Library

The Trojan Women

Euripides

Gilbert Murray (1905)

Euripides's The Trojan Women (415 BC) is the most searing of ancient anti-war plays, staged shortly after Athens' own brutal conquest of Melos. In the smoking ruins of fallen Troy it follows the captive royal women—Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache, and Helen—as they await enslavement and endure the murder of Hector's child, Astyanax. Almost without plot, it is a sustained lamentation over the suffering that victory inflicts on the innocent. The translation is Gilbert Murray's.

Start readingYour notebookShow in graph

Contents

1. The Trojan Women