Hecuba

“O grief!

What can I say?

What are the words for loss?

O bitterness of age,

Slavery not to be borne,

Unendurable!

To whom can I turn?

Childless and homeless,

My husband murdered,

My city stained with fire …

Where can I go?

Where shall I find safety?

What god, what power

Will help me now?

[…]

Why should I live? How live in the light

When its goodness is gone,

When all I have is grief?”

Upon discovering that her daughter Polyxena is to be killed, Hecuba sings a lyric lament for the terrible things she has suffered on account of her declining fortunes: She has lost her home, her husband, her children, her freedom, and must now lose yet another child. Already Hecuba views her situation as “not to be borne, / Unendurable”—yet the worse her situation becomes, the more Hecuba does learn to endure it, though her endurance ultimately transforms her character into something more animal than human.

“But now I die,

And you must see my death—

Butchered like a calf,

Like a wild mountain beast’s young,

Ripped from your arms,

Throat cut, and sinking

Downward into dark

With the unconsolable dead.

It is you I pity,

Mother.

For you I cry.

Not for myself,

Not for this life

Whose suffering is such

I do not care to live,

But call it happiness to die.”

When Polyxena learns that she is to die, she grieves for her mother rather than for herself, for she herself would rather die than be enslaved. These lines address the plight of the female victims displaced by warfare, a theme central to the play. Polyxena’s characterization of herself as various young animals (“a calf, […] a wild mountain beast’s young”) highlights her vulnerability and the loss of humanity experienced by those who are enslaved. In a different but related way, Hecuba will also be made an animal by her suffering and by her loss of freedom.

“O gods, spare me the sight

Of this thankless breed, these politicians

Who do not care what harm they do their friends,

Providing they can please a crowd!”

With these words, Hecuba establishes Odysseus’s character as representative of the “thankless breed” of politicians who behave opportunistically and amorally, caring only for public opinion and public advancement. Hecuba’s characterization of Odysseus as a typical politician would have had special significance in the Athens of Euripides’s day, where politicians and “demagogues” often gained considerable notoriety for the lengths they went to pander to public opinion.

“And you have power,

Odysseus, greatness and power. But clutch them gently,

Use them kindly, and don’t suppose, because

You’re lucky now, that it will last. It won’t.

All greatness goes.

I know. I too was great

But I am nothing now. One day

Cut down my greatness and my joy.”

Hecuba tries to appeal to Odysseus’s mercy by reminding him that he too may suffer a decline in his fortunes, just as she has: “All greatness goes.” These lines thus develop the important theme of the vicissitudes of fortune, which makes friends all the more important—that way, one has people to rely on when fortunes turn.

“This is what it means

To be a slave: to be abused and bear it,

Compelled by violence to suffer wrong.”

Listening to Odysseus rebuff Hecuba’s pleas for mercy, the Chorus pithily observes that to be enslaved is to be powerless and thus to be outside of justice: Those who have no power cannot seek justice for the wrongs they suffer. This injustice comes to characterize the existence of the female victims of war—Hecuba, Polyxena, and the Chorus—as they are presented in the play.

“I am a novice

To miseries, whose yoke I might endure,

But with such pain that I prefer to die

Than go on living badly.”

Polyxena’s desire to die nobly rather than live “badly” is an effective illustration of her aristocratic ideals: better to die than live as an enslaved woman. Unlike her mother, Polyxena will not learn to “endure” her “miseries,” and, at least to Hecuba, her fate is enviable.

“Noble birth

Is a stamp, conspicuous, awesome, among mortals.

And nobility’s name grows greater with worthy actions.”

Responding to Polyxena’s decision to die willingly, the Chorus reiterates the aristocratic idea that nobility and goodness are inborn qualities, “a stamp” that shows through in one’s birth as well as one’s actions. The nobly born, in this view, can never really be enslaved. The corollary, however, is that those who are not nobly born can never really be truly good—an idea accepted by some of the entrenched aristocracy of the ancient Greek world, but which would surely have been unpopular in the democratic Athens of Euripides’s day.

“I have died of sorrow while I was still alive.”

In the kind of semantic paradox that Euripides was known for, Hecuba describes herself as having effectively “died of sorrow” even though she is still alive, reflecting the idea that life in captivity is no life at all, especially for one who was born free. Hecuba’s claim to have “died of sorrow” also foreshadows the change her character is about to undergo, as the grieving Hecuba of the first part of the play degenerates into the vengeful, dog-like Hecuba of the second part.

“O Zeus, what can I say?

That you look on mankind and care?

Or do we, holding that the gods exist,

Deceive ourselves with unsubstantial lies

While chance controls the world? Is this the queen

Of Troy once rich in gold? Is this the wife

Of Priam the great?”

Talthybius, seeing how far Hecuba has fallen, gives voice to his own take on the theme of the vicissitudes of fortune, reflecting that the gods might be a fiction and that in fact “chance controls the world.” Talthybius, who shows compassion for Hecuba, contrasts with characters such as Odysseus and Polymestor, who are hostile and even dismissive of her suffering.

“‘Wait, you Greeks

Who sacked my city! Of my own free will I die.

Let no man touch me. I offer my throat

Bravely to the sword. But by the gods,

Let me be free for now. Let me die free.

I am of royal blood, and I scorn to be called

a slave among the dead.’”

Polyxena’s words to the Greek army, reported to Hecuba by the herald Talthybius, emphasize Polyxena’s aristocratic ideals and her determination to stay true to those ideals. Polyxena dies willingly and retains her modesty to the very end, asking that nobody touch her and thus managing to “die free” even though she has been enslaved.

“The blood

Gushed out, and she fell, dying, to the ground,

But even as she dropped, managed to fall somehow

With grace, modestly hiding what should be hidden

From men’s eyes.”

Talthybius’s description of Polyxena’s death attests to the girl’s adherence, even in death, to the feminine aristocratic ideals of nobility, bravery, and sexual purity. Talthybius, along with the rest of the Greeks, are forced to admire Polyxena’s death. The lines in which Polyxena is described falling while “modestly hiding what should be hidden / From men’s eyes” emphasize her virginal status, an image some readers have understood as erotic.

“But human nature never seems to change;

Ignoble stays itself, bad to the end;

And nobility good, its nature uncorrupted

By any shock or blow, always the same,

Enduring excellence. Is it in our blood

Or something we acquire? But

Goodness can be taught,

And any man who knows what goodness is

Knows evil too, because he judges

From the good.”

Hecuba, taking comfort in her daughter Polyxena’s noble death, meditates on human nature, wondering whether nobility is inborn, something that is “in our blood,” or something that can be acquired and taught—encapsulating the nature versus nurture debate that was prevalent in ancient Greece. For Hecuba, the aristocratic nobility displayed by Polyxena (and herself) cannot be destroyed by circumstances, not even by captivity and enslavement.

“That man is happiest

Who lives from day to day and asks no more,

Garnering no evil in his simple life.”

Hecuba, reflecting on how far her star has fallen, concludes that it is better to live simply, for one who lives a simple life is not as badly affected by the inevitable change of fortune. Because Hecuba was once powerful and rich, her loss of status brings her great suffering; had she never had power or wealth, though, she would have incurred less “evil” and would now not be suffering so much.

“No, not freedom.

Revenge. Only give me my revenge

And I’ll gladly stay a slave the rest of my life.”

Hecuba’s statement that she would rather have revenge on Polymestor than her freedom marks a turning point in the transformation undergone by her character. Represented as a passive victim of suffering in the first part of the play, Hecuba now takes fate into her own hands, leading her to commit violent and cruel actions. Hecuba’s revocation of the basic human desire for freedom marks her as something less than human and foreshadows her transformation into a dog.

“AGAMEMNON.

I pity you, Hecuba.

Your suffering has no end.

HECUBA:

I died

Long ago. Nothing can touch me now.

AGAMEMNON.

What woman on this earth was ever cursed

Like this?

HECUBA.      

There is none but goddess Fortune

Herself.”

In the stichomythia (line-by-line exchange) between Agamemnon and Hecuba, the theme of Enduring the Vicissitudes of Fortune come to the fore, as Agamemnon expresses his pity for Hecuba’s misfortunes while Hecuba responds that human beings are at the mercy of the goddess Fortune—that at any time their luck can take a turn for the worse. Hecuba also asserts—not for the first time—that she has already “died / Long ago” in every way that matters, and that as such she is beyond human concerns of pleasure, happiness, and even freedom.

“Be like a painter. Stand back, see me

In perspective, see me whole, observe

My wretchedness—once a queen, and now

A slave; blessed with children, happy once,

Now old, no children, no city, utterly alone,

Unhappiest of mortals…”

Hecuba, addressing Agamemnon, presents herself as a tableau—a painting of mater dolorosa (“grieving mother”). The emblematic quality of Hecuba’s suffering becomes a symbol for itself, as Hecuba imagines herself as the paradigmatic image of a mother who has lost everything.

“If by some magic, some gift of the gods,

I could become all speech—tongues in my arms,

Hands that talked, voices from my hair and feet—

Then, all together, I’d fall and touch your knees,

Crying, begging, imploring with a thousand tongues—

O master, greatest light of Hellas, hear me,

Help an old woman, though she’s worth nothing, avenge her!

You must do your duty as a man of honor:

See justice done. Punish the murderer.”

In vivid language, Hecuba imagines that if she could get the ability to speak from every part of her body, she would all the more effectively beseech Agamemnon for help: A single, human voice is no longer enough for Hecuba, who in her suffering and desire for revenge has become something no longer human. In a way, this passage prefigures Polymestor’s later prediction that Hecuba will be turned into a dog, although here, the vision of a supernatural creature with voices for body parts equates Hecuba with the play’s Chorus, whose multi-voiced unity laments the fate of women who have survived the war.

“What can we take on trust

In this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,

Fame—nothing is secure, nothing keeps.

The inconsistent gods make chaos of our lives,

Pitching us about with such savagery of change

That we, out of our anguish and uncertainty,

May turn to them.”

Polymestor reflects on the vicissitudes of fortune when he first sees Hecuba, introducing another one of the play’s many reflections on the subject. But Polymestor is not sincere, for he contributed to Hecuba’s misfortunes by murdering her son. Moreover, there is dramatic irony behind his lines, for Polymestor does not yet realize that Hecuba is planning vengeance and that his own fortunes are therefore about to change too.

“As though you stumbled in the surf

Hurled from high ambition down

Trapped, thrashing with terror in the swirling tow and the water

Closing overhead until you drown. And now you know

Those who take a life—

Repay it with their own.

Justice and the gods

Exact the loan at last.”

The Chorus reflects on the fate that is about to befall Polymestor and the justice behind it: “Those who take a life— / repay it with their own.” The audience or reader might wonder, however, whether Hecuba’s justice is really morally so clear. While Polymestor has become like Hecuba and is suffering a change of fortune, metaphorically likened by the Chorus to one who has fallen from a great height into the sea, so too has Hecuba become like Polymestor, murdering his innocent sons just as he killed Polydorus.

Who learned their hatred of women long ago,

For those who hate them now, for those unborn

Who shall live to hate them yet, I now declare

My firm conviction: neither earth nor ocean

Produces a creature as savage and as monstrous

As woman. Any man who has ever met one

Will know that this is true.”

Polymestor ends his case against Hecuba with a misogynistic tirade on the “savage and […] monstrous” nature of women, something he sees exemplified in Hecuba’s revenge. Such sexist generalizations were commonplace in ancient Greece, with the early poet Hesiod even representing women as the cause of all human suffering (this is the point underlying his retellings of the myth of Pandora in the Theogony and Works and Days).

“The clear actions of a man,

Agamemnon, should speak louder than any words.

Good words should get their goodness from our lives;

The evil that we do should show in speech

And never make injustice sound attractive.

Some men, I know, make a science of such persuasion,

But in the end their speciousness will show.

The impostors are punished; not one escapes

His downfall.”

Hecuba begins her rebuttal of Polymestor with another reflection on the nature of human experience, saying essentially, that actions speak louder than words. But her point cuts both ways, for not all audience members are satisfied at the end of the play that Hecuba has acted justly, and some may even see her imminent transformation into a dog as her punishment for the “speciousness” that she has employed in destroying Polymestor.

“HECUBA.

I rejoice in my revenge.

POLYMESTOR.

Enjoy it now. You shall not enjoy it long.

Hear my prediction. I foretell the seawaters…

HECUBA.

Shall carry me on ship across to Greece?

POLYMESTOR.

…shall drown you, after you fall from the masthead.

HECUBA.

Who will force me to jump?

POLYMESTOR.     

You shall climb the mast

Of your own free will…

HECUBA.      

Climb the mast? With wings?

POLYMESTOR.

…changed to a dog, a bitch with blazing eyes.

[…]

HECUBA. Does the prophecy say I’ll live or die?

POLYMESTOR.     

You’ll die.

And when you die your tomb shall then be called…

HECUBA.

In memory of my change, perhaps? Please tell me!

POLYMESTOR.

…Cynossema, ‘the bitch’s grave,’ a landmark

To sailors.

HECUBA.      

What do I care how I die?

I have my revenge.”

After Agamemnon rejects his case, Polymestor predicts Hecuba’s transformation into a dog and subsequent suicide, adding that the spot where Hecuba will jump into the sea will be called Cynossema (“the bitch’s grave”) to commemorate the moment—an example of an etiological myth (a myth about the origins of a particular place, custom, or institution). Polymestor’s vindictive words illustrate an important aspect of his character: While many figures of Greek myth and tragedy gain wisdom through their suffering, Polymestor’s suffering only seems to make him even more spiteful.

“For now I see

The sudden wind sits freshly in our sails.

May heaven grant that our ordeal is done at last!

May all be well at home in Argos!”

As Polymestor is dragged away, Agamemnon notes that the winds have picked up and commands the fleet to get ready to sail. This implies that the ghost of Achilles, who stopped the winds in the first place, has been satisfied by the sacrifice of Polyxena. But there is a certain irony to Agamemnon’s eagerness and joy, for his homecoming, as Polymestor has predicted, will bring misfortune to himself and Cassandra (and thus, by extension to her mother Hecuba), as well as to many of the other Greeks (as one might know from other ancient sources).