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Hecuba and Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

George Gellie
George Gellie*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

Hecuba and The Trojan Women have much of their material in common. Both plays have a chorus of captive Trojan women who are waiting at or near Troy just before they sail with their new masters to Greece. Both groups sing at some length about their slave condition, about the question of where precisely in Greece they will be taken and about the night of Troy’s fall. Hecuba is the protagonist of both plays and they are largely concerned with the destruction of her family. In Hecuba Polydorus is killed before the play’s opening (though Hecuba does not know this) and the cruel killing of Polyxena engages our attention for a considerable time; in The Trojan Women Polyxena is killed before the play’s opening (though Hecuba does not know this) and the cruel killing of Astyanax engages our attention for a considerable time. In both plays Talthybius is the sympathetic announcer of brutal Greek decisions and Odysseus (whether on or off the stage) is the cynical politician whose pressure is held responsible for the deaths of Polyxena and Astyanax respectively.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 14 , 1980 , pp. 30 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1980

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References

1 Kitto, H.D.F.Greek Tragedy 3 (London 1961), 309–27.Google Scholar

2 Rivier, A.Essai sur le Tragique d’Euripide 2 (Paris 1975).Google Scholar He calls Hecuba ‘a half-pathetic, half-romantic play’ and says that Euripides ‘does not evoke the deeper significance of the events’ (154). Of The Trojan Women he says: ‘We are at the opera’ (157).

3 Bernard Knox, ‘Euripidean Comedy’ in The Rarer Action, Essays in honor of Francis Fergusson, eds. Cheuse, A and Koftler, R. (New Brunswick, N.J. 1970), 68–96;Google ScholarSegal, E.‘Euripidean Comedy’, PCA 74 (1977), 33 f..Google Scholar

4 Agamemnon registers the fact that Polydorus’ body, found by the servant, is not in Greek dress (734–5). This probably means that the ghost also is not wearing Greek dress.

5 Cf. Rosivach, V.J.‘The First Stasimon of the Hecuba’, AJPh 96 (1975), 360:Google Scholar ‘Polyxena not only gets exactly what she wants, escape from the disgrace of slavery, but she obtains the further reward of respect for her heroism. In terms of the values which Polyxena holds, her death is a triumph, not a loss.’

6 Cf. Rosivach, op. cit. 361: ‘Polyxena “takes charge”, dominating the scene between herself, Hecuba and Odysseus … Polyxena stage-manages her own death.’

7 Cf. Aylen, L.Greek Tragedy and the Modern World (London 1964), 136:Google Scholar ‘The sacrifice of Polyxena is superficially like that of Macaria, but the point of it here is its pointlessness, for all its nobility.’

8 Conacher, D.J.Euripidean Drama: Myth, Theme and Structure (Toronto 1967), 158 n. 27, talks of Sartre and ‘existentialist heroism’Google Scholar. Vellacott, P.IronicDrama:A Study of Euripides’ Method and Meaning (Cambridge 1975), 162,Google Scholar speaks of ’the morbid superstition which demands human sacrifice; a barbarity excusable in brutalized masses, but not in their leaders’. On the other hand Adkins, A.W.H.‘Basic Greek Values in Euripides’ Hecuba and Hercules Furens’. CQ 16 (1966), 198–9,Google Scholar argues strongly that the human sacrifice would have been accepted as a proper activity by the contemporary audience. Similarly, Kirkwood, G.M.‘Hecuba and Nomos’, TAPA 78 (1947), 64–5.Google Scholar It is difficult to reject their systematic arguments based on legal and philosophical documentation, but Euripides’ play also is a document of the times and the play still seems to look for a spectator’s revulsion from the savagery of the act. Abrahamson, E.L.‘Euripides’ Tragedy of Hecuba’, TAPA 83 (1952), 122,Google Scholar makes a good point: ‘Euripides has made it perfectly clear that no religious necessity is involved in the sacrifice of Polyxena. The Greeks in the assembly are about equally divided in their opinions, and are finally swayed by Odysseus’ demagogic oratory.’

9 For more of this apparent tastelessness, see the final argument used by Hecuba in pleading for Agamemnon’s help against Polymestor: ‘My daughter sleeps at your side… how will you mark, my lord, those happy nights or what return shall my daughter have for those affectionate embraces in bed; what return shall I have from her?’ (826, 828–30). Hecuba goes on to point out that because of this relationship Polydorus virtually has a family tie with Agamemnon (833–5). Many critics (for example Kirkwood, op. cit. 66; Conacher, op. cit. 162–3) find the exchange repulsive and explain it as Euripides’ indication of the first stage in Hecuba’s moral collapse. But the idea has not suddenly entered the play. At 122–4 the chorus stated that Agamemnon, because he was sleeping with Cassandra, felt moved to plead for Polyxena’s life before the Greek assembly. At 850 ff. Agamemnon, having heard Hecuba’s plea, accepts it with as little embarrassment as she displayed in uttering it; but he cannot yield to it because he cannot appear to the army to be using violence on an ally ‘for the sake of Cassandra’. In high tragedy the very vulgarity of this plea would cut across the play’s moral argument; in Hecuba the vulgarity does not count. It provides us with a rhetorical flourish to round out Hecuba’s case. It is just a plotting-feature which is the more entertaining for being a little shocking.

10 Meridor, R.‘Eur. Hec. 1035–38’, AJPh 96 (1975), 5–6,Google Scholar examines the similarities. (They are used by Sophocles also atEL. 1415 f.. ) When Polymestor re-appears at 105 6 wearing his new blinded mask, it is easy to be reminded of Oedipus, and it is probable that Hec. was produced a very few years after OT. Again Polymestor suffers badly in the comparison.

11 For example Schmid, W. in Schmid-Stählin, Geschichte der Griechischen Litemtur, i. 3 (Munich 1934), 466:Google Scholar ‘His blinding and his animal behaviour after it remind one of the Cyclops.’

12 Cf. Grube, G.M.A.The Drama of Euripides (London 1941), 226.Google Scholar

13 But it is, as Strohm, H.Euripides: Interpretationen zurDramatischen Form (Munich 1957), 33,Google Scholar points out, ‘the most unusual of all Deus-ex-machina roles’.

14 See Kitto, op. cit. 220: ‘Polymestor, practically, steals the thunder.’

15 See 852 f., 1025 ff., 1085 f.,1249ff., 1284ff. Cf. Adkins,op. cit. 205:‘he [Polymestor] has killed a ξένος out of greed, and is justly punished. The punishment may be horrible, but so was the crime.’ For a good recent discussion of the justice of Hecuba’s revenge, see Meridor, R.‘Hecuba’s Revenge: Some Observations on Euripides’ Hecuba’, AJPh 99 (1978), 28–35.Google Scholar

16 These epilogues can put us in mind of the last chapters of Victorian novels, though the latter try rather harder to dispense appropriate rewards and punishments.

17 Cf. Barrett, W.S.Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford 1964), 412412:Google Scholar ‘… there is an evident emotional satisfaction in the feeling that the events and persons one has been witnessing live on in effect or name into the life of the present day.’

18 Meridor, ‘Hecuba’s Revenge’ (n. 15 above), 32–4, has some good comments on this subject.

19 Lesky, A.Die Tragische Dichtung der Hellenen 3 (Göttingen 1972), 329,Google Scholar includes Medea and Hippolytus in a category of θυμός-tragedies, and claims for Hecuba an ‘inner nearness’ to them.

20 See Conacher (η. 8 above), 152–4, with references; Abrahamson 121, 128 n. 24; Vellacott 210; S.G. Daitz, ‘Concepts of Freedom and Slavery in Euripides’ Hecuba’, Hermes 99 (1971),222:‘… the loss ofher own humanity as she turns figuratively into a rabid bitch’; Luschnig, C.A.E.‘Euripides’ Hecabe: The Time is Out of Joint’, CJ 71 (1976), 232:Google Scholar ‘Her frustration and thirst for vengeance spur her on to an action so inhuman and unjust that it dehumanizes her utterly.’

21 Schmid(n. 11 above), 464, referring to these reversals of expectation, uses the phrase‘a tragic oxymoron’. Cf. Steidle, W.‘ZurHekabe des Euripides’, WS 79 (1966), 140.Google Scholar As Segal (n. 3 above), 34 puts it, ‘Wishes for the impossible permeate all Euripidean drama.’

22 Kirkwood (n. 8 above), 67 sees the Hecuba who has rejected Nomos and embraced Peitho as ‘already embarked on the career of moral degeneration’. This view of the play is rejected elsewhere in this essay.

23 See Jones, JohnOn Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London 1962), 269:Google Scholar ‘Euripides’s lyrics are suspiciously separable, often, from the plays they belong to, but they are also very fine …’. Jones borrows from Macaulay the phrase ‘misplaced beauty’ (268) to describe his experience of lyrics like these. I would suggest that some of the ‘beauty’ is only ‘misplaced’ if we insist on calling tragedies plays that do not aspire to the genre.

24 Grube (n. 2 above), 225 calls the ode ‘One of the most beautiful in Greek tragedy’. Kitto 217 speaks of ‘a marvellously vivid ode’. On the other hand, Conacher 164, attempting to establish a tragic relevance for the ode, says: ‘ … the Chorus bursts into a sombre ode on the sack of Troy, as if to underline these grim reminders of Hecuba’s defection to her daughter’s and her city’s enemies.’

25 Choral groups in Greek tragedy frequently speak of themselves in the singular. In Hecuba however the strength of focus on the individual experience seems to be extreme.

26 For the special nature of this treatment, see Panagl, O.‘Zur Function der direkten Rede in den “dithyrambischen Stasima” des Euripides’, WS n.s. 6 (1972), 5–11.Google Scholar

27 Webster, T.B.L.The Tragedies of Euripides (London 1967), 121,Google Scholar speaks of the choruses as ‘a foil to the realism of the iambic scenes’. Cf. Barlow, S.A.The Imagery of Euripides (London 1971), 25Google Scholar (examining the themes used in the first stasimon): ‘Broadly speaking, their organic justification is of two kinds, further amplification of the present scene, and relief or contrast from it.’