieved by his father Priam from the camp of the Acheans.

As with his last play "Iphigenia at Aulis," which tells of the events right before the Achean army left for Troy, "The Trojan Women" reflects the cynicism of Euripides. Of all the Achean leaders we hear about in Homer, only Menelaus, husband of Helen, appears. He appears, ready to slay Helen for having abandoned him to run off to Troy with Paris, but we see his anger melt before her beauty and soothing tones. In this play the Greeks do more than enslave women: they have already slain a young girl as a sacrifice to the ghost of Achilles and they take Astyanax, the son of Hector, out of the arms of his mother so that he can be thrown from the walls of Troy. Even the herald of the Greeks, Talthybius, cannot stomach the policies of his people. The play also reminds us that Helen was a most unpopular figure amongst the ancient Greeks, and there is no satisfaction in her saving her life.

"Andromache," the story of the fate of Hector's widow, is one of the weakest of the extant plays of Euripides. In truth, the work is better considered as anti-Spartan propaganda, written near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, although it presents a tragedy. However, the scenes are much more episodic than we usually find in Euripides; the first part of the tragedy is essentially a supplicant play, but then it changes dramatically. The play has one of Euripides' strongest beginnings, with its strong attacks on Sparta, represented by Menelaus. But even as propaganda Euripides elevates his subject for what he sees is not merely a war between two cities, but rather a clash between two completely different ways of life.

Andromache, the widow of Hector, is the slave of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, who is married to Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. The setting is the Temple of Thetis, the mother of Achilles, somewhere between Pithia and Pharasalia in Thessaly. Andromache has born Neoptolemus a son, and the barren Hermione accuses the Trojan woman of having used witchcraft and seeks her death. Andromache has taken refuge as this temple where Hermione and Menelaus try to get her to come out by threatening to kill her son. However, the title character disappears from the play and everybody from Peleus, the father of Achilles, to Orestes, the cousin of Hermione, shows up, mainly to talk about Neoptolemus, who is at Delphi. Thetis shows up as the deus-ex-machina and the play ends rather abruptly. As a tragedy there is little her beyond a progression of characters who all talk about doing something they end up not doing. If there is supposed to be a series of object lessons here they are pretty much lost on the audience.

Obviously this collection would work as a companion volume to Homer's "Iliad" in the classroom. "The Trojan War" is the most significant play here, but the comparisons to "Hecuba" and "Andormache" are quite interesting since we are dealing with the same tragic dramatist writing about the same characters in essentially the same situations. We know that these ancient Greek dramas returned to the same subjects tiime and time again, but this is one of the few opportunities we have from the relatively few plays that remain to make such direct comparisons.