Trojan Women / Iphigenia Among the Taurians / Ion

I've started Troiades in Greek, I don't know how many times.
I put these Loeb editions up for the Greek texts as other editions with commentaries are so very often harder to find an image of. So I put these up, knowing those who know what these are should know I refer to the Greek text. Even though the Loeb's are indeed convenient curse, etc.

'Trojan Women' is another play by Euripides that focuses on the aftermath of war, in this case, the Trojan war. The play is set between the victory of the Greek army and the fall of Troy and the departure of the Greek army. In this situation the Trojan women are distributed among the Greek heroes as prices. Not much is happening in terms of plot in this play, the focus lies in the portrayal of the formaly most noble women in Troy - queen Hecuba, their daughters Polyxena and Cassandra and her daughter in law Andromache. It is the stories they tell about themselves and their lamentations that make up most of this play. They are bringing home the tragic key message - humans fortune is delicate and might even turn royal women into slaves. By portraying each woman's fate, Euripides raises the question who draws the worst lot: the priestress that is forced to become a sex-slave, the young woman who gets sacrificed to a dead Greek fighter, or the old woman who has to leave her home for the first time in her life to serve as a slave in the houshold of a psychopathic man who destroyed her family. But although these prospects are grim, the play provides some relief. The women are not merely suffering victims of what is done to them, they all have some individual trade they can hold against the darkness of their situation - determination, pride, sagacity and solidarity. In one especially moving scenes of the play, Hecuba buries her grandson in the rush of the Greek army leaving and without being provided with the proper means. Euripides shows her and Andromache changing the symbols of the war: Hectors shield becomes the final resting place for Hectors' son and a sign of victory rather than of defeat: Astyanax becomes the garland that in the end bedecks Hectors' victorious shield (1220ff.). This play might be my favorite one of Euripides plays, not least because it is much slower and less crowded than many of his other tragedies. The quietness of it allows the reader or listener to really get to know the fascinating female characters of this tragedy, especially Cassandra and Hecuba.

'Iphigenia Among the Taurians' is a play about how prudence and the love among siblings can change a families fate. Euripides once before had made the decision in his 'Electra', to tell a less tragic story of the cursed and bloody house of Atreus and again chooses this path in his 'Iphigenia Among the Taurians'. In this family, the possibility of family members killing each other - deliberately or not - is always lurking. This play, however, tells the story not of death and seperation but of friendship and reunion. The reader learns from Iphigenias monologue that while people and Greek assume that she has died by her fathers arm as a sacrifical offering, she has in fact been rescued by the goddess Artemis. She serves as her priestess in the land of the Taurians - a job that includes killing foreigners that gets washed on the shore as human sacrifices. Among them are Orestes, Iphegenias brother and his best friend Pelades, who came to the Barbarian land in order to redeem Orestes from the guilt of killing his mother. They are supposed to steal a statue of Artemis from the temple but get caught and are brought to Iphigenia, who doesn't know the strangers and vice versa. In a long scene, in which Iphigenia is preparing to sacrifice Orestes and Orestes is accepting his fate, both realise who the other person is. They plot their escape from the land with the satue and their return back to Greece, which they at the end will do successfully.
Euripides masterfully plots this not-so-tragic tragedy. It is the nobility and cleverness of the siblings that leads them to recognize each other. Iphigenia is impressed by Orestes willingness to die for his friend and it is this acknowledgement that allows them to finally recognize their kinship. Rather than a streak of hair (as in Sophocles' Electra) it is a streak in Orestes' character that shows him to be of the same nature as Iphigenia. Once again, Euripides presents a woman of great strategic skills. She cleverly argues in front of the Taurian king that it is necessary to clean the two man in preparation of the sacrifice. This gives them enough time to get on board of the Greek ship. Or nearly enough time. It would not be one of the most popular Euripidean plays without divine intervention. In the end it is Athena, as a deus ex machina, who rescues the three Greeks from the Barbarians who catch up to the boat and who unites the new and nobler generation of a tragic and murderous family. Although I prefer the political plays of Euripides over the familiy dramas in general, I believe Iphigenia among the Taurians is better than his Electra. I prefer it's emphasis on the friendship between Orestes and Pelades and the setting of a barabaric and uncivilised country. More importantly, however, I prefer Euripides decision to have Orestes and Iphegenia recognize each other because of their moral character instead of physical traits.

The 'Ion' begins with a monologue of the god Hermes, in which he explains that he has come to Delphi to watch Ion, the steward of the Delphians, receive what is his due. The god explains that Ion is the son of his brother Apollon and the Athenian queen Creusa. The boy does not know his parents, however, as his mother was violated by the god as a young girl and left Ion in the cave where she gave birth. It is Apollos plan, Hermes reports, to now put Ion in a position worthy of the son of a god. He plots to tell Xuthus, Creusas husband, that Ion is his, Xuthus', son. As the play unfolds, it turns out that Apollos plan does not turn out as planned. When Creusas learns that her husband appearantly has a son and that this son is the temple boy Ion, she decides to kill the latter one. After Ion escapes a deadly intoxication by his actual mother Creusa, Apollo reveals to Ion and Creusa that they are in fact mother an son. His bright future is predicted by Athena, who appears at the end of the play.
The tragedy, is one can call it that, is focussed around the concept of heritage - in the sense of family as well as of nationality. Euripides questions the concept of parenthood (Is someone who assaults a father? Is an absent mother still a mother? Is a parent always the person that cares for you? Can someone who does not share your genes but your inner conflicts be a mother or a father to you?) and shows that like 'mother' and 'father' the concept of an 'Athenian' is a problematic one.
I would not call the Ion a literary masterpiece. The dialogues and plot are a bit clumsy at times. Yet, the tragedy is a very interesting report on how Euripides and people of his time understood the injustice of sexual assault, the problematic notion of Athenian autochthony and superiority.

The copy I read was translated by Moses Hadas and John McLean.

While Sophocles and Aeschylus practiced the perfection of Greek Tragedy, Euripides was much more subversive. He took the common heroes and made them, well, common. Mortal. Flawed. More human.

The Greeks concerned themselves with the laws of nature (physis) and laws of social constructs (nomos). Which ones do we have to obey and which ones are only driven by custom and tradition? If it was a law of nature, which included the gods, man could only adapt to those laws, he could not change the weather, gravity, fire or the interference of the gods. However, if the law was a societal creation, there only for expedience, then they should be examined and revised when needed.

Euripides examined both. He challenges and questions common behavior and mores at the time.

He also allowed his flawed heroes to step up to the plate, like Hercules does in Alcestis and do something heroic.

Euripides also perfected the deus ex machina to the point no one else could really invoke it with out being compared to Euripides.

His works influenced drama from the Romans to modern times.

I found them to be fascinating.

I hate to sound like a broken record when it comes to the classic Greek texts, but read them! A good part of Western civilization is based on these works, and I recommend understanding them if no other reason you can act all erudite at your next swank party. Just kidding! I know you don't get invited to swank parties, so who are we kidding?