I read this years ago, in college, and I have always remembered the horrible scene in which Hecuba sees the body of her very young grandson, Astyanax, the son of Hector, who has been thrown from the city walls by the Greeks. This is not the same translation as the one I read before, because I vividly remember Hecuba's comment about seeing the "white bone" in the little boy's broken body, and the wording here is slightly different, not as stark. Later I read Caesar's account of taking towns in Gaul, and how the defeated kings would throw themselves from the walls to avoid slavery. Astyanax was seen as a threat because he was the last living link to the throne of Priam; so sad, because of course the little boy would have had no understanding of the politics of which he was the pawn.

This is a review of the play itself, not this particular translation. I read Roche's translation, which is good but (as has been pointed out by absolutely everyone already) includes made-up stage directions that are somewhat distracting.

Trojan Women is an anti-war play, performed in 415 as Athens prepared to go to war with Sicily and in the wake of Athens' brutal conquest of the island of Melos. It takes place directly after the fall of Troy and stars the captured Trojan women, notably Priam's wife Hecuba, the mad prophetess Cassandra, and that Helen woman. It's a little light on plot; there's mainly a lot of gnashing of teeth and being bummed out, and that's about it. Less of the subversive cleverness that I know and love Euripides for. But it certainly gets its point across: "Of all those seeming to succeed, count no one happy till he is dead."

sobbed

Extremely readable and frankly more relatable than Pat Barker's retelling, but I am mostly posting a review just to note that Goodreads offered me the opportunity to "follow" Euripides just so I can be the first to know about any new releases. Crossing my fingers.

I read this in conjunction with The Literary Life podcast --- https://www.theliterary.life/053/

I highly recommend these podcasts, featuring classicist Thomas Banks, for help in understanding how to read literature of various kinds. The background they give, as well as connections to other works, helps tremendously to bring these stories to life. Don't be surprised if you find yourself in these stories, as ancient as they may be.

This volume includes a very informative introduction, as well as notes, and glossary - all of which are very helpful, in both understanding the context within which the play was composed and the many references in the play to myths, gods, and so forth. The play did not win first prize at the annual theatrical competition held in Athens (perhaps similar to our era's Oscars) although it took second prize; this isn't surprising since it conveys a nearly 100% negative image of the "heroic" Achaeans who sailed to Troy to retrieve Helen. Only the herald, Talthybius, comes across as human - the rest of the Greeks, including "heroes" like Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus - are all portrayed as cruel, barbaric, and "blinded" by lust or illusions of honor, into pursuing a ten-year war to obtain a woman, whom they expect to be put to death once captured. Thus, even the "prize" they were supposedly fighting for, is to be turned into nothing. Thus, the whole point of the war, aside from "making a point" that the Trojans cannot be allowed to "get away" with "stealing" Menelaus' wife Helen, is, ultimately, nothing.

This is an anti-war play which must have made the Athenians watching it very uncomfortable - given the contemporary events unfolding at the time in Athens. Athens was about to launch the ill-fated Sicilian invasion. Athens had embarked on an imperialist course in the Aegean - transforming the Delian League into its plaything, a compact for its own benefit. The unending scramble among Greek city-states for supremacy continued - leading to the disunity in the Greek peninsula that made it so easy for Greece to be conquered later on by the Macedonians. The sort of barbaric idiots who insist on war, using any pretext - including fighting for a woman they even characterize as a "slut" - resulted in the subsuming of Greece, the subjugation of the nation of Greece as a province within larger empires since the time of the Macedonian expansion under Philip and Alexander. The "big mouths" and egos of the Greeks led to their undoing. Perhaps this play was a sort of warning to the Greeks - although obviously Euripides would have no way of knowing what was to come for Greece - that the hubris of war waged on a purely irrational basis, whipped up for the slightest pretext, or based on an exaggerated notion of honor - leads to the nemesis of eventual destruction, and that the "penalty" for this hubris, the nemesis, cannot be avoided. Euripides thus turns the cornerstones of the Greeks' touchstone of their self-regard - the Homeric poems - inside out. The "heroic" Greeks - celebrated a million times in legend, on vase painting, on friezes of temples, on lifelike sculptures and no doubt exquisite paintings - are seen to be cruel barbarians, destroying Troy over a "prize" they intended to destroy anyway, for the sake of "honor" or even more basely, "booty." The gods are about the punish the Greeks by making their return journey home miserable; thus, the "adventures" of the Odyssey can be read as the "just punishment" of the gods imposed on just one crew making its journey home - the commander, Odysseus, having taken as his slave the fallen Trojan queen Hecuba, along with her curses upon him and all the Greeks. Perhaps the Homeric poems did convey this "moral" to the Greeks, who otherwise appear to be lacking in an ethical foundation insofar as their myths celebrate vengeance, blood-thirstiness, and so forth: Hubris, or what we might call today "sin" of waging a vengeful and unjust war, results in the nemesis or "punishment" of the downfall of commander after commander afterwards, as the gods "get their revenge" for various arrogant insults against them, such as the taking of Trojan virgin priestess Cassandra as a sex slave by Achilles' son, and the unjust sacrifice of Iphigenia prior to setting sail - if not for the entire enterprise of the war, waged to regain a prize that the Greeks want destroyed anyway. The above may seem simplistic - no doubt the Greeks of those days didn't view the story of the Trojan war and its aftermath as a moral tale. Instead, it must have been seen then as it is often depicted in movies today: A heroic battle, followed by the struggles of a clever hero, who finally reaches home, puts his house in order, and is reunited with his faithful wife Penelope, the antithesis of Helen.

If the play describes the aftereffects of the battle for Troy, the beguiling power of Helen - who does not lose an iota of her composure and hauteur in her discussion with the devastated Hecuba - is also a focus of the play. The theatergoers of course would have known that Helen is not in the end put to death by her husband Menelaus. Helen's "explanation" for what happened - her running off with handsome Paris while Menelaus had traveled to Crete - because Aphrodite had appeared with Paris and ensnared Helen with irrational love for Paris, didn't really convince Menelaus in the play. It doesn't matter though, since Helen's charms, no matter who was wrong, who was victimized, whether Helen is lying or telling the truth, again "win" over Menelaus, and as we know, the half-divine Spartan queen, a daughter of Zeus and a mortal woman, does eventually return to her homeland and resume her place as Menelaus' spouse in the palace of Sparta. Obviously, the "moral" of the story of Helen, is that no man, not even her ridiculously "wronged" husband, can resist her - she always gets her way because of the power of her looks, composure, and no doubt many times lying words. The problem Helen embodies is the problem of the irrational - in her case, lust - vs. logic. Logic would have written off Helen's departure/abduction from Sparta, but logic never drove men's affairs. Instead, Menelaus was driven by "honor" to organize the expedition to Troy, invoking the alliance of the Greek states to assist one another in warfare if one of them were wronged. Was Menelaus wronged? His wife ran off with a prince he was hosting. Perhaps this violation of the inviolate Greek notion of hospitality/honor did translate in Menelaus' mind as a transgression that could only be corrected by retrieving his wife and punishing Paris. But did this one drama of a wife leaving her husband, really merit starting an invasion of Asia by the Greeks - or were they all really blinded by her, did lust for her turn them into barbarians, despite their "pretensions" to civilization. The Greeks ripped off whatever they could steal from Troy, including female slaves, after killing all the Trojan defenders. They did retrieve Helen. Was this what they were fighting for - for ten years - "booty?"

Euripides' play is harrowing and it can only be imagined what it may have been like to view it enacted as it would have been by masked actors, perhaps accentuating the horror of the disasters that befell the female Trojan captives in the course of the play. It no doubt made the audience think and consider what it means to crush an enemy, for what? To gain the upper hand, to rob them, and take them into slavery? Unfortunately, this instructive play, which invites the viewer to look at the "heroic" age from the vantage point of the conquered, and to question what was the point of destroying Troy - is gaining booty "worth" the destruction of an entire nation - perhaps, what's the point of war based on greed - didn't lead the Greeks to mend their ways. They never abandoned their warlike ways, constantly fighting among themselves - until, divided and weakened, they too were conquered by Macedon and later, Rome. The "lesson" of Troy - that the Greeks once did unite to fight a common enemy, was only duplicated in the struggle vs. Persia. Otherwise, disunity and warfare among the Greek states was ongoing, and led eventually to the conquest of the Greek peninsula and archipelago.

3.5 (not quite good enough for a 4, but honestly I enjoyed it)

This was full of hilarious one-liners I never knew.....

Having to study it for year 12 adds a level of stress, but honestly, from a historical standpoint the play is fascinating, and I loved the prose.

read #2:
definitely hits more when you analyse it deeply. 3.75. see you again, old friend

read#3:
I think I'll still leave it at 3.75 but it definitely gets better every time you read it. The more you understand the background and the message, the more impactful it becomes and the more you can take away. The exam is in 9 days someone please save me

A volte ritornano

Niente di nuovo: l’opera d’arte lo è in quanto non puoi buttare là due opinioni epidermiche sulle emozioni del momento. Toccarla, guardala, ascoltarla o leggerla e poi parlarne non è come descrivere l’arricciamento del pelo al venticello primaverile, fresco ma piacevole.
Con “Le Troiane” il detto e ridetto ti sorge in mente spontaneo: con i mezzi della vita moderna si può verificare in tempo reale le intuizioni rafforzandole e tanticchia esaltandoti nella condivisione.

Sulla scena quattro donne e un bambino mentre alle loro spalle Troia brucia:
Ecuba la vecchia che con i figli ha perso qualsiasi fede;
Cassandra la folle, che inneggia alle sue nozze con Agamennone anziché dolersene perché l’imeneo sarà la rovina del comandante in capo e della sua famiglia;
Andromaca la vedova che annega nel nichilismo: la vita, privata dell’esistenza, non vale la pena di essere vissuta;
Elena la colpevole che gioca con la seduzione e i sofismi per salvare la pelle;
Astianatte la vittima imberbe, sacrificato per impedire a qualsiasi erede di vendicare i morti e rivendicare il potere.

La prima domanda è: Euripide è anche moderno, contemporaneo o addirittura attuale?
Il senso comune (quasi mai sinonimo di buon senso), sciorinato come bucato mal lavato un giorno sì e l’altro pure, ci ammonisce che quel che fu non ritorna, per carità.
[ Il “senso comune” deve essere una conquista del progresso e della civiltà se era sconosciuto al grande tragico che, nel V° secolo a.C. , scriveva di una guerra combattuta sei secoli prima mentre, e appena due stagioni avanti della scrittura della tragedia, avrebbe avuto materiale fresco di prima mano, visto il servizietto fatto alla comunità di Melo dal celodurismo ateniese. Mica bruscolini: un bell’eccidio pulito pulito, con le solite vittime collaterali, donne e bambini più un immaginabile esodo di profughi sbandati].

Solo la paura di incorrere nell'inevitabile censura lo fa ricorrere al mito? o la censura, dice il senso comune, è un concetto di progresso e civiltà (?) e non poteva esistere al tempo del drammaturgo? Probabilmente la modernità ha trasformato in “assolvibile censura” l’ostracismo, negando l’esistenza dell’una e dell’altro quando vi procede esibendo a sua discolpa commi raffazzonati e emendamenti di leggi nate per altri scopi.

Diamo per scontato che il ripiego dell’ombroso Euripide fu per scampare all'ostracismo, se non al peggio ancora; ma perché scegliere proprio la distruzione di Troia, rivolgersi al mito? Forse perché il mito era allora il grimaldello per aprire la porta alla conoscenza del senso del presente? Forse perché era il linguaggio da tutti conosciuto e quindi comprensibile senza la riserva mentale che il passato non ritorna? Forse perché non era solo una favola?
Diamo anche questo per reale: Euripide (e i tragici, conosciuti o meno) usava quel linguaggio universale per coinvolgere gli spettatori e sottoporre al loro giudizio critico la versione aggiornata del vecchio mito (le rappresentazioni, come tutti sanno, avvenivano in veri e propri festival in cui al posto di “Fin che la barca va” gareggiava “Le Troiane”. O tempora o mores).
Euripide (e i tragici, conosciuti o meno) non era pertanto un masturbatore mentale, un viaggiatore periombelicale, ma uomo che riconosce la valenza dell’ esistere nell'essere agente nel reale con la sua opera ( suppongo che non sarebbe andato al salone di Torino alle condizioni date dagli organizzatori). Non gli interessa lo zoismo, il vivere per vivere. Dice Andromaca: Morire e non esistere la stessa cosa, dico io, sono .

E soprattutto: perché ancora oggi se ne fanno rappresentazioni? Solo per sfogliare l’album di ciò che fu? Solo per vedere come erano “I Flintstones” del V secolo e compiacerci dei cotanti progressi della nostra contemporaneità?
Se ci guardiamo attorno, siamo ancora circondati da celoduristi achei o ateniesi. Città e intere nazioni in fiamme; donne e bambini, scampati alla morte nelle guerre, che vanno incontro a una esistenza da schiavi e deportati, sempre che sopravvivano alla traversata del deserto, ai campi, al mare e ai capetti di turno.
A scriverlo sembra retorica buonista, tante volte si deve reiterare il concetto a coloro che parlano di invasione, pericolo, minaccia di sostituzione etnica. Sembra un mantra banale e banalizzante, un aggrapparsi all’emozione “letteraria” per cercare un senso reale al mero passatempo della lettura. Ma come ho dimostrato, Le Troiane” è arte e non ammette pretesti di non avere nulla a che vedere con la realtà.

Greek hydria, ca 520–510 BCE; Achilles dragging the body of Hector behind his chariot while Hecuba mourns her son's death and the winged figure of Iris pleads for a ransom of Hector’s body.


Joint review of Euripides' The Trojan Women and Jean-Paul Sartre's adaptation Les Troyennes

................... What shall the poet say,
what words will he inscribe upon your monument?
Here lies a little child the Argives killed, because
they were afraid of him. That? The epitaph of Greek shame.


In 415 BCE Euripides staged a trilogy of dramas accompanied by the usual satyr play of which only the final play of the trilogy has survived to our time - The Trojan Women. At the time of this first performance the initial stage of the Peloponnesian War was over and Athens' absurd expedition to Sicily was soon to begin, spurred on by Alcibiades' personal ambition. How the Athenians were to rue that mad decision.

Both sides of the Peloponnesian War had committed the most horrendous of massacres, particularly on the citizens of defeated cities, and I think Euripides had gotten well and truly sick of it. The Trojan Women is the story of the immediate aftermath of the Greeks' victory in the Trojan War, and in Euripides' hands it is a story of brutal, limitless murder by the victors and their dividing up and hauling away of the surviving women as spoils of war. Did the audience squirm in its seats as they watched their famous ancestors murder and rape the now hapless Trojans? In any case, they awarded the festival's theater prize to another playwright.

Not unusually for Euripides, the primary characters of the piece are women, particularly Hecuba, Queen of Troy, Cassandra, the mad seer, Andromache, Hector's widow, and Helen, the Face that Launched a Thousand Ships. They must endure the will of the Greek men, but the latter do not cut a dashing figure in this play, on the contrary.

In a poetic language whose stateliness and power recalls that of Aeschylus and which far outstrips any of the other Euripidean plays I've read, we witness the suffering of the women already staggering under the blows of recent losses who must endure yet further ravages during the play and, as is made oh so clear, for the rest of their lives.(*) It is more than a little harrowing.

In 1965 Jean-Paul Sartre staged an adaptation of The Trojan Women, not a translation, despite how Les Troyennes is catalogued here at GR. Sartre removed much less than he added, for, as he explains in the Introduction, he felt it necessary to fill in for a modern audience that which went without saying for the 5th century Greek audience. But he also saw an opportunity to make some points for a then contemporary audience. He chose to view the Trojan War as a "colonial war", and so the Greeks/Trojans shade into the Europeans/Colonized with interesting effect. Not satisfied with that, Sartre took the implicit nihilism of Euripides' piece in which the gods' whims and fancies saw to it that both the Trojans and the Greeks payed dearly despite all the pleas and sacrifices made to the gods by both sides and made it quite explicit.

Though Sartre writes in the Introduction that he "chose a poetic language which retains the ceremonial character of the text, its rhetorical value, - but which modifies its accent", little remains in Les Troyennes of that ceremonial character, of that rhetorical value, of that poetry. And with those went a fair amount of the emotional power of Euripides' play, at least for me. Nonetheless, it was very interesting to read this refracted image of Euripides' text and to wonder what the audience at the National Popular Theater made of it.


(*) In another play (Andromache) Euripides follows Andromache into her sexual servitude for Achilles' son, Neoptolemus; she bears him a son who replaces Astyanax - the son she bore Hector and who is murdered in The Trojan Women upon Odysseus' insistence - but who is, in turn, threatened with murder by Neoptolemus' Spartan wife. Euripides wrote Andromache quite a bit earlier (428-425), spills a great deal of patriotic bile over the Spartans and even gives the play a relatively happy ending.

this should be a mandatory read right after finishing the Iliad

ملحمة شعرية تحكي عن مأساة سيدات وبنات مدينة طروادة بعد خدعة الاغريق ودخولهم المدينة عن طريق حصان خشبي كبير ممتلئ بالجنود وقتلهم لكل ماهو حي على هذه المدينة الاسيوية الصغيرة حيث لم يبق الا بقايا ابنية وبعض السيدات الكبار بينهم ملكة المدينة وبعض الفتيات الشابات مثل ابنتها كساندرا وزوجة ابنها هكتور وابنه الذي قتله الاغريق لاحقا
استطاعت الملكة هيكوب ان تدخل القارئ لروحها الجريحة وقلبها المحطم بعد زوال ملكها وقتل اولادها وسبي ابنتها وزوجة ابنها وقتل حفيدها الرضيع
استطاعت اناتها ان تصل الى اعماق روحي وهي تحاول ان تصدق ان مدينتها اضحت رماداً وانها فقدت كل شيء في نفس الوقت وكأنه حلم وقد سخطت كل السخط على ذلك المرسال الاغريقي الذي يأتي ليأخذ البنات للنبيلات لخدمة قصور ملكه والعمل على اسعاده ليل نهار وهو من ازال ملكهم وسطوتهم وعزهم
تذكرت في خضم احداث المسرحية وضعنا نحن السوريون في ظل الحرب الم تغدو مدننا دمارا؟ الم يقتل الكثير من الضحايا الابرياء بدون سبب؟ الم يغرق في البحر الاف الحالمين بالامان
يا الهي هذا ما اراده سارتر ان ننظر دواخلنا في كل قصصه ومسرحياته وروايته
سمعتها من اليوتيوب من قناة الاذاعة المصرية
كان اداء الفنانين ممتاز والموسيقى التصويرية جميلة ومناسبة للنص

Έχουμε ακούσει την λέξη "τραγωδία" και "δράμα" τόσες πολλές φορές στην ζωή μας, κυρίως στον προφορικό λόγο προκειμένου να υπερβάλουμε για μια κατάσταση, που έχουμε σχεδόν παρερμηνεύσει και ξεχάσει την βαρύτητα της λέξης.
ΤΡΑΓΩΔΙΑ και ΔΡΑΜΑ λοιπόν το παρόν βιβλίο με την κανονική σημασία των λέξεων. Σε μια πασίγνωστη ιστορία όπο�� συνδέεται με θάρρος, ανδρεία και ηρωικές φιγούρες, ο Ευριπίδης έρχεται και προσθέτει θρήνο, δάκρυ και μοιρολόι. Γυρνάει αριστουργηματικά το νόμισμα και σου δείχνει και την άλλη μεριά. Την μεριά με τα δεινά, τον θάνατο και τον πόνο. Γιατί το συγκεκριμένο νόμισμα είναι ο Πόλεμος και η μία του μεριά θα έχει πάντα ηττημένους.