#polyxena

i love polyxena who looks at odysseus too afraid of a girl who's about to die to even let her supplicate him and sees right through it and tells her mother not to mourn for her because she would rather die than be enslaved. but i also love polyxena who listens to her mother try and fail to save her and knows death is coming for her, no matter how hard her mother tries to save her, and she at least doesn't want to make it harder for her. she lets odysseus be a coward to her, but she won't show her own fear. instead she makes her lament about hecuba. even if she did want to live. even if she wanted to stay right there with her mother as long as she could.

Thinking again about how the Trojan War ate the slightly younger generation at Troy alive, and the whole thing was bookmarked by the sacrifice of two virginal girls. The older generation has its hard time too, but many of them at least make it home eventually, however happy or unhappy that homecoming was.