Hecuba by Euripides — Read

Composed in c. 424 BC, this tragedy takes place after the Trojan War, before the Greeks have departed from Troy. The play is a detailed study of Hecuba, wife of King Priam and formerly Queen of the now-fallen city, exploring her grief over the death of her daughter Polyxena and the revenge she takes for the murder of her youngest son, Polydorus. The play boasts an unconventional opening, with the ghost of Polydorus explaining how when the war threatened Troy, he was sent to King Polymestor of Thrace for safekeeping, with gifts of gold and jewellery. But when Troy lost the war, Polymestor treacherously murdered Polydorus, and seized the treasure. Polydorus has foreknowledge of many of the play's events, haunting his mother's dreams the night before.

At dawn, Hecuba mourns her great losses and is agitated by the portents of her nightmare. The Chorus of young slave women enters, bearing fateful news. One of Hecuba's last remaining daughters, Polyxena, is to be killed on the tomb of Achilles as a blood sacrifice in his honour. When Odysseus enters, escorting Polyxena to an altar where Neoptolemus will shed her blood, the Ithacan ignores Hecuba's impassioned pleas to spare her daughter and Polyxena herself admits she would rather die than live as a slave. In the first Choral interlude, the Chorus lament their own doomed fate, cursing the sea breeze that will carry them on ships to the foreign lands where they will live in slavery. The plot then falls into two clearly distinguished parts: the Greeks' sacrifice of Hecuba's daughter, Polyxena, to the shade of Achilles, and the vengeance of Hecuba on Polymestor, the Thracian king.