The Trojan women of Euripides

The Trojan women of Euripides,
by Euripides

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Title: The Trojan women of Euripides
Author: Euripides
Release Date: November 16, 2003 [EBook #10096]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE TROJAN WOMEN OF EURIPIDES

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE WITH
EXPLANATORY NOTES BY
GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D.LITT.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
OXFORD

1915

THE TROJAN WOMEN
In his clear preface, Gilbert Murray says with truth that The Trojan
Women, valued by the usage of the stage, is not a perfect play. "It is
only the crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into
music." Yet it is one of the greater dramas of the elder world. In one
situation, with little movement, with few figures, it flashes out a great
dramatic lesson, the infinite pathos of a successful wrong. It has in it
the very soul of the tragic. It even goes beyond the limited tragic, and
hints that beyond the defeat may come a greater glory than will be the
fortune of the victors. And thus through its pity and terror it purifies our
souls to thoughts of peace.
Great art has no limits of locality or time. Its tidings are timeless, and
its messages are universal. The Trojan Women was first performed in
415 B.C., from a story of the siege of Troy which even then was
ancient history. But the pathos of it is as modern to us as it was to the
Athenians. The terrors of war have not changed in three thousand years.
Euripides had that to say of war which we have to say of it to-day, and
had learned that which we are even now learning, that when most
triumphant it brings as much wretchedness to the victors as to the
vanquished. In this play the great conquest "seems to be a great joy and
is in truth a great misery." The tragedy of war has in no essential
altered. The god Poseidon mourns over Troy as he might over the cities
of to-day, when he cries:

"How are ye blind, Ye treaders down of cities, ye that cast Temples to
desolation, and lay waste Tombs, the untrodden sanctuaries where lie
The ancient dead; yourselves so soon to die!"
To the cities of this present day might the prophetess Cassandra speak
her message:
"Would ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war! Yet if war come, there is a
crown in death For her that striveth well and perisheth Unstained: to die
in evil were the stain!"
A throb of human sympathy as if with one of our sisters of to-day
comes to us at the end, when the city is destroyed and its queen would
throw herself, living, into its flames. To be of the action of this play the
imagination needs not to travel back over three thousand years of
history. It can simply leap a thousand leagues of ocean.
If ever wars are to be ended, the imagination of man must end them. To
the common mind, in spite of all its horrors, there is still something
glorious in war. Preachers have preached against it in vain; economists
have argued against its wastefulness in vain. The imagination of a great
poet alone can finally show to the imagination of the world that even
the glories of war are an empty delusion. Euripides shows us, as the
centre of his drama, women battered and broken by inconceivable
torture--the widowed Hecuba, Andromache with her child dashed to
death, Cassandra ravished and made mad--yet does he show that theirs
are the unconquered and unconquerable spirits. The victorious men,
flushed with pride, have remorse and mockery dealt out to them by
those they fought for, and go forth to unpitied death. Never surely can a
great tragedy seem more real to us, or purge our souls more truly of the
unreality of our thoughts and feelings concerning vital issues, than can
The Trojan Women at this moment of the history of the world.
FRANCIS HOVEY STODDARD.
May the first, 1915.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Judged by common standards, the Troädes is far from a perfect play; it
is scarcely even a good play. It is an intense study of one great situation,
with little plot, little construction, little or no relief or variety. The