Trojan Women

The final scenes of this play, with the Trojan women’s burial of Astyanax and their final farewell to Troy, showcase the pivotal role of women and the family in Greek ritual. The importance of the burial ritual is established by Andromache, who, as we’ve seen, behaves as an ideal woman should: first, when she describes her rudimentary burial of Polyxena, and now, when Talthybius announces that Astyanax is receiving a proper burial thanks to Andromache’s intervention.

As the boy’s grandmother, the duty falls to Hecuba to dress and anoint the child, and to bandage his wounds before he travels to the afterlife. While Hecuba leads the lament, the Chorus accompanies her, describing the ritual actions of mourning: “Now raise your hands and strike, batter your head, deliver a volley of blows” (lines 1295-1297; page 170). The tragedy of the situation is compounded by Hecuba’s reflection that their roles ought to have been reversed, and Astyanax ought to have mourned her.

This mourning scene mirrors the scene that ends Homer’s Iliad, and, as we’ll see, it could prepare us to detect certain other Homeric qualities of the play’s ending. The final book of the Iliad describes how the Trojan king Priam recovers the body of his son Hector from the Greek hero Achilles. Achilles has his handmaids wash the man’s body, and as Priam brings it back to the city, Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen take turns leading the mourning for Hector. Finally, the Trojans heap up wood and light a funeral pyre for the prince. These broad points are closely mirrored in the improvised burial ritual of Hector’s son in Trojan Women: a Greek, Talthybius, washes the dead boy’s body. Hecuba, as the only leading woman left, leads the entire lament. Though they bury Astyanax, it is worth noting that men set fire to Troy at the same time, symbolizing a funeral pyre for the last Trojan prince. Hecuba herself refers to it as a pyre, in fact, when she attempts to throw herself onto it.

Echoes of Homer pervade these scenes and can lend deeper meaning to certain passages. For example, when Hecuba observes Astyanax on Hector’s shield, she describes what she sees: “The imprint of his body on your strap is sweet, and oh, his sweat has left a mark on the rim—the sweat that often would drip down from Hector’s brow when he would toil in battle and press this shield against his beard” (lines 1251-1255; page 168). This could be a play on a famous scene in the Iliadfeaturing a detailed description of the decorations on the shield of Achilles, Hector’s rival. The description of Hector’s shield quite literally turns Homer’s description upside down, however; rather than describing the decorated exterior of the shield, as Homer did with Achilles’ shield, Euripides has Hecuba describe the inside of the shield. Instead of art and divine inspiration, she sees marks of humanity, the vestiges of a much-used instrument of war. We are further drawn to compare Hector’s shield with that of the Homeric Achilles, when Hecuba tells the shield, “you are far more worthy of being honored than the arms of clever, wicked Odysseus” (lines 1284-1285; page 169). What Euripides doesn’t bother to tell us, but what the audience is expected to know already, is that Odysseus has inherited the arms of Achilles. Hecuba is thus obliquely comparing the use and the honor of Hector’s shield with Achilles’ shield.