MDS1 ANG

Trojan Women

Heather Sebo

http://www.indafondazione.org/index.php?s=trojan+women

Euripides’ Trojan Women 415 BCE.!Often called the world’s greatest anti-war play. !

452 productions and 4 films of Trojan Women from 1902-2002.!

421 Sione!417 Hesiae!

416 Melos (Thucydides 5.116) !

By line 620 Hecuba has had to bear the defeat of Troy; destruction of her home and slaughter of Priam at the altar of Zeus (98 ff.); the enforced marriage/concubinage of Cassandra, dedicated priestess of Apollo, to Agamemnon (247-59); her own allocation to Odysseus (275-92); the madness of Cassandra

(343 ff.); the enslavement of Andromache to Achilleus’ son Neoptolemos (577 ff.); news of the death of her daughter Polyxena sacrificed on the grave of Achilleus to appease his ghost. (622 ff.); all this and

we are only half way through the play! !

Prologue: Poseidon and Athene!Parodos: Where will I be sent and with whom?!

ACT 1: Cassandra!Stasimon: Sing, Muse, of Ilium; sing with tears ... of joy turned to despair; the Trojan Horse !

ACT 2: Andromache: Astanax must die. !

Stasimon: Troy destroyed once before by Heracles despite the beauty of Ganymede and Tithonius. !!

ACT 3: Menelaos, Helen, Hecuba!

Stasimon: Zeus has betrayed Troy, his misted altar, the clotted scarements; smash Menelaos’ ship!

ACT 4: Funeral of of Astyanax: he should have lived to bury me...!

EPILOGUE: Talthybius hurry to the ships give Troy to the flame!

Chorus: Lost shall be the name on the land, all is gone, perished. Troy, city of sorrow is there no longer...!!!

http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/images/pottery/painters/keypieces/tiverios/19-p137top-medium.jpg

'Sack of Troy' hydria!Kleophrades Painter!

C5th BCE!

http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/images/pottery/painters/keypieces/tiverios/19-p137bottom-medium.jpg

Kleophrades Hydria !

 •   farewell to Troy,!•  deus ex machina (ie. a the direct intervention of a god) !•  a prophecy about the future outside the frame of the play!!!

Francis M. Dunn. 1993. “Beginning at the End in Euripides’ ‘Trojan Women’”, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 136: pp. 22-35. !

Anne Suter (p.16) lists six scenes of full lamentation in Trojan Women:!•  Andromache and Hecuba’s laments for Hector (2); !•  Andromache’s for Astyanax (3); !

•  Hecuba for Astyanax (4); !•  and the chorus for Astyanax. (5) !

•  The play ends with a full lament for the death of Troy (6); !But elements of lament occur in almost every scene. !!

Topoi (topics) typically found in lament !(i) !expression of grief and loss,!(ii) ! contrast between past and present,!

(iii) ! praise for the dead, !(iv) !anger at the dead for abandoning the bereaved, !(v) !anger at, and a desire for, vengeance on those responsible for the death!

(vi) the desire of the mourner to die !

Anne Suter. 2003. “Lament in Euripides' "Trojan Women", Mnemosyne, 56: pp.1-28!

http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/uploads/cassandra_2.jpg

Cassandra !

“...escort the bride. Oh thrust her strongly on. If

Loxias (Apollo) is Loxias still, the Archaians’ pride, great Agamemnon, has won a wife more fatal than

ever Helen was. Since I will kill him: and avenge my brother’s blood and my father’s in the desolation of his house. 353ff. !

she will “step so far out of her frenzy as to show this cities’ fate is blessed beside the Achaians”:!For one woman’s sake, one act of love, these hunted

Helen down and threw thousands of lives away. Their general—clever man—in the name of a vile women cut

his darling down, gave up for a brother the sweetness of children in his own house...365ff!

“Lead me quick to the house of death where I shall take my mate…”![she tears off her robes as a priestess of Apollo ]!

“Throw them to the running winds...” !“when the ship goes out from this shore, she carries

one of the three furies in my shape”. !

SING, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus!and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the!Achaians,!hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls!of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting!of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished!since that time when first there stood in division of conflict!Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.!What god was it then set them together in bitter collision? Iliad 1.1-5!

Sing, Muse, of Ilium; !sing with tears a song of !death in new hymnic strains. !For I shall now sing for Troy, !how I perished, an unfortunate captive of the Argives, !because of a four-wheeled wagon, !when the Achaeans left the horse at the gates, !rattling to the heavens, fully armed and !with gold trappings. Tr. Munteneau !

Dana Munteanu. 2010. “The Tragic Muse and The Anti-epic Glory od Women In Euripides Troades”, The Classical Journal, 106: pp. 129-147!

“!

...daughter of Vindictiveness, of hate, of Blood, Death of all wickedness that swarms on earth. I cry it aloud: Zeus was never your father, but you were born a pestilence to all Greeks and the world beside. Accursed; who from those lovely

eyes brought down to shame and ruin the bright planes of Troy.!Oh seize him, take him, dash him to death of it must be done!

feed on his flesh of it is your will. These are the gods who damn us to death, and I have no strength to save my boy from execution. 768ff.!

Image source: http://donaldlbrooks.com/trojan.html

Irene Pappas as Helen in !The Trojan Women, 1971!

Directed by Michael Cacoyannis. !

http://theperfumechronicles.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/irene-papas1.jpg

http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/tw33.jpg

http://www.movieactors.com/actors/irenepapas.htm

!!

image source: theater2.nytimes.com