Book dossier

Τρῳάδες

by Euripides

"The Trojan Women" is a play by the 5th century B.C. Greek dramatist Euripides. The story takes place at the end of the Trojan war and is focused on the Greeks' division of the spoils, who happen to be the survivors of the ten year war, the Trojan women. The main protagonist is Hecuba, the queen of Troy, and through her and her daughter Cassandra and her daughter in law Andromache (widow of Hecuba's son Hector) we are led through the process by which the surviving Trojan women realize the horrors of their fates. Euripides shows us via an insistent sense of immediacy incident by incident, step by inevitable step, through a messenger, what their individual fates are to be and that there can be no reprieve. The horrors of war these women faced for ten years will not abate simply because the battle has ended. The play is as topical now as when it was written for during the writing Athens and Sparta were involved in their long and ruinous Peloponnesian war. It is known Euripides was opposed to this war. And the chaos this war brought ended Athenian democracy.