| The Trojan Women | |
|---|---|
 An engraving of the death ofAstyanax | |
| Written by | Euripides |
| Chorus | Trojan women |
| Characters | Hecuba Cassandra Andromache Talthybius Menelaus Helen Poseidon Athena |
| Place premiered | Athens |
| Original language | Ancient Greek |
| Genre | Tragedy |
| Setting | Near the walls of Troy |
| Trojan War |
|---|
 |
Trojans and allies |
The Trojan Women (Ancient Greek:Τρῳάδες,romanized: Trōiades, lit. "The Female Trojans") is atragedy by theGreekplaywrightEuripides, produced in 415 BCE. Also translated asThe Women of Troy, or as its transliterated Greek titleTroades, The Trojan Women presents commentary on the costs of war through the lens of women and children.[1] The four central women of the play are the same that appear in the final book of theIliad, lamenting over the corpse of Hector after theTrojan War.
Hecuba, another tragedy by Euripides, similarly deals with the experiences of women left behind by war and was more popular in antiquity.[2][3]
The tragedy has inspired many modern adaptation across film, literature, and the stage.
ScholarNeil Croally believes thatThe Trojan Women was written as a reaction to theSiege of Melos in 416 BCE during thePeloponnesian War, in which Athens invaded theAegean island ofMelos, destroyed its city, and slaughtered and enslaved its populace(seeHistory of Milos).[4][5] However, historianMark Ringer regards this as unlikely, as Euripides was probably developing his play before the siege of Melos even began, with only a month or two after its fall to make revision, and such commentary could have offended Athenian audiences of the production.[6]
It is the third play in atetralogy by Euripides, all drawn from the same source material: theIliad. The other works in the tetralogy include the tragediesAlexandros andPalamedes, and the comedicsatyr playSisyphus, all of which are largely lost, and only fragments survive.[7][8][3]TheTrojan Women was performed for the first time in 415 BCE as part of this tetralogy at theCity Dionysia festival in Athens.[9] Euripides won second place, losing to the obscure tragedianXenocles.[10]
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 ofTroy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families taken away as slaves. However, it begins first with the godsAthena andPoseidon discussing ways to punish the Greek armies because they condoned thatAjax the Lesser rapedCassandra, the eldest daughter of KingPriam and QueenHecuba, 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 heraldTalthybius arrives to tell the dethroned queen Hecuba what will befall her and her children. Hecuba will be taken away to the Greek kingOdysseus, and Cassandra is destined to become the conquering kingAgamemnon'sconcubine.
Cassandra, who can see the future, is morbidly delighted by this news: she sees that when they arrive inArgos, her new master's embittered wifeClytemnestra 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 princessAndromache arrives and Hecuba learns from her that her youngest daughter,Polyxena, has been killed as a sacrifice at the tomb of the Greek warriorAchilles.
Andromache's lot is to be the concubine of Achilles' sonNeoptolemus, 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 fatherHector, and rather than take this chance, they plan to throw him off from the battlements of Troy to his death.
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 thatAphrodite 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 fromTelemachus' visit to Sparta in Homer'sOdyssey 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.
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.[11][12]
Euripides' social commentary on the costs of warThe Trojan Women has left a lasting legacy. Many of its themes still resonate with the public today, inspiring modern adaptations.
The Mexican filmLas Troyanas (1963) directed bySergio Véjar, adapted by writer Miguel Angel Garibay and Véjar, is faithful to the Greek text and setting.[citation needed]
Cypriot-Greek directorMichael Cacoyannis used Euripides' play (in the famousEdith Hamilton translation) as the basis for his 1971 filmThe Trojan Women. The movie starred American actressKatharine Hepburn as Hecuba, British actorsVanessa Redgrave andBrian Blessed as Andromache and Talthybius,French-Canadian actressGeneviève Bujold as Cassandra, Greek actressIrene Papas as Helen, andNorthern Ireland-bornPatrick Magee as Menelaus.[citation needed]
Sheri Tepper woveThe Trojan Women into her 1988feminist science fiction novelThe Gate to Women's Country.[citation needed]
A 1905 stage version, translated byGilbert Murray, starredGertrude Kingston asHelen andAda Ferrar as Athena at theRoyal Court Theatre in London.[13]
The French public intellectualJean-Paul Sartre wrote a version ofThe Trojan Women (Les Troyennes) in 1965.[citation needed]
Israeli playwrightHanoch Levin (1943–1999) wrote his own version of the play,The Lost Women of Troy, adding more disturbing scenes and scatological details.[citation needed]
In 1974, Ellen Stewart, founder ofLa MaMa Experimental Theatre Club inNew York City, presentedThe Trojan Women as the last fragment of a trilogy (which includedMedea and Electra). With staging by Romanian-born theatre director Andrei Serban and music by American composer Elizabeth Swados, this production went on to tour more than 30 countries over the course of 40 years. Since 2014, The Trojan Women Project has been sharing this production[when?] with diverse communities that now[when?] include Guatemala, Cambodia andKosovo.[citation needed]
Charles L. Mee adaptedThe Trojan Women in 1994 to have a more modern, updated outlook on war. He included original interviews withHolocaust andHiroshima survivors. His play is calledTrojan Women: A Love Story.[citation needed]
In 2000, theOregon Shakespeare Festival produced the play in modern costumes and props, with the Greek soldiers wearingcamouflage and carryingassault rifles.[14]
David Stuttard’s 2001 adaptation,Trojan Women,[15] written in the aftermath of theSeptember 11 attacks, toured widely within the UK and was staged internationally. In an attempt to repositionThe Trojan Women as the third play of a trilogy, Stuttard then reconstructed Euripides' lostAlexandros andPalamedes (in 2005 and 2006 respectively), to form a "Trojan Trilogy", which was performed in readings at theBritish Museum andTristan Bates Theatre (2007), and Europe House (2012) inLondon. He also wrote a version of thesatyr playSisyphus (2008) to round off Euripides' original trilogy.[16]
Femi Osofisan's 2004 playWomen of Owu sets the story in 1821, after the conquest of theOwu kingdom by a coalition of otherWest African states. Although it is set in 19th century Africa, Osofisan has said that the play was also inspired by the2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition.[17]
Brad Mays directed amultimedia production for theARK Theatre Company inLos Angeles in 2003. The play opened with a fauxCNN TV news report intended to echo the then-currentwar in Iraq.[18] A documentary film was made of the production, released in 2004.[19]
The Women of Troy, directed byKatie Mitchell, was performed at theNational Theatre in London in 2007/08. The cast includedKate Duchêne as Hecuba, Sinead Matthews as Cassandra andAnastasia Hille as Andromache.[citation needed]
The Trojan Women, directed byMarti Maraden, was performed at theStratford Shakespeare Festival at the Tom Patterson Theatre inStratford, Ontario, Canada, from 14 May to 5 October 2008 with Canadian actressMartha Henry as Hecuba.[citation needed]
Christine Evans reworked and modernised theTrojan Women story in her 2009 playTrojan Barbie.Trojan Barbie is apostmodern updating, which blends the modern and ancient worlds, as contemporary London doll repair shop owner Lotte is pulled into a Trojan women's prison camp that is located in both ancient Troy and the modern Middle East.[20]
In 2011,Anne Bogart'sSITI Company premieredTrojan Women (After Euripides) at Getty Villa before touring the production.[citation needed]
In 2016, Zoe Lafferty's version of the play,Queens of Syria, in Arabic with English subtitles, was put on by theYoung Vic before touring Britain.[21]
In 2021,Anne Carson, the experimental poet, translator, and classicist, published her translation asTrojan Women: A Comic with illustrations byRosanna Bruno, a portion of which was excerpted earlier that year in the 236th issue of theParis Review.[22] Carson's vision was realised by Bruno to stage the production of a tragedy in the form of a "comic," orgraphic novel with the characters cast as uncanny figures, such asHekabe as an old, once-regal dog, the goddessAthena as a pair of overalls wearing an owl mask, and the murdered babyAstyanax (last heir to the Trojan throne) as apoplar tree sapling.[citation needed]
In March 2023 a production ofWomen of Troy directed byBen Winspear and starring his wife actor-producerMarta Dusseldorp was staged at the10 Days on the Island festival inTasmania, Australia. Poetry by Iranian-Kurdish refugeeBehrouz Boochani, who was for many years detained by the Australian Government inManus Island detention centre, was set to music composed byKatie Noonan and performed by a chorus of Tasmanian women and girls, interspersed with the text of the play.[23]
On July 7, 1986, the opera,Troades,[24] with a libretto by conductorGerd Albrecht and composerAribert Reimann based on the German translation byFranz Werfel, the author ofThe Song of Bernadette, opened the 1986 Munich Opera Festival. It had been commissioned by theBavarian State Opera, which mounted the production in the National Theater Munich.
| Translator | Year | Style | Full text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robert Potter | 1781 | Verse | [2] |
| Edward Philip Coleridge | 1891 | Prose | full text at Wikisource |
| Arthur Way | 1896 | Verse | full text at Wikisource |
| Gilbert Murray | 1905 | Verse | full text at Wikisource |
| Moses Hadas and John McLean | 1936 | Prose | |
| Edith Hamilton | 1937 | Verse | |
| Richmond Lattimore | 1947 | Verse | available for digital loan |
| Isabelle Raubitschek and Anthony E. Raubitschek | 1954 | Prose | |
| Philip Vellacott | 1954 | Prose and verse | |
| Gwendolyn MacEwen | 1981 | Prose | |
| Shirley A. Barlow | 1986 | Prose | |
| Don Taylor | 1990 | Prose and verse | |
| David Kovacs | 1999 | Prose | |
| James Morwood | 2000 | Prose | |
| Howard Rubenstein | 2002 | Verse | |
| Ellen McLaughlin | 2005 | Prose | |
| George Theodoridis | 2008 | Prose | [3] |
| Alan Shapiro | 2009 | Prose | |
| Emily Wilson | 2016 | Verse | |
| Anne Carson | 2021 | Comic Book, verse | Euripides' Trojan Women: A Comic, with illustrations by Rosanna Bruno |
The full text ofThe Trojan Women at Wikisource (multiple English translations)
Media related toThe Trojan Women at Wikimedia Commons
The Trojan Women public domain audiobook atLibriVox