‘Andromache’ was particularly excellent!

such a beautiful telling of what the women caught up in the trojan war experienced. these stories are filled with so much tragedy, but simultaneously a lot of heart and love. i was practically in tears at the end of the trojan woman, and continued to be throughout the whole story. the translation did this a lot of justice, and worked all of the pain in these stories very seamlessly into words.

Women and children art the true casualties of war and bare the burden of determing if the battle continues. Though circumstances beyound our control bring about challenges and troubles, the measure of our character is determined by how we meet those curcumstances.

Uni Read!

I have been without internet for a while, so I have three reviews to write! I'll start here because I finished this the most recently.


This is the first collection of plays I've read all year. My taste in plays is very strong. I either love a play, or I hate it. The group of plays I love is very small. That group includes many of Euripides' plays. While I was in high school and college I had to read the three classic Greek playwrights: Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides. While I hated the first, I loved the others.

I was a little weary about rereading this book. I just reread Hardy's "Tess of D'Ubervilles," which I had loved while I was in school. That adventure did not turn out very well. My fears were unfounded, however.

All three plays create a sense of suffering that I have not encountered in literature before. The characters often ask, "What other suffering can become of us? We have already suffered all there is." These plays proceed to assure their characters that they have not, and not by a long stretch. These plays are at times so horrific that I realized that out-bested many modern horror films. Euripides evokes great emotion in his work. His great word-choice really helped him with that.

"Hecuba" and "Andromache" stand out. Both of these plays have well-defined plots. "The Trojan Women," however, seems like an epilogue to another play: we find out the fate of various important Trojan women after the war. But, there is no overarching plot, and thus, little tension. This was definitely my least favorite of the plays.

"Hecuba" and "Andromache" follow women who believe they are defending themselves. I favored Andromache because that was all she was doing. Hecuba goes too far, however, and lets her rage overtake her. These plays, despite being ancient, are timeless. The setting, culture, and war may have changed, but human nature has not. Each offers a timeless reflection on what war and rage can do to our lives.

(Trojan Women only)

i need to reread andromache one day but on less caffeine because right now i can't decide whether it was very very good or was i just experiencing shrimp emotions.

"You're giddy at your own calamities,
Brightly singing what your song keeps dark."

-Chorus Leader, in Euripides' Trojan Women.


This quote basically sums up Euripides' poetics...tragedy rendered in giddy verse. These are fantastic translations of the plays by established poets and scholars. Oxford University Press has set a high standard here and given readers of Greek Tragedy a true gift.

Having recently re-read Aeschylus' Agamemnon, it is hard for me to judge Euripides on his own terms.

These, however, are not his strongest works. All three plays repeat the common Greek wisdom that one must not count a man as fortunate until his death, and demonstrate this incessantly – which is fine, but they are not equally successful at making it interesting.

Hecuba is the best of the three, for me. The plot structure is more traditional, as well as the themes of loyalty, betrayal and revenge. Hecuba shines as the protagonist, as the most wretched and unfortunate woman of all, and the criticism directed at the Greek army and its generals is more incisive because the characterization of Agamemnon and Odysseus is original. Hecuba's temporary alliance with Agamemnon and her act of revenge against the less powerful enemy, Polymestor, is a brilliant portrayal of the imposed reversals of human relationships. The sacrifice of Polyxena obviously mirrors Iphigeneia's and Euripides deals very well with the intertextuality.

The Trojan Women has been recognized as one of the most - if not the most - pathetic plays. There is basically no plot, in the Aristotelian sense of enchained actions, simply the piling up of misfortunes. For this reason, the greatest moments are the rhetorical performances by Cassandra, Hecuba and Helen. The prologue with Poseidon and Athena and their plot to punish the Greeks for their impiety impacts the way we read the new "barbaric" decisions taken by the army. The gods however are not integrated in the rest of the plot.

Finally, Andromache. It's a no from me, dog. I can understand that Euripides is an innovative playwright, and that he experimented with the plot structure in this one. But the parallel between suppliant Andromache and suppliant Hermione is not enough to unify the episodes, and while Neoptolemus' arrival as a corpse is a good reversal of the expectation set up from the beginning, Orestes comes from nowhere, as well as Thetis (yes, deus ex machina, but still). What annoyed me the most in this play, however, is the invasion of a sort of bourgeois, prosaic morality regarding marriage, which is really the biggest theme here. You can see why Nietzsche accused Euripides of killing tragic theater and bringing forth the New Comedy. Furthermore, it's anachronistic, maybe, to complain about misogyny in Greek theater, but Euripides just fails to make it interesting. There are mainly gratuitous quips about promiscuous and deceitful women which the author ties to the ever-present absent figure of Helen. Just, no.

3/5 because Hecuba is actually good.