Euripides: ‘Hecuba’

 Euripides’ Hecuba is one string of misery, all falling on the queen of the fallen city of Troy.

Hecuba, enslaved with the other Trojan women, is powerless and endures two crimes.

The Greek soldiers vote to sacrifice her daughter Polyxena over the grave of their champion Achilles. It’s a barbaric, superstitious custom, but the Greek leaders, not wanting to buck the majority, follow along. They shrug and tell Hecuba it’s political necessity — it can’t be helped.

Hecuba protests to the Greek hero Odysseus, whose life she once saved. Odysseus acknowledges he owes her but falls back on a technicality: he would intervene to save Hecuba’s life, but not her daughter’s. The decision prompts one of the great tirades against politicians in literature.

As Hecuba is reeling from this tragedy, one of the enslaved women finds the body of Polydorus, the one child Hecuba thought was safe. Fearing Troy might fall, Hecuba and her husband, Priam, had sent Polydorus to grow up under the guardianship of Polymestor, a Thracian king. When Troy fell, Polymestor killed the boy and pocketed his money.

Professor H.D.F. Kitto, my guide to the Greek tragedies, points out that the first crime is the key. Euripides isn’t so interested in what the crime did to the victims — to Polyxena and Hecuba — but what it did to the Greeks.

The Greeks thought of themselves as civilized people — not barbarians, like Polymestor.

Civilized people are not cruel people. But in Euripides’ telling, they do cruel things out of political expediency, catering to the superstitions of the majority.

The cruel abuse was heaped on Hecuba until she snapped. She couldn’t overpower the conquering Greeks, but she could lure the greedy Polymestor into her tent — urging him to bring his two little boys — with promises of more money. It shocked the Greeks when she blinded Polymestor and killed his sons.

There are many wonderful lines in the play. I like this one, spoken by King Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, as he grapples with the question of who is culpable:

 

Then no man on earth is truly free.

All are slaves of money or necessity.

Public opinion or fear of prosecution

forces each one, against his conscience,

to conform.

 

• Sources: H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954. The section on Hecuba is on pp. 225-32.

Hecuba, translated by William Arrowsmith, is in Euripides III in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore; Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 1-68. The quotation is on p. 46.