ARTicles vol. 7 i. 4: Euripides and the Trojan Women

The Trojan Women premiered in the spring of 415 BCE, as Athens’ military fate was held in the balance.  For sixteen years the Peloponnesian War had rumbled on between Athens and Sparta.  The previous fall, Athens, eager to gain more power, provoked an incident with the neighbouring island of Melos, forcing them to capitulate to Athenian control.  After a one-sided assault the Melians surrendered; the Greeks massacred the men, and enslaved their women and children.

Shortly before the annual theatre festival began, Athenian warships were amassing in the harbour, preparing for their most ambitious scheme yet: a Sicilian expedition.  The aggressive scheme had been hotly debated in the Senate, but the belligerent majority won out, and 10,000 men set sail for Sicily with the whole of the Greek fleet.  The Sicilian expedition eventually proved to be a devastating defeat, exposing Athens to the mercy of her enemies, and ultimately resulting in the end of her greatest era.

Always a controversial and iconoclastic figure, Euripides responded to the political situation not with a patriotic celebration of Athenian power, but rather with a tragic commentary on the inhumanity of war.  Euripides often shocked and baffled his contemporaries by inverting the traditional roles of heroes and gods in mythology, creating psychologically detailed portraits of his flawed antiheroes.  He altered the focus of tragedy from the impervious realm of the gods to the humanity of daily life.  In The Trojan Women, he challenged the very nature of Greek cultural supremacy.  The Greeks established their identity based on democratic ideals, and told a version of history that emphasized the triumph of their civilized society over the tyranny of their enemies.  In The Trojan Women, however, it is the Greeks who are barbaric, treating their foes as cattle and executing a small child out of an irrational fear.  Conversely, the women of Troy, Hecuba in particular, shoulder their burdens with nobility and decency.

Given the subversive nature of The Trojan Women, with its implicit condemnation of the Melian massacre and the forthcoming Sicilian expedition, it is not surprising that the play only took second place at the theatre festival.  Euripides was no stranger to criticism; he was frequently denounced as a blasphemer and misogynist (a strange charge given the complexity of his female characters) and condemned as an inferior craftsman, especially in comparison to Sophocles.  Eventually, it is reported, he “lost his patience with the ill-will of his fellow citizen” and withdrew in self-imposed exile to Macedonia, where he lived out his days.

THE TROJAN WOMEN — SYNOPSIS
Troy has fallen to the Greeks.  Hecuba, the once-great queen of Troy, haunts the ruins of her city, waiting with her daughters and countrywomen for the Greeks to decide their fate.  The Greek captain Talthybius brings news of what will happen to them: Cassandra, the prophetic virgin priestess, will be the concubine of King Agamemnon; Andromache, widow of the warrior Hector, goes to Achilles’ son Neoptolemus; and Hecuba has been chosen as slave to the hated Odysseus.

Cassandra, foreseeing the destruction she will bring to her captors, relishes her role as avenger.  Others are not as happy with their fate.  Andromache bitterly envies the dead, who have been spared further pain.  She reports the death of Polyxena, Hecuba’s youngest daughter, sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles in exchange for a favourable wind home.

Worse is to come, as Talthybius brings the orders for Astyanax, the son of Andromache and Hector, to be killed.  The Greeks, fearing the son of Troy’s greatest warrior, hurl the young boy from the battlements.  Into this carnage arrives Menelaus, the victorious King of Sparta, come to retrieve his wayward wife Helen, whom he plans to kill in retribution for her betrayal.  The beautiful Helen pleads for her life, while Hecuba serves as prosecutor.  Ever persuasive, Helen receives a temporary reprieve, long enough to return to Sparta.

Talthybius returns with the body of Astyanax, laid out on Hector’s shield.  In her final moments at Troy, Hecuba performs the funeral rites for her young grandson, before the women are herded onto waiting Greek ships.  They leave for a new life as slaves and concubines, as their city burns behind them.

Katie Mallinson is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.

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