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INTRODUCTION
THE date when Euripides presented his Hecuba is not precisely known.
Available evidence indicates that it was produced about the year 425 B.C.,
some three or four years after the appearance of the Hippolytus. The play
is the first of those now extant wherein the poet turns to the legends of
the Trojan War for his material. He chooses as his central figure, Hecuba,
the queen of the fallen city. She is now the slave of Agamemnon, leader of
the conquering Greek host which, as the play opens, is on the point of
sailing home. Although the Hecuba is often regarded as the first of Euripides'
series of "war plays," the high point of which is, of course, the
pageant-like Trojan Women, the emphasis in the play is less upon the
horrors of war as they are manifested in the character of Hecuba, than
upon the psychological analysis of the character and its reaction to manifold
sufferings, which only in part derive from war.
The Hecuba is sharply divided into two parts. The first deals with the
sacrifice of Polyxena, daughter of the queen, whom the Greeks have cruelly
voted to slay in order to appease and honour the spirit of Achilles. The
second part reveals Hecuba as she exacts her vengeance from the king of
Thrace, Polymestor, to whom she had entrusted her young son, Polydorus,
for safe keeping during the course of the war. Polymestor, when the war
ended, treacherously killed the youth to gain the sum of money which had
been given him to hold in trust when he accepted the guardianship. Hecuba,
by chance, discovers Polydorus' death, and then takes steps towards
her revenge. The two sections of the play are integrated through the medium
of Hecuba's character, and only by this means does the poet manage
to achieve a requisite degree of artistic unity for his piece.
In the first half of the play, Hecuba, comforted by the fact that she has
two children left, Polyxena and Polydorus, endures the ghastly experience
of seeing her daughter carried off to death. She is strengthened by the calm
courage displayed by Polyxena, who with nobility and dignity goes forth
to meet her doom. Surely one of the finest passages in Euripides is the
speech of Talthybius, the Greek herald, describing how she died. In the
latter section, the discovery of the death of Polydorus hardens Hecuba
into cold-blooded unemotional bitterness. She revenges herself on Poly-
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