The Trojan Women and Hippolytus

by Euripides

These two powerful classics of ancient drama are excellent examples of the author's gift for adapting traditional material for decidedly nontraditional effect. Through them Euripides critically examines social and moral aspects of contemporary life and even specific political events. He endows his figures with shrewdly observed individual character, implicitly deflating the emblematic simplicity of traditional narratives and making him seem the most modern of the great Greek dramatists.
The Trojan Women, one of the most powerful indictments of war and the arrogance of power ever written, is played out before the ruined walls of Troy.

A grim recounting of the murder of the innocent, the desecration of shrines, and the enslavement of the women of the defeated city, it reveals the futility of a war fought for essentially frivolous reasons, in which the traditional heroes are shown to be little better than bloodthirsty thugs. Hippolytus is primarily about the dangers of passion and immoderation, whether in pursuing or in thwarting normal desires — struggles symbolized by the gods, who embody natural forces and behave like irresponsible humans.
Required study for any college course in literature and mythology, these two masterpieces are essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of world drama.

Genres: Classics, Plays, Mythology, Drama

64 pages, Paperback

Published July 17, 2002

About the author

Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Gods can be such jerks lol. Greek Gods are always playing with the humans, they get bored too often.

[Bruce · Rating 2 out of 5]

In The Trojan Women the agony of the surviving women of Troy at the hands of their Greek conquerors is used by the Athenian playwright to comment on the recent atrocities committed by Athenian forces during the Peloponnesian War. Noble women loudly complain of their new reduced status as slaves bound to their husband’s killers. One plots revenge, and another woman’s baby is torn from her arms to be slaughtered.

In Hippolytus humans pay with their lives as goddesses settle scores for slights by inciting men and women to suicide and murder while the goddesses maintain a superficial peace among themselves on Olympus by killing off her rival's devotee.

Both plays use extended monologues in these stiffly worded 1891 translations. The plays are brutally powerful, but the translations are not up to the quality of the drama.

[Talisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read the first play in this book thus far, 'The Trojan Women'. Will read the other play later this year. While it is a small book, it is a dense read, in my opinion. The dialogue is so heavy with pain & suffering, after losing the war, the women of Troy are forced into slavery, their families murdered, and their city set to fire.
It is a heart wrenching tale of what happens to a community and it's people after the battle is done, and the remaining living conquered, are left to their fate.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful play to show the devasating effect of war on family, religion, and community. The play is set in the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War. All of the men have been killed, and the women have been taken into captivity. In his typical style, Euripedes shows the gods to be unreliable and the Greeks to be suspect in their motives for conducting the war. The Trojans are shown to be noble and heroic. The play was performed during the Second Peloponnesian War after Athens had ravaged the city of Melos. Euripedes powerful anti-war statement comes just before the disasterous attempt by Athens to invade Sicily. We see the suffering in turn of Hecuba, Cassandra (who faces death along with Agamemnon), Andromache, and Helen (who gets little sympathy from Euripedes). Those interested in rhetoric will see Euripedes' answer to Gorgias "Encomium on Helen" in Hecuba's speech of blame. This play provides an interesting frame for understanding events in 5th century Athens, but also provides a universal statement on the nature of war.

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Modern reader would probably benefit from an edition with a little more critical material, but if you are willing to put in the work, go for it.