Why sing in hell? What do you sing in hell?
Euripides’ Trojan Women (Troades) explores, with rare depth, human suffering and human identity. The women of the title are awaiting the Greek ships to carry them to slavery after their men have been slaughtered. The backstory is well known. The Trojan prince Paris, also called Alexander, judged a beauty contest among three goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Hera and Athena tried to bribe him with military power, but Aphrodite offered the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy. Following Paris’ carrying off Helen from Sparta, the Greeks, led by her husband, Menelaus, and his brother, Agamemnon, besieged Troy for ten years. They finally captured the city by building a wooden horse and filling it with soldiers. Believing the horse an omen of good fortune, the Trojans brought it into the city and lost the war and their city.
Since its first performance in 415 BC, Euripides’ play has been applauded on the stage but has presented problems for modern critics. Is it a cautionary tale against war? Does it reflect the Athenian massacre of Melos in 416? Or their self-destructive Sicilian invasion of 415? Is it just a series of loosely connected scenes of pathos? Is it one long scream against the unbearable horrors of fate, part of Euripides’ “most unmitigated misery ever witnessed on a stage” (E. Segal, Oxford Readings, 244)? Is this what Aristotle really meant by calling Euripides “the most tragic of poets” (Poetics, 1453a)? Does nothing redeem the misery? Why then did it influence Roman writers like Ennius and Accius and inspire Seneca’s greatest play? Why does it have ever-popular modern performances and adaptations? Note the film version of 1971 by Michael Cacoyannis.
Modern scholars have stressed the play’s original context as one part of a probably connected trilogy, the form used by Aeschylus years before, then revived by Euripides. Although fragments of the other two plays have survived, we are missing many details. About AD 200, Aelian writes that Xenocles, “whoever in the world that is,” won first prize in 415 and “second to him was Euripides with Alexandros, Palamedes, Trojan Women, and the satyr-play Sisyphus” (Kovacs, Euripidea, 428). The first play deals with the story of Alexander and the prophecy that he would be a “firebrand” to destroy Troy. He is to die by exposure, but he is rescued and brought up by slaves. His parents think he is dead. He returns to the court and defeats his brothers in an athletic contest. Thinking they were bested by a slave, his brother Deiphobus and his mother Hecuba plan to kill him, but somehow Cassandra discovers his identity and he is reinstated as a prince of Troy.
The second play features Palamedes, the inventor of writing, who had once discovered the trick by which Odysseus had tried to avoid going to the Trojan War. In this play, Odysseus, out of revenge, plants some money under Palamedes’ tent and accuses him of selling out the Greek army. He is killed for treason. His brother, Oeax, alerts their father, Nauplius, by writing on oar blades and throwing them into the ocean. Later, his father tricks and destroys the returning Greek fleet by setting up false signal fires on the coast of Euboea.
Is Troy then destroyed because Priam and Hecuba did not kill their child? When Poseidon and Athena agree at the beginning of Trojan Women to destroy the returning Greek fleet because Ajax has violated Athena’s temple, are they also avenging what Odysseus did to Palamedes, so that the conquerors as well as the conquered are punished? That might be true if Aeschylus or Sophocles wrote the play. But with Euripides we are not sure. Should, or could, Priam and Hecuba kill their newborn child? Are the gods unfair?
Or are there gods? Hecuba’s prayer is typical of Euripides’ employing the gods and questioning them at the same time:
O support of earth, having your seat on earth—
Zeus, or air—whoever you are, difficult to know,
Either necessity of nature or mind of man,
I pray to you. In silent ways,
You lead all mortal affairs to justice. (884–888)
The play opens with an agreement between Poseidon and Athena to destroy the victorious Greek fleet, a prophecy we must keep in mind as the play progresses because, gods or not, it came true, but after the action of the play. This retribution may imply the justice that Hecuba longs for. Within the action, we see no retribution, only the suffering of the women and their reactions. Two other relevant fates also occur after the play, and the Greek audience was aware of them. Hecuba, taken as a slave by Odysseus, never reaches his homeland of Ithaca. She is changed into a mad dog and leaps from the mast of the ship to an ocean death (cf. Hecuba, 1259– 1273). Helen, taken back to Sparta supposedly to die, becomes the complacent housewife who breezily tells her tale in Homer’s Odyssey (4.235–289). All three extraneous events affect us as we watch or read this tragedy.
The destruction of Melos occurred a few months before the play. The Athenians destroyed the city, massacred the men, and sold the women and children into slavery. The play is often read as a protest against this atrocity and against the planned Sicilian Expedition that turned out so disastrously later in 415 (Murray, Euripides and His Age, 63–65), but there are no references to Melos in the play or to the Sicilian Expedition. Perhaps Euripides did not have enough time to write a Melian play and rehearse a chorus (Kip, “Euripides and Melos”). Even if he did, such horrors were all too common in the ancient Greek world. Such a protest seems to jar against the praise of Athens within the play and against classical Athenian ideology (Sidwell, “Melos and the Trojan Women”).
Is the play a general condemnation or critique of war, as it is often read (Murray, Euripides and His Age; Sartre, “Why the Trojan Women?”; Vellacott, Ironic Drama; Croally, Euripidean Polemic)? Surely the suffering of war is the subject, and in 415 BC many felt that Athens was courting destruction by deciding to extend its empire to Sicily, a prediction that turned out to be unfortunately true. At the same time, Athens was still at war with Sparta and had been for fifteen years. But war was a constant condition of ancient Greek life. Poseidon condemns only excessive and irreligious violations committed in war, not war itself:
Foolish is the man who plunders cities,
Temples, and tombs, the sacred places of the dead.
Bringing havoc, he will be destroyed. (95–97)
And Cassandra reveals that just wars are those fought on behalf of a city-state:
He who thinks well must avoid war.
If it comes, to die nobly is not a shameful crown
For the city, but to die ignobly is a disgrace. (400–402)
The cruelties of war are the subject of the play, but we must seek further for its theme. One complication is that we cannot say that there is no humanity in the play if we follow carefully the reactions of the herald, Talthybius (Gilmartin, “Talthybius”). On the other hand, to trace the cause or origin of the suffering leads us to gods who might not exist. Instead of the sense of divine justice in the world that might characterize a play by Aeschylus or Sophocles, we find a dialectic that questions without answering directly. The Greeks in general might be the villains, but they do not appear on stage.
In the play, Euripides presents the issue of the cause of the war in a “trial” scene between Helen and Hecuba (914–1032). The supposed cause of the war, Helen, confronts the greatest living victim of the war, Hecuba. Helen presents her defense in essay form (rhesis), followed by Hecuba’s rebuttal. Helen was often seen in Euripides’ time as a whore, but she was also considered a victim. The tale of her flight with Paris leaves open her complicity: runaway or abductee?
Defenses of Helen focus on her as a victim of Zeus’ plan to reduce the human population (the Cypria). The orator, Gorgias, wrote a seemingly lighthearted defense of Helen. Gorgias claims that she was the victim of the gods, love, force, and rhetoric (Encomium of Helen). Helen uses these arguments in the play. To a modern audience, they might appear sophistical, but many ancient Greeks still believed in the Homeric gods and their mysterious ways of working and causing human suffering. “The will of Zeus was accomplished” (Iliad, 1.5). These arguments are no more farfetched than today’s that blame God’s plan, evolution, or political determinism to explain tragedy. The argument that Helen never went to Troy at all is not mentioned in Trojan Women but could have been in the minds of the audience (cf. “Introduction” to Helen in this volume). Nevertheless, blaming the gods never acquitted even Greeks of the heroic age from all responsibility (Adkins, Merit, 16). In Euripides’ time, Athens was moving toward rationalism as it shifted away from the world of Homer to that of the polis (city-state).
Helen claims that Hecuba should have killed Paris as a baby because she dreamed he was a firebrand who would destroy the city, an argument that was echoed by Andromache in the play (597) and formed part of the first play in this trilogy, Alexandros. The idea is not so unrealistic if we remember Sophocles’ Oedipus. Like a good dramatist, Euripides avoids simplicity by building up both sides of the argument; the audience can decide.
Euripides may have started as a painter and is noted for his imagery (Barlow, Imagery of Euripides, 15). One of the dominant images in the play is that of feet: dancing feet, marching feet, stumbling feet. Poseidon opens with a reference to the perfect dance of the sea nymphs, the Nereids:
I, Poseidon, have come, leaving
The salty depth of the sea, where Nereids
Turn their shining feet in dance. (1–3)
From this symbol of perfection, we degenerate to the broken Hecuba, whose song has lost the dance:
And even this is music to the wretched:
To sing their ruin without the dance. (120–121)
She remembers the days when she led the dance:
I’ll raise the cry,
Not the same dance song
I raised for Troy’s gods once,
When the scepter supported Priam,
And my foot was first in the dance
With loud Phrygian steps. (147–152)
Cassandra tries to convince her mother, Hecuba, to dance, for Cassandra will avenge Troy by provoking the murder of Agamemnon, Troy’s conqueror, thus bringing down his royal Greek house. The dance has been restored:
Swing your foot high, bring the chorus
—Evoe!—
As in the happiest days of my father.
Holy is the chorus!
Lead, Phoebus. In your temple and crowned with sweet bay,
I sacrifice.
O Hymen, Hymen, Lord of Brides!
Turn your feet, here and there, with mine
in lovely steps. (325–334)
Hecuba cannot fathom her daughter’s prophecy, true as it is.
Hecuba’s feet are old, leaden, beaten:
And whom will I serve, I who need
In my old hand a stick for a third foot? (275–276)
Lead my foot, graceful in Troy once,
A slave now, to my bed of leaves on the ground
And my stony pillow, so falling I shall perish. (506–508)
Her foot does not quicken until she forces herself to bid goodbye to Troy:
But, old foot, hurry as you can,
So I may say good-bye to the dying city. (1275–1276)
If the Trojan Women opens with the perfect dance, it ends with a forced march. The chorus closes the play with:
March to the Achaean ships! (1332)
It would be too easy to say that the suffering in the play has been resolved into acceptance. As we shall know by the end, too much has happened dramatically and has been said lyrically to see the ending as a solution, or even a real resolution. The play begins in despair and increases in despair, as hope yields to hopelessness and reality fades to memory and dream. What we witness and experience is the heroic female spirit enduring the worst. Their despair contrasts with the grandeur of some of Euripides’ greatest odes, celebrating and lamenting the glory that was Troy. At one hopeful moment, Hecuba believes that Troy will live on in poetry (1242–1245). But later she and the chorus say the name will die (1278, 1319, 1322). We know it will not. Perhaps we could not bear the thought. But the characters do not know the future. In their cataclysm of suffering, they endure ignorance and sorrow. For them, hopes rise only to fall in an increasingly dramatic sequence. The human spirit wrestles with dream and fact, grand memory and future pain, madness and grief, hate and love, identity and annihilation. But the human mind goes on living, coping, dreaming, remembering, despairing, changing, thinking, even philosophizing, and doing these activities over again, refusing to fall silent, refusing in its way to die. Formally, and so, aesthetically, these actions are elevated to dialogue, song, ode, and dance. The Dance of Life and the Dance of Death. The mystery of life and its pain have not been simplified but reproduced and amplified. The wonder is that human nature can endure, and express, so much so well. The Trojan women’s endurance and their continued spirit are their heroic triumph. Unlike all other Greek characters in Greek tragedy, Hecuba never leaves the stage.
Note on the Greek Text
I have used as my main text James Diggle’s Oxford Classical Text, Euripidis Fabulae, II (1981). (Line numbering corresponds to Diggle’s text, not to my translation.) I have also used these editions:
G. Murray, Euripides, Euripidis Fabulae, II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913).
W. Biehl, Euripides, Troades (Leipzig: Teubner, 1970).
K. H. Lee, Euripides, Troades (London: Macmillan, 1976; 2nd ed. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1997), with commentary.
S. A. Barlow, Euripides, Trojan Women (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1986). J. Diggle’s Oxford Classical Text with commentary.
D. Kovacs, Euripides, IV, Trojan Women, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
List of Characters
POSEIDON, God of the Sea
PALLAS ATHENA, a goddess
HECUBA, Queen of Troy and widow of King Priam
CHORUS, captive Trojan women
TALTHYBIUS, a herald
CASSANDRA, a prophetess and daughter of Hecuba
ANDROMACHE, widow of Hector, the son of Hecuba
MENELAUS, King of Sparta
HELEN, Menelaus’ wife
ASTYANAX, son of Andromache and Hector (silent part)
(Before a tent, an old woman lies face down. In the background, Trojan houses are burning, after the conquest by the Greeks. POSEIDON enters.)
POSEIDON:
I, Poseidon, have come, leaving
The salty depth of the sea, where Nereids
Turn their shining feet in dance.
From the time Apollo and I raised up
| The stony towers around Troy | 5 |
Straight and true, never has the city
Of my Phrygians been distant from my heart.
Now smoldering, she lies sacked and wasted
By the Achaean spear. The Phocian from Parnassus,
| Epeius, with Athena’s connivance, built | 10 |
And sent within the towered walls a horse
Pregnant with weaponry, a statue of death
[Which later men shall call “the wooden
Spear-horse,” since it bore shafts inside].
| The sacred groves are deserted, the dwellings | 15 |
Of the gods flow with murder, and by the altar steps
Of Zeus the Protector, Priam lies dead.
Much gold and Phrygian spoil are hauled
To the Achaean ships that wait for a fair wind
| From the stern, so that after ten seed-times | 20 |
Those Greeks who warred down this city
May gladly see their wives and children.
Since I am bested by the Argive goddess Hera,
And by Athena, who both brought down the Trojans,
| I’ll leave renowned Troy and my altars. | 25 |
For when hateful devastation takes a city,
Religion suffers, and the gods are not honored.
The Scamander resounds with shrieking captives,
Women being allotted their masters.
| The Arcadians and the Thessalians have taken some, | 30 |
And the chiefs of the Athenians, Theseus’ sons, others.
Those Trojan Women still masterless
Are in this tent and kept for the generals.
With them is Tyndareus’ daughter, Spartan
| Helen, justly judged a captive. | 35 |
Should anyone wish to look on this wretched woman,
It is Hecuba, lying before the tent, pouring
Out many tears for many reasons.
Unknown to her, her pitiful child
| Polyxena lies dead on Achilles’ tomb. | 40 |
Priam also is gone and their sons. And the virgin,
Cassandra, whom Lord Apollo left frantic,
Agamemnon will force her to his illicit bed,
Rejecting the god’s wish, and piety, too.
| So farewell, my once prosperous city | 45 |
Of carved towers. If Athena, the child of Zeus,
Had not destroyed you, you would be still standing.
(PALLAS ATHENA enters.)
ATHENA:
May I address the one nearest my father in birth,
A great power and honored by gods,
| If I put down my former hatred? | 50 |
POSEIDON:
You may, for family conversations, Lady Athena,
Possess a great charm for the heart.
ATHENA:
I applaud your kind nature and suggest
A course of common interest, my lord.
POSEIDON:
| Do you bring a new message from the gods, | 55 |
From Zeus, or some lesser deity?
ATHENA:
No—but on account of Troy, where we stand,
I came to join your power to mine.
Surely you do not toss aside your hate
| And pity Troy burned to ash? | 60 |
ATHENA:
Back to my point. Will you share my plan
And agree to what I wish to do?
POSEIDON:
Of course. But I want to know your mind.
Are you on the Achaean side or the Trojan?
ATHENA:
| I wish to cheer the Trojans I once hated | 65 |
And give a bitter return to the Achaean army.
POSEIDON:
Why do you leap about like this, hating
And loving too much anyone you meet?
ATHENA:
Don’t you know they violated me and my shrines?
POSEIDON:
| Yes. When Ajax took Cassandra by force. | 70 |
ATHENA:
He suffered nothing at Achaean hands, not a word.
POSEIDON:
But they sacked Troy under your power!
ATHENA:
I want us to bring disaster on them.
I’m ready to do as you wish. What will you do?
ATHENA:
| Give them a homecoming that is no homecoming! | 75 |
POSEIDON:
When they are on land, or on the salt sea?
ATHENA:
When they sail from Troy to home,
Zeus shall send a storm and terrible
Hail and dark blasts of air.
| He says he will give me fiery lightning | 80 |
To strike the Achaeans and burn the ships.
You, for your part, bring the Aegean
Raging in grand, whirling waves.
Fill the hollow depth of Euboea with corpses
| So that from now on the Achaeans will know | 85 |
To honor my temples and the other gods.
POSEIDON:
So be it. This favor needs few words.
I shall stir up the salty Aegean.
The headlands of Myconos, the hummocks of Delos,
| Scyros, Lemnos, and the beaches of Caphareus | 90 |
Will swim with the bodies of many dead.
Go to Olympus and take the thunderbolts
From your father’s hand and wait
Till the Achaean fleet is under full sail.
| Foolish is the man who plunders cities, | 95 |
Temples, and tombs, the sacred places of the dead.
Bringing havoc, he will be destroyed.
(POSEIDON and PALLAS ATHENA exit.)
HECUBA:
Up, desperate one, raise your head
And neck from the ground. Troy’s gone,
| And we rule Troy no more. | 100 |
Endure the change of fate.
Sail the passage. Sail your destiny.
Don’t set life’s prow against
The wave and sail by chance.
| Never, never! | 105 |
What’s not for me to cry about?
My country, children, husband all have perished.
The grandness of my ancestors
Cut short: how you are nothing now.
| Why be silent? Why not? | 110 |
Why lament?
Miserable I am, under a heavy fate
That lies upon my limbs—what torture!
My back stretched on a hard bed.
| My head! My temples! | 115 |
My ribs! I wish to pitch
And roll my back and spine
To both sides, always
Weeping elegies in song.
| And even this is music to the wretched: | 120 |
To sing their ruin without the dance.
Ships’ prows with swift oars,
That came to sacred Troy
Through the purple sea
| And Greece’s safe harbors, | 125 |
With the pipes’ hated war song
You hung the twisted rope,
Egyptian-grown,
| Alas, in Troy’s gulfs, | 130 |
Chasing Menelaus’
Hated wife, Castor’s disgrace,
The shame of Sparta,
Slaughterer
| Of Priam, sower of fifty sons. | 135 |
She has run me, poor Hecuba,
Aground in this disaster.
What seats I sit on
By Agamemnon’s tent!
| An old woman and a slave, | 140 |
I’m led from home,
My head pitifully mauled by grief.
But, O poor wives
Of the bronze-speared Trojans
And ill-mated brides,
| Troy smolders. Let’s weep for it! | 145 |
As if I were a mother of young birds,
I’ll raise the cry,
Not the same dance song
I raised for Troy’s gods once,
| When the scepter supported Priam, | 150 |
And my foot was first in the dance
With loud Phrygian steps.
(SEMI-CHORUS A enters from the tent.)
SEMI-CHORUS A:
Hecuba, what are you shouting?
What and why do you call out? Through walls
| I heard your grief. | 155 |
Fear shoots through the hearts
Of the Trojan women
Inside who cry out at their slavery.
HECUBA:
O child, hands that carry the oars
| Are now moving to the Greek ships. | 160 |
SEMI-CHORUS A:
No, no! What do the Greeks want? Surely they will
Transport me now out of my fatherland.
HECUBA:
I don’t know. I’d guess—the worst.
SEMI-CHORUS A:
Please, no!
| Poor Trojan women, come out | 165 |
To hear your hard fate:
The Greeks are preparing for home.
HECUBA:
Oh, no,
| Don’t send out | 170 |
The bacchic Cassandra,
My maenad girl
For Greeks to shame.
I will be grieved then all the more.
O, O
Troy, wretched Troy, you are gone,
And wretched are those who leave you,
| The living, and the dead. | 175 |
(SEMI-CHORUS B enters from the tent.)
SEMI-CHORUS B:
Woe on woe, I left that tent there,
Agamemnon’s, trembling at your words,
My Queen. Will Greeks
Kill what’s left of me?
| Are those sailors ready | 180 |
To set their stern oars soon in motion?
HECUBA:
O child, terror-stricken I came,
My soul shuddering before dawn.
SEMI-CHORUS B:
Has some Danaan herald come already?
| Who will I lie with, me a wretched slave? | 185 |
HECUBA:
You are near your allotments now.
SEMI-CHORUS B:
No, please!
What Argive man or Phthian
Or islander leads
Unfortunate me far from Troy?
HECUBA:
| You gods! | 190 |
In whose land
Shall I live in slavery,
A worn-out rag,
In form a corpse,
The fleeting image of a corpse?
No, no!
| Or bring up another’s child, I | 195 |
Who held the highest rank?
CHORUS:
Alas, with what pitiable outcries
Could you scream out your outrage?
Not by Trojan looms will I shift
| The spinning shuttle back and forth. | 200 |
One last time, I look at my parents’ home—
One last time! I shall have even more suffering:
I shall be brought to a Greek bed
—May that night die with my fate!—
| Or wretched slave to fetch the water, | 205 |
From Pirene’s sacred fountains.
May I go to Theseus’
Famed and favored country.
| But not to the swirling Eurotas, | 210 |
Helen’s most detested land,
As a slave and meet Menelaus,
The ravisher of Troy!
I heard that blest, beautiful country,
| Foundation of Olympus, | 215 |
Land of the Peneus, is lush
With riches and with fruitfulness.
My next best is there after wishing for
That blest country of Theseus: Athens.
| I hear the Etnean island, | 220 |
The god Hephaestus’ land,
Is heralded for crowns of honor,
A mother of mountains that faces Carthage.
And that land neighboring
| The Ionian sea | 225 |
Which Crathis, the finest of rivers,
Nourishes with streams, makes happy
A land of virtuous men.
| Now this herald from the army | 230 |
Of the Danaans, a steward of horrible news,
Marches in, stopping his swift steps.
What is he bringing? What is he going to say?
For we are slaves already of a Dorian land.
(TALTHYBIUS enters.)
TALTHYBIUS:
| Hecuba, you know me from making | 235 |
Many trips to Troy, the Achaean herald,
Known to you before, lady.
I, Talthybius, have come, bringing news.
HECUBA:
My old fear, my dear women.
TALTHYBIUS:
| Your lot is cast, if this was your fear. | 240 |
HECUBA:
No, no.
What city do you say: in Thessaly, Phthia,
Or Cadmus’ country?
TALTHYBIUS:
Each of you is allotted a different man.
HECUBA:
Who won whom? What Trojan woman
| Has good fortune waiting for her? | 245 |
I know. But learn separately. Not all at once.
HECUBA:
My child,
Who won her, tell me, the curst Cassandra?
TALTHYBIUS:
Lord Agamemnon chose her himself.
HECUBA:
| A slave for the Laconian | 250 |
Lady—what hell!
TALTHYBIUS:
No, but an illegal marriage for his bed.
HECUBA:
Her, the virgin, to whom golden-haired Apollo
Gave the gift of living untouched?
TALTHYBIUS:
| Love’s arrow struck him for the possessed girl. | 255 |
HECUBA:
Child, throw away your laurel branches,
And from your skin the divine garment
Of wreaths you wear.
TALTHYBIUS:
Yes, is it not a great thing to succeed to a king’s bed?
HECUBA:
| What about my youngest you took from me? | 260 |
Where is she?
You speak of Polyxena—or who?
HECUBA:
Her, who is her lot?
TALTHYBIUS:
She is set to serve at Achilles’ tomb.
HECUBA:
| Unlucky me, I bore her a servant to a tomb. | 265 |
But what custom or law of the Greeks
Is this, my friend?
TALTHYBIUS:
Good fortune favors your child. She fares well.
HECUBA:
What are you saying?
| Does she still see the sun? | 270 |
TALTHYBIUS:
Fate has her, so she is free of pain.
HECUBA:
What of the wife of Hector, master of war,
Miserable Andromache, what is her fate?
TALTHYBIUS:
She, also, was chosen. Achilles’ son took her.
HECUBA:
| And whom will I serve, I who need | 275 |
In my old hand a stick for a third foot?
Lord Odysseus of Ithaca won you to be his slave.
HECUBA:
Please, no!
Strike your shorn head!
| Tear your cheeks with your nails! | 280 |
Ah me—
I drew the lot of slaving
For a rotten deceiver,
Hostile to justice, a lawless beast,
| Who twists all things all ways | 285 |
And opposites back again
With his double tongue,
Making what was loved hateful to all.
Screech for me, Trojan Women.
| I am cross-starred and ruined, | 290 |
Most wretched in misfortune
And fallen by lot.
CHORUS:
You know your fortune, my queen,
But what Achaean or Hellene holds mine?
TALTHYBIUS:
Go, slaves, we need to bring out
| Cassandra as fast as possible and put her | 295 |
Into the hands of the commander-in-chief.
Then I’ll lead the chosen captives to the others.
Uh! Why is a pine torch burning inside?
Are the Trojan women firing their tents, or what,
| Because they are to be drawn from this land | 300 |
To Argos, and burning their bodies,
Wishing to die? At such times to be sure
Freedom endures evil, though impatient of the yoke.
Open, open up! Don’t let what is best for them
| And hateful to the Achaeans throw blame on me. | 305 |
HECUBA:
No, they are not burning anything. But my bacchic
Daughter, Cassandra, is rushing here.
(CASSANDRA enters from the tent.)
CASSANDRA:
Raise, present, bring light, I honor
—Look, look!—
| And light this temple with torches, Lord Hymen. | 310 |
Blessed is the bridegroom
And blessed am I too with a royal bed
In Argos, married!
O Hymen, Hymen, Lord of Brides!
| Since you, mother, with tears, | 315 |
With screams, you cry for father dead
And our loved country,
I light in marriage
| My mother’s torch | 320 |
To gleam, to shine,
Giving it to you, O Hymen,
Giving you light, O Hecate,
For virgin beds
As custom demands.
| Swing your foot high, bring the chorus | 325 |
—Evoe!—
As in the happiest days of my father.
Holy is the chorus!
Lead, Phoebus. In your temple and crowned with sweet bay,
| I sacrifice. | 330 |
O Hymen, Hymen, Lord of Brides!
Now dance, mother, the lead.
Turn your feet, here and there, with mine
In lovely steps.
| Cry—O!—the hymn | 335 |
With blessed tunes,
Cry out the bride!
Go, O Trojans robed for beauty!
Celebrate, sing the fated man
| To share my bed | 340 |
In marriage, my bridegroom!
CHORUS:
My queen, won’t you seize your raving daughter
Before she runs into the Argive camp?
HECUBA:
Hephaestus, you bring the marriage torch for mortals,
But you fan this fiery misery far
| From my grand hopes. No, child, | 345 |
Not with spear point or Argive spear
Did I expect your marriage consummated. Give me
The fire! It’s not right you bear a torch,
A raging maenad, nor in misfortune, child,
| Have your senses cleared, but stay like this. | 350 |
Bring inside the torches, Trojan women,
Exchange tears for her wedding songs.
CASSANDRA:
Mother, crown my head with victory
And rejoice in my royal marriage.
| Escort me, and, even if I am unwilling, | 355 |
Drag me. If Apollo exists,
The famed lord of the Achaeans, Agamemnon,
Marries into a more troublesome marriage than Helen’s.
For I will kill him and plunder his house
| In return, avenging my brothers and father. | 360 |
But I will stop. I will not sing of the axe
That will enter my neck and other beheadings
And the matricidal agonies that my marriage brings
And the overthrow of the House of Atreus.
| I shall show this city more fortunate than the Achaeans, | 365 |
And, though possessed, I shall stand
That much outside my bacchic madness.
For one woman and one love,
They hunted Helen and destroyed thousands.
| The wise general killed his beloved child | 370 |
On behalf of the hateful and gave up
The pleasures of children at home for his brother,
For a woman willing, and not taken by force.
After they came to the Scamander’s banks,
| They kept dying, though no one had taken their land | 375 |
Or their high-towers. Those Ares seized
Did not see their children, were not shrouded
By a wife’s touch, and lie in an alien land.
Like things happened at home:
| Some women died widows; others childless, | 380 |
Having raised children in their homes for nothing.
At their tombs, no one pours the blood offering.
For all this, the army must be commended!
Better to be silent about shameful things.
| May she who hymns evil be not my muse. | 385 |
First, Trojans—their greatest fame!—
Died for their country, those corpses the spear took
Were borne home by those dear to them
And have a garment of earth in their fatherland,
| Wrapped by hand in the required rites. | 390 |
Those Phrygians who did not die in battle
Always lived with wife and children,
Pleasures foreign to the Achaeans.
Hear how it is with Hector, so wretched you think:
| He passed away in reputation the best. | 395 |
The coming of the Greeks did that.
Had they stayed home, his valor would have gone unnoticed.
Paris married Zeus’ daughter, but if he did not,
At home he would have had a wife no one heard of.
| He who thinks well must avoid war. | 400 |
If it comes, to die nobly is not a shameful crown
For the city, but to die ignobly is a disgrace.
For this, you should not, mother, pity
Our country or my marriage bed, for by my marriage,
| I shall kill those we hate most. | 405 |
CHORUS:
How sweetly you laugh at domestic disasters
And sing what you will perhaps see later is false.
TALTHYBIUS:
Had Apollo not maddened you, you would not
Send out my commanders from the land
| With such a prophecy without paying a price. | 410 |
But those thought grand and wise
Are no better than nothing at all:
For the great lord of the Pan-Hellenes,
Atreus’ dear son, subjugated himself
| And chose the love of this maenad. I’m a poor man | 415 |
But I wouldn’t have asked for her bed.
You don’t have a sound mind.
Your reproaches to the Argives and praises of the Phrygians
I toss to the winds. Follow me to the ship
| —A great match for the general!—And you, | 420 |
When the son of Laertes wants to take you,
Follow him. You will be a slave to a virtuous woman,
So those who came to Troy say.
CASSANDRA:
What a fierce flunky he is. Why do they have
| The name “heralds,” hateful to all men, | 425 |
Who humor tyrants and city-states? You said
My mother shall go under Odysseus’ roof?
Where are the words of Apollo, communicated
To me, that she will die here? I won’t insult
| Her with the rest. The wretched Odysseus, | 430 |
He does not know what he will suffer.
How my suffering and Troy’s will seem gold
To him. Ten years more he will complete
And arrive in his fatherland alone,
| [Beyond] the narrow, rocky strait that fierce Charybdis | 435 |
Inhabits, the mountaineering Cyclops,
Who eats flesh raw, and Ligurian Circe,
Transformer of men to swine, and shipwreck at sea,
And the love of lotus and the Sun’s sacred cattle
| Whose sizzling flesh will send a bitter prophecy | 440 |
To Odysseus. Enough. Living, he shall go
To the House of Death and escape ocean water.
Coming home, he will find much misery.
But why do I spout forth the sorrows of Odysseus?
| March, as fast as I can, and be married in Hades to my groom! | 445 |
For certain that evil man shall be buried with evil rites in darkness,
Not by day—you who think you act great, O leader of the Danaans!
And I, too, a naked corpse thrown out, the gullies,
Flowing with swollen storm water near my husband’s tomb
| Will give me to beasts to eat, me the handmaid of Apollo. | 450 |
O garlands of the most beloved of gods, sacred joys,
Good-bye. I have abandoned the festivals I once gloried in.
Go, torn from off my skin, so that being still holy in body,
I give you to be borne on swift winds for you, O mantic god.
| Where is the general’s ship? Where must I step on board? | 455 |
No longer can you be too quick watching for a wind for the sails.
You shall take me out of this land as one of the three Furies.
Good-bye, mother. No tears. O beloved country
And my brothers beneath the earth and the father who begot us,
| You shall receive me soon. I will come to the dead bringing victory, | 460 |
Having ravaged the house of Atreus, which wrecked us.
(CASSANDRA exits followed by TALTHYBIUS. HECUBA falls.)
CHORUS LEADER:
Protectors of old Hecuba, don’t you see
How the queen falls speechless and prostrate?
Won’t you help her? You will let an old woman
| Lie there, you villains? Lift her up! | 465 |
HECUBA:
Fallen, let me lie here. Unwanted help is not
At all welcome, my women. Falling is right
For what I suffer and have suffered and still will suffer.
O you gods! I summon evil allies,
| But to call on the gods means something, | 470 |
When one of us suffers disaster.
(HECUBA is helped up.)
So first I want to sing of joy.
That way I get more pity for my misfortunes.
I was royal, and I married royalty.
| I bore the greatest children, | 475 |
Not mere nothings, but the finest of the Phrygians,
Whom no Trojan nor Greek nor barbarian
Woman could boast of giving birth to.
I saw them fall under the Greek spear.
| I cut my hair at their tombs. | 480 |
And Father Priam—I didn’t hear it from others
But saw it with my own eyes and cried—
Him butchered at the altar fire,
And the city was taken. The virgins I raised
| For the honor of choice bridegrooms, | 485 |
I had them taken from my hands, raised for others,
No hoping that they shall see me,
And I will see them no more.
And the last, the capstone of my pitiful disasters,
| I go off to Greece, an old woman slave. | 490 |
It is absolutely unbearable at my age
What they will put upon me: a doorkeeper
To guard the keys, I who bore Hector,
Or make bread and have a mat on the ground
| For my wrinkled back, after a royal bedstead, | 495 |
My flesh ragged and wrapped in rags,
The pieces of my gown, unseemly for the wealthy to wear.
Pathetic me, ruined because of one woman’s one marriage:
What disasters I met with, and shall meet with!
| Cassandra, my child, you who reveled with gods, | 500 |
In what misfortunes you lost your virginity,
And you, poor Polyxena, where are you?
Neither male nor female child
Of the many I bore helps unhappy me.
| So why raise me up? On what hope? | 505 |
Lead my foot, graceful in Troy once,
A slave now, to my bed of leaves on the ground
And my stony pillow, so falling I shall perish
Wasted by tears. Do not think
| Any fortunate man fortunate, until he dies. | 510 |
CHORUS:
Sing me dirges for Troy,
Weeping and new,
O Muse, a burial hymn.
| I shall now cry out in song for Troy | 515 |
How by the four-wheeled Argive cart,
I died a wretched captive of the spear.
Greeks left that gold-studded horse that creaked to heaven
| Filled with armed men | 520 |
At the city gates.
The rock called out
“Go! Ah! Our pain is gone.
| Bring up the statue | 525 |
To Zeus’ Trojan daughter.”
What girl did not go?
What old man from his home?
In song they found reckless
| Treachery. | 530 |
The whole race of Troy
Rushed to the gates,
Brought in the mountain pine—
| A barrage of boards and death for Troy. | 535 |
For Pallas with the divine horses.
With circling ropes of flax, like a ship,
They brought the dark hull to her temple floor,
| Red with Troy’s blood | 540 |
At the goddess’ seat.
When dark night came
On work and joy,
The Libyan flute rang out
| And Phrygian singing. | 545 |
The virgins raised their beating
Feet, cheerful outcries.
In homes, the radiant fires
Burnt down to black embers,
| Bringing sleep. | 550 |
With the chorus in the temple,
I was celebrating the mountain virgin,
Daughter of Zeus.
| A bloody war cry across the city | 555 |
Filled the shrines of the citadel.
Fluttered their hands
In the robes of their mothers.
| Ares stepped from ambush, | 560 |
The work of the Virgin Pallas.
The slaughter of Phrygians
Went on at the altars and
Desolate beheadings
| Of husbands in their beds bore off | 565 |
The child-bearing prizes of young women to Greece,
A sorrow for the Phrygian fatherland.
(ANDROMACHE enters with ASTYANAX, her baby, in a wagon full of Trojan spoils.)
Hecuba, do you see Andromache here
Carried in the foreigner’s wagon?
| Darling Astyanax, Hector’s son, | 570 |
Is with her, close to her heaving breast.
Where are they taking you on the back of a wagon,
Poor woman,
Sitting beside Hector’s bronze weapons
And the Phrygian spoils taken by the spear,
| With which the son of Achilles | 575 |
Will crown from Troy his Phthian temples?
ANDROMACHE:
Achaean lords are leading me away.
HECUBA:
No, no!
ANDROMACHE:
Why do you sigh my song?
What hell!
ANDROMACHE:
This pain!
HECUBA:
O, Zeus,
ANDROMACHE:
| Misery! | 580 |
HECUBA:
Children,
ANDROMACHE:
We were that once
HECUBA:
Our happiness is gone, and Troy is gone,
ANDROMACHE:
Accurst.
HECUBA:
My noble children gone.
ANDROMACHE:
What hell,
HECUBA:
Mine, too,
The pain!
HECUBA:
| Pitiful | 585 |
ANDROMACHE:
City
HECUBA:
That smolders still.
ANDROMACHE:
My husband, O please come,
HECUBA:
—You call my son in Hades,
Unhappy woman.—
ANDROMACHE:
| Come safeguard your wife. | 590 |
You ruiner of Greeks,
HECUBA:
My first-born child to Priam
Of all my sons then.
ANDROMACHE:
Let me lie in hell.
These are grand yearnings:
| —What pains, we suffer, poor woman.— | 595 |
ANDROMACHE:
A city is destroyed
HECUBA:
—Pain lies on pain.—
ANDROMACHE:
Because of the malignant gods when your son escaped death,
Who destroyed the Trojan citadel for an abominable marriage.
Before the goddess Pallas, the bloodied bodies of the dead
| Are stretched out for vultures to carry off. The yoke of slavery has reached Troy. | 600 |
HECUBA:
O my sad country,
ANDROMACHE:
I—weep for your abandonment.—
HECUBA:
You see the wretched end.
ANDROMACHE:
My home where I delivered!
HECUBA:
My children, your mother in a deserted city is lost to you.
What song! What sorrow!
| Tears on tears pour down | 605 |
In our homes. The dead man forgets pain.
CHORUS:
How sweet are tears to those who have suffered
And cries of lamentation and music that has pain.
ANDROMACHE:
| O mother of Hector, who wasted so many | 610 |
Argives with his spear—You see this?
HECUBA:
I see the work of the gods: how they raise up
Things that are nothing and destroy what seems something.
ANDROMACHE:
The child and I are led away as booty. The wellborn
| Inherits slavery. So great is the change. | 615 |
HECUBA:
The power of necessity is terrifying. Cassandra
Just now was dragged away from me.
ANDROMACHE:
Oh no!
Another Ajax, it seems, has appeared,
Your daughter’s second. You suffer more, too.
HECUBA:
| There is neither measure nor number for my sufferings. | 620 |
One evil competes with the next.
ANDROMACHE:
Your daughter Polyxena is dead, her throat cut
Before Achilles’ tomb, a gift to a lifeless corpse.
I’m cursed. That enigma Talthybius spoke
| To me unclearly before is clear now. | 625 |
ANDROMACHE:
I saw her myself. Getting down from the wagon,
I covered her corpse with garments and struck my breast.
HECUBA:
Woe on woe, child, your unholy sacrifice!
How you have died horribly!
ANDROMACHE:
| Dead is dead. But her being dead | 630 |
Is a better fortune than my being alive.
HECUBA:
My child, to die is not the same as living.
It is nothing at all. In life is hope.
ANDROMACHE:
Mother, mother of children, hear my great words,
| So I may put delight in your heart. | 635 |
I say to die is like not having been born,
And to die is better than to live in misery.
The dead no longer feel pain at all.
The fortunate man falling into misfortune
| Misses in his mind his former success. | 640 |
Polyxena, just as if she had not seen the light,
Is dead and knows nothing of her torture,
And though I hit the target of good reputation,
And won much, I missed that of good fortune.
| The modest behavior that belongs to a woman | 645 |
I produced by hard efforts in Hector’s house.
First, whether the woman is at fault or not,
A bad reputation follows her
Who does not stay inside.
| Putting away my desire, I remained at home. | 650 |
And in the house, I did not allow
The loose talk of women. Having my mind
As a good home teacher, I was satisfied.
For my husband, I had a quiet tongue
| And a calm eye. I knew where I should prevail | 655 |
Over him and where he should have the victory.
That reputation reaching the Greek army
Wrecked me. When I was taken,
Achilles’ son wanted me for wife.
| I shall slave in the house of our murderer! | 660 |
If, setting aside the dear image of Hector,
I’ll open my heart to my new husband,
I’ll seem evil to the dead one. Or hating
The new one, I’ll be hated by my master.
| Though they say that one night | 665 |
In a man’s bed loosens a hostile woman,
I hate her who throws over
Her former husband for a new marriage
And loves another. But no horse separated
| From its companion bears the yoke easy. | 670 |
And the savage and voiceless beast
Is without reason and inferior by nature.
But in you, O dear Hector, I had a man good for me
And great in wit and birth and wealth and courage.
| You first yoked me in marriage, untouched, | 675 |
A virgin, taken from my father’s house.
Now you are destroyed, and I’ll be taken over the sea
To Greece, a captive under the yoke of slavery.
Does not the dead Polyxena, whom you cry for,
| Have less sorrow than me? | 680 |
For the hope that remains to all mortals
Does not go with me. Nor do I deceive myself
That I’ll fare well. Still, it’s sweet to think so.
CHORUS:
You, too, have come to the same disaster. Lamenting
| Yours, you teach me what misery I am in. | 685 |
HECUBA:
I myself have never been on a ship,
But I know from pictures and reports:
If a storm is moderate enough for the sailors to bear,
They have the heart to save themselves from disaster:
| One at the tiller, one at the sails, | 690 |
Another keeps out bilge. If a full sea
Churned-up overwhelms them, they let themselves
Fall to their fate in the running of the waves.
So I, having much misery,
| I am voiceless and keep my tongue, | 695 |
Such a divine wave of misery overpowers me.
But, O dear child, let go of Hector’s fate.
Your tears will not save him.
Honor your new lord,
| Giving the man the lure of your charm. | 700 |
If you do this, you will please all your friends
And will raise up the son of my son
As the greatest benefit for Troy, so the sons
Of his race may establish Ilium again
| And it will be a city still. | 705 |
But from this subject, another arises.
What lackey do I see approaching,
A messenger of new resolutions?
TALTHYBIUS:
Wife of Hector, once the best of the Phrygians,
| Do not hate me. Unwilling I announce | 710 |
The common message of Greeks and Peloponnesians.
ANDROMACHE:
What is it? Your preface is an evil beginning!
TALTHYBIUS:
It is resolved that this child. . . . How can I say it?
ANDROMACHE:
He’s not to have a different master from me?
TALTHYBIUS:
| No Greek will be his master. | 715 |
ANDROMACHE:
Leave him here the last of the Trojans?
TALTHYBIUS:
I don’t know how to tell you bad news easily.
ANDROMACHE:
I praise your hesitation, except in telling bad news.
TALTHYBIUS:
They shall kill your child. Now, you know the worst.
ANDROMACHE:
| No! I hear a greater disaster than my marriage. | 720 |
Odysseus triumphed in the assembly . . .
ANDROMACHE:
—All the worse! I suffer beyond measure!—
TALTHYBIUS:
. . . Saying do not raise the son of the best father . . .
ANDROMACHE:
—May he win such things for his own children!—
TALTHYBIUS:
| . . . That they must throw him from the Trojan towers. | 725 |
Let this be so, and you will show yourself wiser.
Don’t hold on to him. Suffer your pain nobly.
Not having strength, don’t think you have power.
You are powerless. You must watch out.
| City and husband are ruined. You are defeated. | 730 |
And we are able to battle one, lone woman.
For this reason, I don’t want you to desire a fight
Or to perform some shameful or hateful act
Or hurl curses at the Achaeans.
| If you say anything that angers the army, | 735 |
The child will go unburied and unpitied.
Being silent and mastering your fate,
You wouldn’t leave this child’s corpse without a grave,
And you yourself would make the Greeks more merciful.
ANDROMACHE:
| O most beloved, O much-honored child, | 740 |
You die at enemy hands, leaving your mother lost.
The noble birth of a father,
A safeguard for others, shall kill you.
The bravery of your father is no help to you.
| O my cursed wedding bed and marriage | 745 |
Through which I came into Hector’s house,
Not to bear my son a victim for Greeks,
But a king of fruitful Asia!
O child, are you crying? Do you feel your fate?
| Why grab me and hold my gown, | 750 |
Huddling like a chick between my wings?
Hector won’t come, seizing his famous spear,
Coming up out of the earth to bring your deliverance,
No father’s kinsmen or Phrygian force,
| But a horrible fall on your neck from on high, | 755 |
Pitilessly breaking your breath.
O most beloved child, clasped in your mother’s arms,
O sweet smell of your skin! For nothing
This breast nourished you in baby clothes.
| Useless, I wore myself out, wasted with work. | 760 |
Now, and never again, embrace your mother,
Hug her who bore you, wrap your arms
Around my back and join lips.
O Greeks, inventing barbarian crimes,
| Why do you kill this blameless child? | 765 |
O, Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, not Zeus,
I say you were born of many fathers:
First Vengeance, then Envy, Murder
And Death and as many evils as earth breeds.
| I’m sure Zeus never bore you, | 770 |
Deathbringer to many barbarians and Greeks.
May you die! With your beautiful eyes,
You shamefully destroyed the renowned plains of Troy.
Come, take him, throw him if you will.
| Feast on his flesh. By the gods, | 775 |
We are brought to nothing, and we cannot
Keep off death from my child. Veil my poor body
And throw it into the ship. A beautiful
Marriage I go to, losing my child.
CHORUS:
| Poor Troy, you have lost thousands | 780 |
For one woman and a hateful marriage.
TALTHYBIUS:
Come, boy, leaving the loving embrace
Of your tortured mother, go to the crowning
Heights of your father’s towers, where,
| It was decreed, to stop your breath. | 785 |
Take him! A man must be ruthless
To herald such things
And more a friend
To heartlessness than I am.
(TALTHYBIUS takes the child and exits. The wagon continues with ANDROMACHE.)
HECUBA:
| My child, son of a cursed son, | 790 |
We are unjustly robbed of your life,
Your mother and I. What is to become of me?
What can I do for you, unlucky child?
We can strike our heads and beat our breasts,
| That we can do. My poor city! | 795 |
Poor you! What trouble don’t we have?
What stops destruction from
Rushing over us completely?
O, Telamon, king of bee-breeding Salamis, you
| Set your throne on the wave-encircled island | 800 |
Opposite the blessed hill where first
Athena revealed the gray-green branch of the olive tree,
Heavenly crown and glory for gleaming Athens.
You, you came with the bow-shooter Heracles
| To share great deeds, | 805 |
Sacking Troy, our city,
When you arrived of old from Greece.
He led the first flower of Greeks, cheated of his horses,
| And relaxed his sea oar at fair Simois, | 810 |
Heracles, who tied the stern cables
And raised from the ship his skillful hand and Laomedon’s
Death, and after purging the perfect stonework
| Of Apollo with red blasts of flame on flame, | 815 |
He ravaged Troy.
Twice, in two batterings,
| The murderous spear smashed Trojan walls. | 820 |
For nothing, you walk graceful by golden decanters,
Laomedon’s son, Ganymede,
Who fills the cups of Zeus in glorious slavery,
| While your native city is eaten by fire. | 825 |
Salty shores
Cry out, like a bird
| For her young, | 830 |
Here for husbands, for children there,
For grandmothers there.
Your fresh bathing places,
Your schoolboy running courses are gone.
| You keep your young face radiantly calm | 835 |
With favors at the throne of Zeus,
Though Greek spears ruined
| The land of Priam. | 840 |
Eros, Eros, you came to the house of Dardanus,
The heavenly ones loving you.
How then you raised Troy high in greatness, linking
| Her in wedlock to the gods. I reproach | 845 |
Zeus no more.
The shattering light,
White-winged Dawn,
| Friend to mortals, she saw Troy wrecked, | 850 |
Saw Pergamum, too,
Though she had a husband,
A father for her children, from Troy.
| A golden four-horse chariot from heaven | 855 |
Took him above, made him the land’s
Great hope. But Troy
Charms gods no more.
(MENELAUS enters.)
MENELAUS:
| O this light, shining beauty of the sun, | 860 |
In which I shall capture my wife
Helen, for I am Menelaus,
Worn-out with labor for the Greek army.
I came to Troy, not as people think,
| For a woman, but for a man who cheated | 865 |
His host and took his wife from his home.
That man paid the penalty, thank the gods,
And he and the land fell to the Greek spear.
I have come to take the Laconian woman—it’s not sweet
| To speak the name of the wife who was mine once. | 870 |
She is counted in this tent of captives
With the other Trojan women.
Those who fought hard for her with their spears
Gave her to me to kill or, if I wish,
| To bring her back unkilled to the Argive land. | 875 |
It seems best to me to forget Helen’s fate
In Troy and take her with rapid oar
Into Greece and put her to death there,
Payment for so many friends dying at Troy.
| But, go into the tent, my men, | 880 |
Escort her out, dragging her
By her blood-soaked hair.
When fair winds blow, we shall take her to Greece.
HECUBA:
O support of earth, having your seat on earth—
| Zeus, or air—whoever you are, difficult to know, | 885 |
Either necessity of nature or mind of man,
I pray to you. In silent ways,
You lead all mortal affairs to justice.
MENELAUS:
What is this? What strange prayers you make!
HECUBA:
| I praise you—if you kill your wife. | 890 |
Avoid her sight, or she will snatch you with love.
She snares men’s eyes, wipes out cities,
Burns homes. She has such magic.
I know her. You do, too, and those who have suffered.
(HELEN enters, finely dressed.)
HELEN:
| Menelaus, This is a fearful start. | 895 |
I am brought out before the tent
In the hands of your servants by force.
I suppose you hate me. All the same,
I wish to ask what decision
| Have the Greeks and you made on my life? | 900 |
MENELAUS:
Nothing definite, but the whole army
Gave you to me, the man you cheated, to kill.
HELEN:
Then can I speak to this decision,
Showing that if I die, I die unjustly?
MENELAUS:
| I came not for words, but to kill you. | 905 |
HECUBA:
Hear her! Do not kill her without this,
Menelaus, and let me answer her.
You know nothing of the trouble
In Troy. The whole argument together
| Will kill her. There is no escape. | 910 |
MENELAUS:
This takes time. Still if she wishes to speak,
Let her. But know I grant it
On account of your words, not for her sake.
Whether I speak well or badly, you probably
| Will not answer, considering me an enemy. | 915 |
And I, against what I think you will charge me with,
I shall answer, opposing
My accusations to yours.
First, this woman bore the beginning of trouble
| By giving birth to Paris, and, second, the old man | 920 |
Destroyed Troy and me by not killing the baby,
The painful image of a firebrand, then called Alexander.
Hear the rest of what happened.
He judged this triple group of goddesses.
| The gift of Athena to Alexander was to destroy | 925 |
Greece by commanding a Trojan army.
Hera held out rule over Asia
And the boundaries of Europe, if she won.
Aphrodite, wondering at my looks,
| Offered me, if she surpassed the goddesses | 930 |
In beauty. Consider what followed next.
Aphrodite won. My marriage blessed Greece,
So it is not ruled by barbarians,
Neither through spear nor tyranny.
| Greece prospered by what destroyed me. | 935 |
Sold for my beauty, I am blamed
By those who should crown my head.
You will say I have not spoken to the point:
How I left your house secretly.
| Having no minor goddess with him, | 940 |
This demon of Hecuba, call him
Alexander or Paris, as you wish,
This man, you worst of husbands, you left
In your home and sailed from Sparta to Crete.
| I shall question, not you, but myself: | 945 |
What was I thinking, going off from my house
With a stranger, giving up country and home?
Punish the goddess, if you are stronger than Zeus,
Who has power over the other gods,
| Though he is Love’s slave. So forgive me. | 950 |
But you may raise a false objection against me.
After Alexander died and went deep under earth,
Because my god-prepared marriage was no more,
I should have left my house and gone to the Greek ships.
| I tried this very thing. The tower keepers | 955 |
And the guards on the walls are my witnesses,
Who often discovered me secretly letting myself
Down from the battlements to the ground on a rope.
Deiphobus, that new husband, took me
| And held me as wife against the will of the Trojans. | 960 |
How could I die legitimately, my husband,
And justly and by you, I who married by force,
My domestic life bitter slavery, instead
Of a reward for victory. If you want power
| Over gods, your desire is mindless. | 965 |
CHORUS:
My queen, protect your children and country,
Break her eloquence, because she speaks well,
And does wrong—a terrible thing.
HECUBA:
I shall become the ally of the goddesses
| And show she spoke unjustly. | 970 |
I don’t think Hera and the virgin goddess
Reached such heights of stupidity
That Hera would sell Argos to barbarians,
Or Pallas ever sell Athens in slavery to Troy.
| They did not come to Ida for such childish games | 975 |
And pride in their looks. Did the goddess
Hera have such love of beauty,
So she could get a husband better than Zeus?
Or Athena hunting for a marriage with some god,
| She who begged her father for virginity | 980 |
And fled marriage? Don’t make the goddesses silly
To gloss over your crimes. You won’t convince the wise.
You said Aphrodite—which is ridiculous—
Came with my son to Menelaus’ house.
| Could she not have remained calmly in heaven | 985 |
And brought you and the whole city of Amyclae to Troy?
It was my most remarkably handsome son,
And, seeing him, your mind became Aphrodite.
All such stupidity is Aphrodite to mortals. For truly
| Does the goddess’ name begin like aphrodisiac. | 990 |
Seeing him shining in barbarian dress
And gold, you went stark mad.
You were raised frugally in Argos.
Freed from Sparta, you hoped to flood
| Troy, already awash with gold, with your extravagance. | 995 |
The home of Menelaus was not enough
For you to riot in your luxury.
Well then.
You say my son took you by force.
What Spartan saw you? What outcry
| Did you make, young Castor and his brother | 1000 |
Still being alive and not yet among the stars?
After you came to Troy, the Argives
On your trail, the battle was to the death.
If this man’s actions were reported better,
| You praised Menelaus, so that my son | 1005 |
Suffered, having a great rival in love.
If the Trojans prospered, this man was nothing.
Watching fortune, you worked it so that
You followed her and chose not to follow virtue.
| Then you say you secretly let yourself down | 1010 |
From the walls by a rope, as if kept against your will.
Where were you caught hanging by a noose
Or sharpening a sword, which a high-born woman
Would do, longing for her ex-husband?
| I advised you many, many times: | 1015 |
“My daughter, go home! My child will make
Another marriage. I shall send you to the Achaean ships,
Helping you sneak away. Stop the war
Between the Greeks and us!” You hated this.
| You ran rampant in Alexander’s palace and wanted | 1020 |
Barbarians to prostrate themselves before you.
This meant something to you. And now
You come decked out, seeing the same sky
As your husband, you despicable bitch.
| You should have come humble in rags, | 1025 |
Wracked with fear, head shorn,
Showing shame rather than shamelessness
For the crimes you have committed.
Menelaus, know my conclusion:
| Crown Greece by nobly killing this woman, | 1030 |
And set the law for others:
Whoever betrays her husband, dies.
Menelaus, take a vengeance on your wife worthy
Of your ancestors and home. Avoid unmanly blame
| In Greece. Be noble before your enemies. | 1035 |
MENELAUS:
You agree with me in this matter:
That she went from my home of her own free will
To a foreign bed. Aphrodite was brought into her story
So she could brag. Go to the stone-throwers!
| Pay quickly for the long suffering of the Achaeans | 1040 |
With death and learn not to disgrace me!
HELEN:
No, I grab your knees! Don’t kill me,
Blaming me for the madness of the goddesses! Forgive!
HECUBA:
Don’t betray your allies she has already killed.
| I beg you on their behalf and their children. | 1045 |
MENELAUS:
Stop, old woman. I take no thought of her.
I’m telling my servants to take her
To the ships, from there to be taken to sea.
HECUBA:
Don’t let her go in the same ship as you.
MENELAUS:
| What? Has she put on weight? | 1050 |
HECUBA:
There is no lover who does not always love.
The minds of lovers vary.
But let it be as you wish. She shall not
Go in the same ship. You speak well.
| Reaching Argos, this rotten wife will die | 1055 |
The painful death she deserves and will instill
Chastity in all women. This is not easy.
Nevertheless, her destruction will strike fear
Into their stupidity, even if they are more hateful than her.
(MENELAUS exits with HELEN.)
CHORUS:
| Could you betray the temples | 1060 |
In Ilium to the Achaeans
So easily, and altars of sweet incense,
O Zeus, and flame of honeyed offerings,
The smoke of heavenly myrrh,
| Blest Pergamum, and Ida’s, Ida’s | 1065 |
Ravines of ivy wreaths that run
With rivers of the melted snow,
The boundary struck first by the dawn,
| The sacred dwelling lit by sunlight? | 1070 |
Gone are the sacrifices,
The holy music of the choirs,
And all-night vigils for the gods in darkness,
The statues with their profiles of gold,
| And festivals of the moon | 1075 |
In Phrygia that number twelve.
I worry, Lord, if you care for
These things upon your heavenly throne:
The burning of the ruined city,
| Attacked by fire and blasted apart. | 1080 |
Husband, dear husband,
Dead, you wander about,
| Unburied, unclean, while a sea-ship | 1085 |
Fluttering its wings ravishes me away
To grazing Argos, where the people live
Within Cyclopean walls sky-high.
At the gates, a multitude of our children
| Cling and cry and cry and cry, | 1090 |
“Mother, no, please no, the Achaeans pull me
Away, alone, without you,
From your sight to their dark ship
| With sea-oars to | 1095 |
Sacred Salamis,
Or the Isthmian headland, open
Two ways, where Pelops’ palace
Guards the Peloponnesus.”
| Flashing with lightning, | 1100 |
May Aegean’s blest fire
Hurled with all might strike amidships
Menelaus’ oars in mid-sea, since he
| Sends me away in tears, in tears from Troy, | 1105 |
A slave from home to Hellas while
Helen, Zeus’ daughter, happens to hold
Golden mirrors, the joy of girls.
| May he not come to the Laconian land, | 1110 |
His fatherland and his hearth
Nor the city of Pitane
And its bronze-gated
Temple, capturing
| His cheating wife, great Greece’s shame, | 1115 |
That brought such miserable suffering
To the river Simois.
Oh, no!
New misfortunes follow new misfortunes
In our land. Look, unhappy wives of Troy,
| At this corpse of Astyanax, | 1120 |
Some discus horribly flung from the towers.
Greeks have killed him.
(TALTHYBIUS enters with the corpse of ASTYANAX.)
TALTHYBIUS:
Hecuba, one last oared ship is about
To carry by sea the remaining spoils
| Of Achilles’ son to the coast of Phthia. | 1125 |
Neoptolemus himself has set sail,
Hearing some bad news of his grandfather.
Acastus, Pelias’ son, has driven him from the country.
So he went quickly. He didn’t have the luxury
| Of delay. Andromache is with him, | 1130 |
Bringing me to many tears as she left,
Moaning for her fatherland and saying farewell
To Hector’s tomb. She asked Neoptolemus
To bury this child, who, hurled from the walls,
| Breathed out his life, the son of your Hector. | 1135 |
And this bronze-backed shield, the terror of Achaeans,
This, that his father threw over his ribs,
She asked him not to take it to Peleus’ hearth
Nor into the room where she will be bedded,
| For Andromache, the dead child’s mother, | 1140 |
A painful sight. But to bury the boy in the shield
Instead of cedar wood or surrounding stone,
To give him into your arms to wrap the corpse
With robes and wreaths as best as you can,
| Since she is gone and her master’s haste | 1145 |
Would not let her bury her own child.
We, when you have dressed the body,
Will cover it in earth and take to sea.
Do your duty as fast as possible.
| I saved you one torture. | 1150 |
Crossing Scamander’s streams,
I washed the body and cleansed its wounds.
But now I go to break ground for the grave,
And cut short the work you and I must do
| To set our ship on course for home. | 1155 |
HECUBA:
Put the fine-rounded shield on the ground,
A sad spectacle, unwelcome in my sight.
(TALTHYBIUS exits.)
Why, O Achaeans, did you fear this young child,
Prouder of your spear than your brain,
| And commit such outrageous murder? Would he stand | 1160 |
Fallen Troy up again someday? How empty you are!
Though Hector triumphed with his spear
With thousands of others, we still perished.
But when the city died and the Phrygians were ruined,
| You feared this tiny baby. I do not honor fear | 1165 |
In one who fears and does not think.
O dearest, what a misfortune your death is!
If you died for the city, reaching manhood,
Marriage, and the godlike kingship, you would have been blessed
| —If any of these things are blessed. But now, unaware, | 1170 |
Neither seeing nor knowing these things,
Child, you experienced nothing of your inheritance.
Unlucky you, your country’s walls,
Towered by Apollo, horribly gashed the curls
| Your mother bore and cultivated so much | 1175 |
And covered with kisses, where blood laughs out
Among broken bones—how shamelessly I speak!
O hands, how you are the sweet images
Of your father’s, but lie loose in the sockets.
| O dear mouth, promising much, you are ruined | 1180 |
And have deceived me, burying yourself in my gown,
Saying, “O grandmother, I shall cut a great lock
Of curls off for you and bring groups of my friends
To your grave and give a loving eulogy.” Now you
| Don’t bury me, but I you, a sorry, younger corpse, | 1185 |
Me an old, cityless, childless woman.
O, the many hugs, the nursery care,
The naps we shared, all gone.
What could a poet write upon your grave?
| “The Achaeans killed this child from fear”? | 1190 |
The inscription is disgraceful to Greece.
Not having your inheritance, you shall have
Instead a bronze-backed shield for a tomb.
O shield, that saved the beautiful arm
| Of Hector, you have lost your best guardian. | 1195 |
How sweet the impression lies in the handle,
and in the circular rim of the shield
The sweat, which long-struggling Hector dropped
From his forehead and left from his beard.
| Go, bring in ornament for the sad corpse, | 1200 |
Whatever you can. Fate leaves
No glamour here. What I have, you shall get.
That mortal is a fool who seems successful
And always rejoices. Fate in its ways,
| Like a crazy man, leaps here and there. | 1205 |
The same man is never happy forever.
CHORUS:
Here at hand, the women are bringing you ornaments
From the Phrygian spoils to deck your dead body.
HECUBA:
O child, your father’s mother places on you,
| Not prizes, won with horses or bows over your friends, | 1210 |
Customs Phrygians honor in moderation,
But gifts once your own. Helen, hated by the gods,
Took everything, took you, and killed your life
| And wrecked totally our whole royal house. | 1215 |
CHORUS:
There, there, you strike,
You strike my heart, my once great lord
Of the city!
HECUBA:
Glorious Phrygian robes that should have dressed
Your body in marriage to the highest Asian princess,
| I put on your flesh. And you, beloved shield | 1220 |
Of Hector, once the mother of countless
Trophies, receive this crown.
Dying with the dead, you do not die.
Since it is better by far to honor you
| Than the weapons of clever, cowardly Odysseus. | 1225 |
Gods! Gods!
The land weeps bitterly
To receive you, my child.
Weep, mother
HECUBA:
—O gods!—
CHORUS:
A lament of the dead.
HECUBA:
| What now! | 1230 |
CHORUS:
O gods, indeed, your unforgettable pain!
HECUBA:
I shall heal your wounds with bandages,
A pathetic doctor in name, but powerless.
Your father will tend you among the dead.
CHORUS:
| Strike, strike your head! | 1235 |
Blows of the hand, like oars!
Me! What pain!
HECUBA:
Most beloved women!
Hecuba, tell us. What are you crying?
HECUBA:
| The gods care about nothing except my pain | 1240 |
And Troy hated beyond other cities.
We slaughtered oxen for nothing. But had not a god
Overturned the land and thrown down what stood up,
We would be unknown and not hymned by the muses,
| Providing songs for men to come. | 1245 |
Go, bury the corpse in its pitiful grave.
He has the death cloths he needs.
I think it matters little to the dead,
If someone is buried in rich clothes.
| That is an empty boast of the living. | 1250 |
(The corpse of ASTYANAX is carried out.)
CHORUS:
Pure hell!
Poor mother, her great hopes
For your life mangled!
Child, greatly happy, descended
From noble ancestors,
| Destroyed by terrible death. | 1255 |
What more!
Who do I see on top of Troy,
Waving hands flaming
With torches? Some new disaster
Is about to fall on Troy.
(TALTHYBIUS enters.)
TALTHYBIUS:
| I call you captains who were ordered | 1260 |
To burn this city of Priam. No longer
Keep the flame idle in your hand but hurl fire,
So we may level the city of Priam
And set out happily from Troy.
| This order is double: | 1265 |
When the chiefs sound the shrill blast
Of the trumpet, move ahead, daughters of Troy,
To the Achaean ships and so depart the land.
You, most wretched old woman, follow them!
| These men come after you from Odysseus, | 1270 |
Whose allotment takes you a slave from your homeland.
HECUBA:
Cursed me. This is the last
And end of all my sufferings.
I leave my country. My city flares upward.
| But, old foot, hurry as you can, | 1275 |
So I may say good-bye to the dying city. O grand city,
Once proud in spirit among the barbarians,
How quick you will lose your glorious name.
They burn you, leading us as slaves from the land.
| O, gods! But why do I call on the gods? | 1280 |
Called before, they did not listen.
Come, let me rush into the funeral pyre!
How very beautiful for me to die with the blazing fatherland!
(HECUBA rushes at the flames, but TALTHYBIUS drags her back.)
TALTHYBIUS:
You are possessed, poor thing,
| Because of your troubles. Come, men! No delay. | 1285 |
You must hand to Odysseus this woman, his prize.
HECUBA:
Gods, gods, gods!
Son of Cronus, Phrygian Lord, Ancestor,
Father, do you see what things unworthy
| Of your race we suffer? | 1290 |
CHORUS:
He sees. The great city—
Now no city—is ruined. Troy is no longer.
HECUBA:
Gods, gods, gods!
| Ilium blazes. The buildings | 1295 |
Of the citadel burn down
And the city and the tops of the walls.
CHORUS:
Like smoke on a heavenly wing,
Our land, fallen to the spear, crumbles away.
| Houses are overrun with furious fire | 1300 |
And the killing spear.
O country, nurse of my children!
CHORUS:
Why! Why!
HECUBA:
My children hear, and know your mother’s voice!
CHORUS:
With your lament you call upon the dead!
HECUBA:
| Putting my old limbs upon the ground, | 1305 |
I make it ring with my two fists.
CHORUS:
I follow you and set my knee
On earth and call my suffering husband
Below.
HECUBA:
We are led, we are taken
CHORUS:
| —You cry pain, pain!— | 1310 |
HECUBA:
Under a roof for a slave,
CHORUS:
Far from my home.
O Priam, O Priam,
You are ruined, graveless, friendless,
Blind to my misfortune.
CHORUS:
| Black death has covered his eyes: | 1315 |
Holy, and unholy, slaughter.
HECUBA:
O temples, beloved city
CHORUS:
Why! Why!
HECUBA:
You own the murderous fire and spearhead’s point.
CHORUS:
You shall fall quick and nameless on dear soil.
HECUBA:
| Dust like a smoky wing to heaven | 1320 |
Will make my home invisible.
CHORUS:
The name of Troy shall disappear.
One thing gone here, another there.
Troy’s gone.
HECUBA:
Notice that? Did you hear?
| Yes, the towers crash. | 1325 |
HECUBA:
Earthquake, an earthquake, the whole
CHORUS:
City it swamps.
HECUBA:
No, no! O my trembling,
Trembling limbs, make my feet move!
| Go to days of slave-life. | 1330 |
CHORUS:
Poor city! Nevertheless—
March to the Achaean ships!
(The trumpet sounds. TALTHYBIUS exits followed by HECUBA and the Trojan women.)
Notes
1–52. Prologue (what precedes the introduction of the chorus. Aristotle, Poetics, 1452b19–20). A frame scene and a divine perspective on the action (1–97). (See the introduction.) Followed by Hecuba’s song (98–153).
1. Poseidon. King Laomedon of Troy cheated Poseidon of his wages after he built a sea wall at Troy, so Poseidon remained an enemy of the Trojans during the Trojan War (Iliad 21.441–460). Poseidon is sympathetic to them in this play and intensifies our sympathies by emphasizing the excessive violence of the Greeks.
2. Nereids. Sea-goddesses.
7. Phrygians are the same as Trojans.
9. Achaean = Greek. Parnassus. Phocis is an area of northern Greece where the Mount Parnassus range is located.
13–14. These lines are thought to be an interpolation by an actor.
16–17. Poseidon cites the atrocity of King Priam of Troy being murdered at the sacred hearth that should have been a sanctuary, protected by Zeus Herkeios (“Of the Household”). Poseidon had helped build the sanctuary. For the killing of Priam by Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, see Virgil, Aeneid 2.526–558.
23. Argive = Greek. Hera. Queen of the gods.
28. Scamander. A river near Troy.
30. Arcadia, in the south, and Thessaly, in the north, are sections of Greece. Theseus was a great hero and a legendary king of Athens.
40. Achilles. Greek hero at Troy.
42. Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy, but she rejected his sexual advances. Unable to take his gift back, he gave her the curse of never being believed. Her virginity was sacred to Apollo.
43. Agamemnon. Leader of the Greek forces.
49. Poseidon is the brother of Zeus.
65–66. Athena’s decision to punish the Greeks frames the action of the tragedy, adding to the sympathy for the Trojans and condemning Greek crimes.
69–70. The Greek Ajax, son of Oileus, raped Cassandra in Athena’s temple. Cf. note to 42.
84. Euboea. Large island near Athens.
89–90. Myconos, Delos, Scyros, and Lemnos are Aegean islands. Caphareus is an eastern promontory of the island of Euboea.
98–152. Hecuba’s song (monody). In contrast to the formal, divine dialogue of Poseidon and Athena, Hecuba’s grief is augmented by her astrophic lyric measures (sung).
132. Castor was a brother of Helen.
153–229. Parodos. The introductory ode of the chorus. 153–175: Strophe A. 176–196: Antistrophe A. 197–213: Strophe B. 214–229: Antistrophe B. 153– 196 is a kommós, a lament between Hecuba and the chorus, emphasizing their bonding in misery. Unlike Hecuba, the chorus speculates on where they may go as slaves, suggesting life after Troy. Longing for, and invoking, faraway places is characteristic of Euripidean choruses (e.g., Bacchae, 402–416).
168–169. Hecuba thinks of her possessed daughter as a maenad, or follower of Dionysos (Bacchus).
184. Danaan = Greek.
188. Phthia is in northern Greece.
206. Pirene is a spring in Corinth.
210. The Eurotas is a river in Sparta.
216. The Peneus is a river in northern Greece.
220–221. Etna is the volcano in Sicily where the smith god, Hephaestus, had his forge.
223. Carthage. A city in north Africa.
225–226. The Ionian Sea is between Greece and Italy where the river Crathis is. Greeks inhabited Italy at this time.
230–510. First Episode. Introductory Greek anapests (230–234). Hecuba’s lament (278–292). Cassandra’s song (308–341). 308–324: Strophe. 325–341: Antistrophe. Cassandra’s recitative (Greek trochaic tetrameters) (444–461).
234. Dorian. Southern Greece, standing for Greece in general here.
243. Cadmus founded the Greek city of Thebes.
250–251. the Laconian / Lady is Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon and sister of Helen.
274. Achilles’ son. Neoptolemus.
278–292. Hecuba’s violent reaction shifts her dialogue to lyric. Odysseus, though a hero in the Odyssey, is often a villain (e.g., in Sophocles’ Philoctetes).
301. Argos. A city near Sparta.
308–341. Cassandra’s wild song mixes iambic, dochmiac (˘ ——˘ —), and aeolic (basically choriambic, —˘ ˘ —) verses. She blends death song and marriage song (cf. Hecuba, 209–210). Then she changes key to “outside my bacchic madness” and prophesies truly in dialogue measures but is fated never to be believed.
310. Hymen. God of marriage.
320. As mother of the bride, Hecuba was supposed to hold the bridal torch.
323. Hecate. A goddess of the underworld.
326. Evoe. The traditional bacchic cry.
327. Phoebus = Apollo.
343. Hephaestus. See note to 220–221.
370. Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to make the winds blow for the expedition to Troy.
372. for his brother. Agamemnon’s brother is Menelaus, husband of Helen.
374. Scamander’s banks. See note to 28.
376. Ares. God of War.
398. Zeus’ daughter. Helen was reputedly the daughter of Zeus, who, in the shape of a swan, raped her mother, Leda.
421. son of Laertes. Odysseus.
425–430. On the fate of Hecuba, see the introduction.
435–443. [Beyond]. Some words are missing from the manuscripts. Charybdis, Cyclops, and Circe are two monsters and a witch confronted by Odysseus. See Homer’s Odyssey (books 9–12) for all the events in this passage.
447. leader of the Danaans. Agamemnon.
457. the three Furies. Erinyes, inexorable goddesses of vengeance from the underworld.
444–462. Greek trochaic tetrameters (eight trochees to a line) extend the line, making Cassandra’s prophesy more formal, while the falling rhythm forecasts more tragedy to come after the action of the play, including her own murder.
509–510. Do not think / Any fortunate man fortunate until he dies. A Greek commonplace originally attributed to Solon the Lawgiver (Herodotus 1.32).
511–567. First Stasimon (Choral Ode). 511–530: Strophe. 531–550: Anti-strophe. 551–567: Epode.
526. Zeus’ daughter. Athena.
568–798. Second Episode. Introductory anapests (568–576.) Andromache and Hecuba Duet (557–607). 577–581: Strophe A. 582–586: Antistrophe A. 587–590: Strophe B. 591–594: Antistrophe B. 595–607: Epode. A vivid and personal re-creation of the fall of Troy (cf. Virgil, Aeneid 2), which prepares for the introduction of another victim of the war, Andromache, wife of Hector. Note that the antilabé, or split lines, add to the lyric intensity, as Hecuba and Andromache lament mainly their own individual fates till the fate of Astyanax brings them together.
597. your son. Alexander, or Paris. This story was the subject of the first play in the trilogy, Alexandros. See the introduction.
704. Ilium = Troy.
711. Peloponnesians. Southern Greeks.
725. Odysseus’ murder of Astyanax is mentioned in the Sack of Troy of the Epic Cycle (7–6 C).
782–798. Greek exit anapests.
799–859. Second Choral Ode. “The Telamon Ode” (or “The Ganymede Ode”). 799–808: Strophe A. 809–819: Antistrophe A. 820–839: Strophe B. 840–859: Antistrophe B. The chorus’ despair leads to their recalling the cursed history of Troy: How Telamon and Heracles destroyed Troy before the Greeks did. Then they lament the divine friends of Troy who failed to protect the city.
799–816. Telamon. Uncle of Achilles. Telamon helped Heracles destroy Troy earlier. Salamis. An island near Athens and traditionally the home of Euripides.
809. cheated of his horses. Heracles had rescued Hesione, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy. Laomedon promised Heracles wonderful horses that he had received from Zeus, but he never gave them to him. Laomedon was the father of Priam. Notice the many references to treachery in the play (1, 9–12, etc.).
810. Simois. A river near Troy.
821. Ganymede. Zeus carried off the Trojan boy, Ganymede, to be his cupbearer and lover.
840–856. Eros. God of love. Eros inflamed Zeus with love for Ganymede and the goddess of Dawn (Eos) with love for the Trojan Tithonus, thus connecting the gods and Troy. Dardanus. A son of Zeus, he was the founder of Troy.
851. Pergamum. The citadel of Troy.
860–1059. Third Episode. A shift in the action to a “trial” scene about the cause of the Trojan War. Menelaus now enters, not the great hero in Homer’s Iliad but the famed cuckold who now engages in a power struggle with his runaway wife (cf. Odyssey, 4.137–289).
869. Laconian. Spartan.
884–888. Hecuba reflects some Sophist speculation of the time. Anaximenes thought that air was the basic substance and determined the world, as soul determined the body. Soul itself was air. Anaxagoras posited nous, or mind. Doubts about the tales of the gods are common in Euripides (e.g., Helen, 1138–1142) and show the increasing rationalism of the age. But we must realize the dramatic context in which such speculations occur. Here we see into the contradictory mind of a tormented woman who feels abandoned by the traditional gods and divine justice she has always believed in; yet she needs to believe. Euripides was a friend of the Sophists and influenced by them.
914–965. Helen speaks a set speech (rhesis), reminiscent of law courts. Hecuba answers her with another (969–1032). Greek tragedy and Greek oratory are nearly allied. Helen’s speech has similarities with two prose defenses of Helen: Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen (undatable) and Isocrates’ Encomium to Helen (date uncertain but later than this play). The first defends Helen as victim (see the introduction). The second sees Helen as protecting Greece from Trojan domination, as she claims here (932–937).
920. the old man. Priam. See the introduction for the Alexandros, the first play in the trilogy. Alexander, “defender of men,” is another name for Paris. In that play, Hecuba dreams that she gave birth to a stick of burning wood (the firebrand of line 922).
959. Deiphobus, brother of Paris and Hector, who later married Helen at Troy. He was killed and mangled by Menelaus.
975. Ida. A mountain range near Troy.
986. Amyclae. A city near Sparta.
988–990. Aphrodite/aphrodisiac. The pun in Greek is not possible to reproduce in English: Aphrodite (“Love”) begins like aphrosyne (“mindlessness”).
1000. Castor and his brother. Castor and Pollux, brothers of Helen, now the constellation Gemini. Cf. line 132.
1060–1117. Third Choral Ode. 1060–1070: Strophe A. 1071–1080: Anti-strophe A. 1081–1099: Strophe B. 1100–1117: Antistophe B. The chorus now blames Zeus himself for not helping their city, whose natural beauty and glorious festivals are now gone, and personalizes the tragedy by prophesying the future, and finally curses Menelaus’ return.
1066. Ida’s. A local story claimed that the mountain, the boundary of ocean and land, gathered rays of light from the sea and made them into the rising sun.
1088. Cyclopean. The Cyclopes are cannibalistic giants. See notes to 435–443.
1097. Salamis. See note to 799.
1098–1099. Isthmian. The Isthmus of Corinth forms the entrance to the Peloponnesus, “Pelops’ Island,” or southern Greece. Cf. line 711.
1112. Pitane. A section of Sparta.
1114. Temple. Of Athena.
1118–1332. Exodos. Transitional Greek anapests (1118–1122). From 1216 to the end the verse becomes lyric, except for Talthybius’ order to burn down the citadel (the houses were burning at the beginning of the play), Hecuba’s reaction, and his order for the women to leave (1260–1286). 1302–1316: Strophe. 1317–1332: Antistrophe.
1128. Acastus. King of Iolcos; befriended Peleus, grandfather of Neo-ptolemus and father of Achilles. According to this passage, Acastus later drove Peleus out of Iolcos.
1152. Scamander’s streams. See line 28.
1288. Son of Cronus. Zeus. Dardanus, founder of Troy, was a son of Zeus. Cf. note to 840.
1316. Holy, and unholy, slaughter. Priam was killed at the altar of Zeus. Cf. lines 16–17.