Hecuba Queen of Troy

Let me actions be lessons.

Let my grief inspire a happier path.

Let your people support you.

“Aristotle's definition of tragic compassion. Hecuba's plea, like Aristotle's definition, implies that we will not have compassion if we believe the per son fully deserves the suffering. There may be a measure of blame, but then in our compassion we typically register the thought that the suffering exceeds the measure of the fault.” (Nussbaum 15)

How could I be deserving of the suffering I have endured? Did I set out for my family to be destroyed? Did I want to be a widow? A grieving mother ? A Trojan women? My plea was for justice which Agamemnon granted me by exiling Polymestor. He will never suffer the pain I have endured my whole life. 

Throughout history, there have always been riots and crowds that may be seen as destructive or non peaceful. These people join together to prove a point whether it is a peaceful crowd or not. These riots are a crowd of people, who collectively have the same “fire”. By fire I mean ambition for change.

These crowds or riots form to create a message that correlates with their identify. The people beside me were also Trojan women, we had the same losses and the same message. We had nothing to loose because we have already lost everything we knew. 

Louis de Silvestre, “Odysseus verlangt von Andromache den Knaben Astyanax” (1708)

Trojan Women Chorus: "O sea-breeze, wind that carries ships across the heaving waves, where are you now carrying me? In what home will I be slave? Will I be goods for Argos or Sparta? Phthia, maybe?—where they say the full Apidanus departs the fertile plains?"

(Hecuba by Euripides lines 440-448)

Trojan Women Chorus: "Alas for my children, alas for the fathers, and for our native land now leveled, slashed by Argive spears to ash-heaps and shreds of smoke, while I am taken far from Asia, to Europe, to be a slave. This is what I’ll call home now: the bed-chamber of Hades." 

(Hecuba by Euripides, lines 476-484)

After Troy was conquered, many wives and mothers lost their families. I realized I was suffering among many. Us women complied our losses, understood our collective grief. We all wanted to have revenge on the murders of our family’s. The only way we could ever be effective was to work together to overcome those who have wronged us and try to get justice for our losses.

“Hecuba, of course, is not responsible for the relentless suffering inflicted upon her, and she approximates none of the hubris too often ascribed to Greek tragic heroes. As a victim of circumstances totally beyond her control, she is the central representative of the drama's communal suffering”(Anselment 411).

The video “The Trojan Women (1971) Tribute 

Achilles

“Please, I beg you. Don’t take my daughter from me. Let her live. Haven’t enough died already? All I’ve lost lives on in her. She is my solace.” ( “Hecuba” by Euripides 278-280)

Does it make you happy to have killed my Hector and Polyxena? Does it bring you joy to conquer our home? I cannot seek revenge on a dead man. What made you deserve my daughter’s blood? If you loved her enough, let her live.  

For the Record: “Polyxena has done no harm to Achilles”.

( “Hecuba” by Euripides 263-264.) 

“Hecuba and The Trojan Women murdering Polymestor” by Antonio Tempesta

To Polymestor

Do you remember these words of The Trojan Women:

--You haven’t yet paid the price, but you will. 

—Like a man stumbling into foul bilge-water. 

—Or swept from shore and drowning in the undertow. 

—As the waves cover your head, you’ll see how your life is just a loan that’s come due. 

—Death is the payment the gods demand. 

—Where justice and the gods converge, there’s a maelstrom.  

—Your greed for gold leads you down the road to hell. 

—Hands that never held a sword will cut your life away. 

(”Hecuba” by Euripides, lines 1023-1032)