Hecuba

Fiction | Play | Adult

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Lines 1-215

Lines 216-657

Lines 658-952

Lines 953-1295

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Lines 216-657Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Lines 216-483 Summary (First Episode and First Stasimon)

Odysseus arrives and tells Hecuba that the army has voted to sacrifice Polyxena to the ghost of Achilles; Odysseus has been sent to fetch Polyxena. Hecuba reminds Odysseus that during the war, he “came to Troy, a spy, in beggar’s disguise” (241), but was discovered by Helen, who betrayed his identity to Hecuba. Though Hecuba had Odysseus in her power, she agreed to keep his presence a secret when he begged her for his life. Now Hecuba asks that Odysseus return the favor—to spare Polyxena’s life. She asks what possible justification there can be for sacrificing Polyxena, even suggesting that Helen, who caused the war, be sacrificed instead. Odysseus, however, is unmoved. He admits that he is indebted to Hecuba for saving his life, but claims to have no choice in the matter: He vowed that when Troy was captured, the daughter of the king and queen would be given to the best soldier, and the dead Achilles was by far the best soldier in the Greek army. He shudders at the implications of failing to properly honor the dead and advises Hecuba to endure her grief.

Hecuba asks Polyxena to beg Odysseus for her life. But Polyxena does not do so. Instead, she delivers a speech in which she accepts her fate, asking what she has to live for now that her home has been destroyed and her family is dead or enslaved. She regards a noble death as preferable to living the rest of her life as an enslaved woman. Hecuba begs Odysseus to let her die in Polyxena’s place or to at least let her die with her daughter, but he rebuffs her. Polyxena tries to comfort her mother, and the two women part tearfully. Hecuba collapses.

The Chorus sings the first stasimon, wondering where the Greek ships will take them. They imagine where they will end up and who will be their enslavers, painting a romantic picture of the cities and islands of Greece. They lament that they must live out their lives as enslaved women, far away from their homeland.

Lines 484-657 Summary (Second Episode and Second Stasimon)

Talthybius, herald of the Greek army, enters searching for Hecuba. When he finds her lying on the ground, he expresses pity for her fate, saying that he would rather die “than sink as low / As this poor woman fallen now” (497-98). Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, has sent Talthybius to tell Hecuba that Polyxena is dead and that she can bury her body. Hecuba asks how her daughter died, and Talthybius responds with a long Messenger Speech—a standard feature of Attic tragedies, in which violence is described rather than dramatized—in which he recounts Polyxena’s final moments. Polyxena was brought before the entire Greek army as Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, prayed to Achilles’s ghost and asked him to accept the offering. Polyxena then addressed the assembled army, declaring that she was dying of her own free will, and presented herself to Neoptolemus’s sword. Neoptolemus sacrificed the girl as the entire army admired her courage. Hecuba should count herself blessed in having such a heroic daughter.

Hecuba expresses sorrow for her daughter’s death but is comforted by the fact that Polyxena died so nobly. Hecuba meditates on the nature of goodness. Then she asks Talthybius to tell the Greeks to stay away from Polyxena’s body so that Hecuba can give it a proper burial. Talthybius exits. Hecuba then sends her handmaid to bring water from the shore so that she can clean her daughter’s body and prepare it for burial. As the servant leaves, Hecuba again laments the loss of her fortunes.

The Chorus sings the second stasimon. Their “doom was done” (630) when Paris sailed to Sparta and carried off Helen: This event was the origin of their present grief. They end their brief song by imagining Spartan girls and mothers mourning for their own sons who died at Troy.

Lines 216-657 Analysis

The first and second episodes of Euripides’s Hecuba pick up and hone the theme of Enduring the Vicissitudes of Fortune. When the Greek herald Talthybius sees Hecuba, he is alarmed that the once powerful queen of Troy has been reduced to an enslaved woman, declaring that “I would rather die than sink as low / As this poor woman has fallen now” (497-98). Hecuba’s fortunes continue to decline. She must lose yet another daughter, Polyxena, whom the Greeks have voted to sacrifice to the ghost of Achilles; all Hecuba can do, as Odysseus coldly advises her, is “endure; bear your losses” (325). Hecuba is bound by the powers of fate and necessity (ubiquitous in Attic tragedy, and linked to the Role of Good and Evil in the Human Experience), and can do nothing to resist those powers.

In drawing more attention to the enslavement of Hecuba and the royal family of Troy, the play explores the idea that nobility is inborn. This aristocratic notion is picked up, for instance, in the Chorus’ remark that “Noble birth / Is a stamp, conspicuous, awesome, among mortals. / And nobility’s name grows greater with worthy actions” (379-81).

Noble or aristocratic birth, in other words, is viewed as something that somebody is born into: Simply being enslaved does not change this aspect of a person’s nature. This idea makes the enslavement of Hecuba and her family seem even more troubling and unjust to the Chorus: “This is what it means / to be a slave: to be abused and bear it, / compelled by violence to suffer wrong” (331-33).

But while Hecuba is forced to endure her new status, Polyxena is happy to escape into death. As she says to Odysseus when he comes to take her away, “I prefer to die / Than go on living badly” (377-78). Polyxena’s aristocratic nature is thus unable to abide life as an enslaved person.

The first two episodes also juxtapose Greek values and those the Greeks’ viewed as “barbarian” values. To Odysseus and the other conquering Greeks, Hecuba and the other Trojans are “barbarians.” The Greeks believe that since Trojan values are inferior and even unjust, they rightly suffer destruction, misery, and slavery. But the arguments that Odysseus and other Greeks use to justify the barbarity of the Trojans in the play are usually specious and unconvincing. Odysseus, for instance, claims that barbarians differ from Greeks in failing to honor their dead, and that this is why “Hellas should prosper while your countries suffer / The fate they deserve” (330-31). But the audience and reader see that the “barbarian” Hecuba does honor her dead children, taking care that they are properly buried and deeply mourning their loss. If anything, it is the Greeks’ intention to sacrifice a human victim to a ghost that represents inappropriate behavior towards the dead, even from a Greek perspective (which generally condemned human sacrifice). Moreover, not all the Greeks agree with Odysseus, whose hostility is juxtaposed with the compassion of Talthybius and even Agamemnon.