Trojan Women

Euripides’ Trojan Women is set in the ruined camp at Troy on the last day before the Greek fleet sails. According to the ancient report of its production (Aelian, Various History 2.8), it was the third play of a group on Trojan themes that won the second prize in the 91st Olympiad (416–413 BC). It follows the fates of four renowned Trojan women, Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache and Helen, after the sack of the city. The play opens with a divine prologue in which the sea-god Poseidon, who once helped to build the walls, takes leave of the ruined city, and Athena, angry at the outrage done to her shrine by the Greeks, asks his help in destroying their fleet on its way home (Trojan Women 1–97). Hecuba, awake among the captives, mourns, and the Chorus joins her (98–229). The herald Talthybius announces the allotment: Cassandra to Agamemnon, Polyxena to the tomb of Achilles, Andromache to Neoptolemus and Hecuba to Odysseus (230–291). Cassandra is taken away in a prophetic frenzy (308–461). Andromache arrives with her son Astyanax, and Hecuba urges her to live for the child, but Talthybius returns to say that the Greeks have voted that the boy be thrown from the walls (568–798). Menelaus comes to take Helen, who is allowed to defend herself, and Hecuba answers her; Menelaus says that she will be killed in Argos (860–1059). Talthybius brings the body of Astyanax on Hector’s shield; Hecuba lays it out for burial, and while the walls of Troy fall in flame, the women are taken to the ships (1123–1332).

Date and Historical Background

The text of Trojan Women gives no year, no festival and no prize. The date and result rest on Aelian, Various History 2.8, a writer of the second or third century AD who drew on earlier records. According to Aelian, the contest took place in the 91st Olympiad (416–413 BC), and Euripides won the second prize behind Xenocles. According to Aelian the two other plays of Euripides’ group were Alexander, which dealt with the recognition of Paris, and Palamedes, and the satyr play was Sisyphus. Xenocles’ plays are given as Oedipus, Lycaon, Bacchae and the satyr play Athamas. The mythical background, on the other hand, is given in the play itself: Poseidon and Apollo built the walls of Troy (Trojan Women 4–7), the Greeks took the city with the wooden horse (9–11), and Telamon and Heracles had sacked it once before, in the time of Laomedon (799–819).

Aelian is also the source for a comment on the judges’ decision, in which he says that it was absurd for Xenocles to win and Euripides to be placed second, and that the voters must either have been ignorant or corrupt.

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Poseidon, god of the sea, who with Apollo built the walls of Troy (Trojan Women 1–7)
• Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, who helped the Greeks take Troy but now turns against them (48–97)
• Hecuba, queen of Troy, widow of Priam and mother of Hector, Paris, Cassandra and Polyxena
• Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba and Priam, priestess of Apollo, prophet who is not believed
• Andromache, widow of Hector, mother of Astyanax
• Helen, wife of Menelaus who went to Troy with Paris and was married afterwards to Deiphobus (959–960)
• Talthybius, herald of the Greek army
• Menelaus, king of Sparta and Helen’s first husband
• Astyanax, the young son of Hector and Andromache, who does not speak
• Chorus of Trojan women, captives of the Greeks

Setting

The scene is the ruins of Troy outside the tents of the captive women, soon after the fall of the city. The city is still smouldering at the opening (Trojan Women 8–9), and the Greek ships are waiting only for a fair wind (19–22). Hecuba lies in front of the gates, near the tent of Agamemnon (36–38, 139–140).

Summary of Trojan Women

Prologue

Trojan Women opens with a speech by Poseidon (1–47). He describes the sack of Troy, the wooden horse built by Epeius with the help of Athena, and the dead Priam at the altar. He says that he has been defeated by Hera and Athena and is leaving his city and his altars. The captive women are being given out by lot; Hecuba lies in front of the gates, and he tells that her daughter Polyxena has been killed at the tomb of Achilles without her knowledge, and that Cassandra has been taken by Agamemnon. “Farewell, O city once prosperous! farewell, you ramparts of polished stone! if Pallas, daughter of Zeus, had not decreed your ruin, you would be standing firmly still.” (45–47.)

Athena appears and asks to lay aside their old quarrel (48–60). She wants to join Poseidon against the Greeks because of the insult to her shrine: “Do you not know the insult done to me and to the shrine I love?” — “I do: when Aias dragged away Cassandra by force.” — “Yes, and the Achaeans did nothing, said nothing to him.” (69–71.) She will impose “a return that is no return”: Zeus will send rain and hail and give her his thunderbolts to set the ships afire, and Poseidon is to fill the Aegean with waves and the bay of Euboea with corpses (77–86). Poseidon agrees and names the places where the wrecks will lie, Myconos, Delos, Scyros, Lemnos and the cliffs of Caphareus (87–92), and adds the warning that a man who sacks cities, with their shrines and tombs, is a fool, since he destroys himself in the end (95–97).

When the gods have gone, Hecuba lifts her head from the ground and begins a monody: she tells herself to endure, and then asks, “What else but tears is now my hapless lot, whose country, children, husband, all are lost?” (98–121). She calls on the ships that came for Helen and curses the woman who killed Priam, and she sees herself being taken away as a slave (122–152).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

Two groups of the Trojan women come out of the tents in turn, afraid, and ask Hecuba what is happening (Trojan Women 153–196). She tells them that the Argives are about to sail and that the women are about to learn whose slaves they are, and she asks them not to wake Cassandra, who is out of her mind (165–175). The Chorus sings a lament: “I look my last on my children’s bodies, my last,” and wonders where they will be taken, perhaps as the wife of a Greek or to draw water at the spring of Peirene (197–213). They hope to be sent to Theseus’ land of Attica or to the country by Mount Olympus, and not to Sparta, the home of Helen and Menelaus (214–229).

First Episode

Talthybius arrives to announce that “the lot has decided your fates already” (230–240). Hecuba asks one by one. Agamemnon has chosen Cassandra for himself, for a secret love; Polyxena “to minister at Achilles’ tomb”, which he describes with the words that she is set free from trouble, and Hecuba does not understand that it means her death (260–270); Andromache is taken by Achilles’ son (273–274); and Hecuba herself is given to Odysseus (277–278). She cries out against a “treacherous foe I hate, a monster of lawlessness” (282–286), and tells the Chorus to weep for her.

Talthybius sees a blaze of light in the tent and fears that the women are setting it on fire, but it is Cassandra who rushes out with torches (298–307). In a trance she sings a mock wedding hymn for herself and Agamemnon (308–340), and Hecuba, who takes the torch from her, asks the women to weep instead of singing (343–352). Cassandra tells her mother to crown her: if Apollo is a prophet, then Agamemnon “will find in me a bride more vexatious than Helen. For I will slay him and lay waste his home to avenge my father’s and my brothers’ death” (353–364).

She then argues that Troy is happier than the Greeks (365–405): they lost a countless army for one woman, and their dead lie far from home, unburied by their wives, while the Trojans died for their country and were laid in native soil by their friends. Hector’s fame, she adds, came from the Greek attack, and “whoever is wise should fly from making war”. Talthybius dismisses her as mad (408–423). She answers with a prophecy: Odysseus will wander for another ten years after the ten at Troy, past Charybdis, the Cyclops, Circe, the lotus-eaters and the cattle of the Sun, and will go down alive to Hades (424–443). She leaves for the ship, saying that she will overthrow the house of the sons of Atreus (444–461).

Hecuba falls to the ground and refuses the help of the women (462–466). She recites her past happiness, the sons killed, Priam butchered at the hearth, the daughters given in marriage to foreigners, and what she expects in slavery, ending with the wish that she be left to lie on the ground and to die: “Of all the prosperous crowd, count none a happy man before he die” (466–510). In the first stasimon the Chorus tells of the night of the fall: the wooden horse dragged to the temple of Athena with songs and dancing, the cry of death through the town, and the altars running with Phrygian blood (511–567).

Second Episode

The Chorus Leader sees Andromache coming on a Greek cart with her son Astyanax in her arms, together with Hector’s arms and the other spoils (568–576). Andromache and Hecuba lament together (577–607). Andromache then tells Hecuba that Polyxena is dead, slain at the tomb of Achilles as an offering to his corpse; she saw the body herself and covered it with a robe (622–628). Hecuba understands now what Talthybius meant (624–625).

Andromache says that death is better than a wretched life, and that Polyxena, who is dead, has less to bear than she, who must serve in the house of her husband’s killer (634–683). She describes how she lived in Hector’s house: she stayed indoors, admitted no gossiping women, kept a silent tongue and a modest eye before her husband, and knew where to rule and where to yield. The report of this reached the Greek army, she says, and it was the reason why Achilles’ son wanted her. If she forgets Hector for her new master she will be a traitor to the dead, and if she hates him she will anger her master (643–670). Hecuba tells her to put aside such thoughts, to win over her new master and to rear Hector’s son, so that his descendants may some day rebuild Troy (686–705). At that moment Talthybius comes back, unwillingly, to say that Odysseus has persuaded the Greeks that the boy must not be reared: “He must be thrown from Troy’s battlements” (709–725). He urges Andromache to bear it quietly, for if she curses the army her son will have neither burial nor pity (726–739).

Andromache takes leave of the child, who clings to her, and curses Helen: “you were born of many a father, first of some evil demon, next of Envy, then of Murder and of Death” (740–779). Talthybius takes the boy from her arms (782–789), and Hecuba laments him (790–798). In the second stasimon the Chorus sings of the earlier sack of Troy by Telamon and Heracles under Laomedon (799–839), of Ganymede, who serves the wine of Zeus while his city burns, and of Eos and her husband Tithonus from Troy. The stanza ends: “all the love the gods once had for Troy is passed away” (840–858).

Third Episode

Menelaus enters, glad that the day has come when he can take Helen (860–883). He tells the audience that he has not come to Troy for a woman so much as to punish the man who stole her. The army has handed her to him to be killed, and he will carry her to Greece and have her executed there, to repay the families of the men who died at Ilium (873–876). Hecuba prays to Zeus, whoever he is, and thanks Menelaus if he will slay his wife, but advises him not to look at her (884–894).

Helen is brought out, and asks to answer her accusers (895–905). Menelaus says: “I came not to argue, but to slay you”, but Hecuba asks him to listen to the case and to let her answer (906–913). Helen’s speech (914–965) puts the blame first on Hecuba, who bore Paris, then on Priam, who did not kill the baby, and then on Aphrodite: Paris judged three goddesses, Athena offered him victory over Greece, Hera rule over Asia and Europe, and Aphrodite promised him Helen, so that Greece was saved from being ruled by barbarians. She adds that she tried to escape from Troy by the walls after Paris died, as the watchmen can testify, but Deiphobus took her by force as his wife.

The Chorus asks Hecuba to defend her children and her country (966–968). Hecuba answers (969–1032) that she does not believe that Hera or Athena would have wanted to sell their cities to barbarians, nor that Aphrodite needed to come with Paris, since she could have brought Helen to Troy from heaven. It was Helen who, seeing Paris in his gold and foreign clothes, lost her senses: the name of Aphrodite, as she puts it, begins the word for folly. Helen did not cry out for help at Sparta, though Castor was alive, and at Troy she praised Menelaus when the Greeks won and her lover when the Trojans did. She never hanged or stabbed herself as a noble wife would have, and Hecuba had offered to help her steal away to the Greek fleet. She tells Menelaus to put her to death, as an example to all women.

Menelaus agrees that Helen left his house of her own will and that her talk of Aphrodite is mere bluster (1036–1041). He tells his servants to take her away to those who will stone her (1039–1041). Helen throws herself at his knees: “do not impute that heaven-sent affliction to me, or slay me; forgive me!” (1042–1043). Hecuba tells him not to betray the dead, but he refuses to listen. She then asks that Helen not sail in the same ship as he, and he agrees; Helen will go in a different ship, and when she arrives in Argos she will die a shameful death as an example to other women (1049–1059). The third stasimon follows: the Chorus asks whether Zeus cares that his altar and sacrifices at Troy are gone (1060–1080), imagines the journey to Argos and to Salamis or the Isthmus, and prays that a thunderbolt will strike Menelaus’ ship (1081–1117).

Exodos (Exit Song)

The Chorus sees Astyanax’s body, and Talthybius enters with it (Trojan Women 1118–1128). He says that one ship alone is waiting: Neoptolemus has already sailed, having heard that Peleus has been driven from his kingdom by Acastus, and Andromache has gone with him, weeping for her country and for Hector’s tomb (1123–1135). She begged that the child be buried and that Hector’s shield be his coffin instead of being taken to the house of Peleus. Talthybius has already crossed the Scamander, washed the body and cleaned its wounds, and will now dig the grave (1136–1155).

Hecuba has the shield placed on the ground and speaks to the child (1156–1206). She blames the Greeks for fearing so small a boy when they could not beat Hector, and imagines what the poet will write on his tomb: “Argives once for fear of him slew this child”, and that inscription, she says, would be a shame for Hellas. She sees in his hands the likeness of his father’s, and recalls the promise he made to cut his hair for her tomb: now the old woman buries the young. The women bring robes and ornaments from the spoils; Hecuba wraps him in a Phrygian robe that should have been his wedding garment and gives the shield its honour (1207–1235). She says that heaven seems to care about nothing but her troubles and Troy’s, and without the god’s ruin they would not be sung by poets (1240–1250). The body is carried out to burial.

Torches then appear on the heights of the city, and Talthybius orders the captains to burn Troy, and the women to go to the ships when the trumpet sounds (1260–1271). He tells Hecuba that the servants of Odysseus are coming for her. She starts to run into the flames, to die with her country, but he has her held (1272–1286). She cries out to the dead and to the earth, as the citadel crashes down (1287–1326), and the Chorus sings of the smoke and the name of their country fading. Hecuba and the Chorus are led away: “The name of my country will pass into obscurity; all is scattered far and wide, and hapless Troy has ceased to be” (1322–1332).

A Brief Analysis

The structure of the play is unusual. Poseidon and Athena plan the destruction of the Greek fleet in the prologue (77–97), but the wreck never takes place in the play. Astyanax is condemned (709–739) and his body returns (1123–1155), but his death is not shown. Helen is condemned by Menelaus, who says twice that she will die, once with stoning (1039–1041) and once in Argos (1056–1059), but the play ends before anyone can tell what will become of her. The actions that follow one another in the play are a series of allotments, partings and losses, and the Chorus, which stays on stage from the parodos to the end, commits itself to nothing except lament.

The victors are not shown as winners. Cassandra says that the Greeks lost a countless army for one woman and that their dead lie unburied in a foreign land, while the Trojans were buried by their friends (365–402). Hecuba says that the Greeks are braver than they are wise, since they killed a child out of fear (1158–1165), and Poseidon warns that the man who sacks cities and shrines is a fool, for he destroys himself (95–97). Odysseus, who persuaded the army to kill Astyanax (721–725), is described by Hecuba as a lawless monster (282–286), and Cassandra foretells his ten years of wandering (431–443).

The play also asks what the gods are doing. Athena, who sided with the Greeks, turns on them because they allowed the outrage to her shrine (69–71); Hecuba prays to Zeus “whoever you are” (884–888); the Chorus wonders whether he cares that his altar is gone (1060–1080); Hecuba concludes that heaven seems to care only to hate Troy (1240–1250). The answers of the characters differ, and the play does not choose among them.

Some readers have connected the play with the events of the years before it. Thucydides records that in the summer of 416 BC the Athenians sailed against Melos with thirty-eight ships, about 2,700 Athenian and allied hoplites and a force of archers (5.84), that the island surrendered in the following winter, and that the Athenians killed the adult men and enslaved the women and children (Thucydides 5.84–116), and the expedition against Sicily was decided in the same winter (6.1). No ancient source says that the play was written with Melos or Sicily in mind, and the text itself mentions neither.

Trojan Women Sources

The main source for this page is the play itself: Euripides, Trojan Women 1–1332, read in the Greek text (Perseus Digital Library). Other ancient sources used are Aelian, Various History 2.8 (the production in the 91st Olympiad, the companion plays and the verdict) and Thucydides 5.84–116 and 6.1 (Perseus Digital Library).

See Also: Euripides, The Sack of Troy, Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache, Helen