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For other uses of the terms The Trojan Women or Women of Troy, see The Trojan Women (disambiguation).

The Trojan Women (Ancient Greek: Τρῳάδες, romanized: Trōiades) is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides, produced in 415 BCE. Also translated as The Women of Troy, or as its transliterated Greek title Troades, The Trojan Women presents commentary on the costs of war through the lens of women and children. The four central women of the play are the same that appear in the final book of the Iliad, lamenting over the corpse of Hector after the Trojan War.

Hecuba, another tragedy by Euripides, similarly deals with the experiences of women left behind by war and was more popular in antiquity.

The tragedy has inspired many modern adaptation across film, literature, and the stage.

Historical background

The Trojan Women was written as a reaction to the Siege of Melos in 416 BCE during the Peloponnesian War, in which Athens invaded the Aegean island of Melos, destroyed its city, and slaughtered and enslaved its populace (see History of Milos).

It is the third play in a tetralogy by Euripides, all drawn from the same source material: the Iliad. The other works in the tetralogy include the tragedies Alexandros and Palamedes, and the comedic satyr play Sisyphus, all of which are largely lost, and only fragments survive. The Trojan Women was performed for the first time in 415 BCE as part of this tetralogy at the City Dionysia festival in Athens. Euripides won second place, losing to the obscure tragedian Xenocles.

Plot

Hecuba: Alas! Alas! Alas! Ilion is ablaze; the fire consumes the citadel, the roofs of our city, the tops of the walls!

Chorus: Like smoke blown to heaven on the wings of the wind, our country, our conquered country, perishes. Its palaces are overrun by the fierce flames and the murderous spear.

Hecuba: O land that reared my children!

Euripides's play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families taken away as slaves. However, it begins first with the gods Athena and Poseidon discussing ways to punish the Greek armies because they condoned that Ajax the Lesser raped Cassandra, the eldest daughter of King Priamand Queen Hecuba, after dragging her from a statue of Athena. What follows shows how much the Trojan women have suffered as their grief is compounded when the Greeks dole out additional deaths and divide their shares of women. The Greek herald Talthybius arrives to tell the dethroned queen Hecuba what will befall her and her children. Hecuba will be taken away to the Greek general Odysseus, and Cassandra is destined to become the conquering general Agamemnon's concubine.

Sacrifice of Polyxena by the Greeks on an Attic black-figure Tyrrhenian amphora

Cassandra, who can see the future, is morbidly delighted by this news: she sees that when they arrive in Argos, her new master's embittered wife Clytemnestra will kill both her and her new master. She sings a wedding song for herself and Agamemnon that describes their bloody deaths. However, Cassandra is also cursed so that her visions of the future are never believed, and she is carried off.

The widowed princess Andromache arrives and Hecuba learns from her that her youngest daughter, Polyxena, has been killed as a sacrifice at the tomb of the Greek warrior Achilles.

Andromache's lot is to be the concubine of Achilles' son Neoptolemus, and more horrible news for the royal family is yet to come: Talthybius reluctantly informs her that her baby son, Astyanax, has been condemned to die. The Greek leaders are afraid that the boy will grow up to avenge his father Hector, and rather than take this chance, they plan to throw him off from the battlements of Troy to his death.

Neoptolemus killing Priam and Astyanax

Helen is supposed to suffer greatly as well: Menelaus arrives to take her back to Greece with him where a death sentence awaits her. Helen tries to convince Menelaus that Aphrodite was the cause of her betrayal and that she should not be punished, but Hecuba says that Helen is lying and has only ever been loyal to herself. While he remains resolved that he will slay her when they return to Greece, at the end of the play it is revealed that she is still alive; moreover, the audience knows from Telemachus' visit to Sparta in Homer's Odyssey that Menelaus continued to live with Helen as his wife after the Trojan War.

In the end, Talthybius returns, carrying with him the body of little Astyanax on Hector's shield. Andromache's wish had been to bury her child herself, performing the proper rituals according to Trojan ways, but her ship had already departed. Talthybius gives the corpse to Hecuba, who prepares the body of her grandson for burial before they are finally taken off with Odysseus.

Throughout the play, many of the Trojan women lament the loss of the land that reared them. Hecuba in particular lets it be known that Troy had been her home for her entire life, only to see herself as an old grandmother watching the burning of Troy, the death of her husband, her children, and her grandchildren before she will be taken as a slave to Odysseus.

Themes and significance

Hecuba: O my dear child, it is not the same to be alive and dead. The one is nothing but in the other there is hope. Andromache: Mother, listen to my argument, a powerful one, that I offer as a comfort to your heart. I say that never to have been is the same as death, but to die is better than to live in grief.

The Trojan Women presents an anti-war narrative as it highlights the postwar experiences of the women left behind after the Trojan War. The women of Troy experience grief and suffering over the loss of their husbands and children. The tragedy also calls attention to how women were treated as commodities in antiquity by showing how they were divided among the remaining men as spoils of war. The character of Cassandra demonstrates how women were not listened to or taken seriously, but rather, seen as hysterical and irrational.

Euripides' social commentary on the costs of war The Trojan Women has left a lasting legacy, as many of its themes still resonate with the public today.