Trojan Women

Athens in the 5th century BC was a radical democracy. This meant that adult male citizens (regardless of wealth or class) were expected to participate fully in their government and legal system. Rather than using elected representatives, all government and judicial decisions were made by the votes of whatever citizens turned up to participate. Citizens not only voted, they also participated equally in debates, delivering speeches before the assembly of citizens, and representing themselves in court.

The importance of persuasiveness under this system created difficulties for the Athenians. Under radical democracy, those who wished to have the most power within the state had only to master the art of rhetoric in order to convince the masses to vote in their favor. Professional rhetoric teachers, called Sophists, boasted that they could effectively argue both sides of any issue. The concept that important state-level decisions could be influenced not by the truth, but rather by artifice, alarmed many Athenians and caused them to be deeply suspicious of demagogues who curried too much favor with the crowd.

With this cultural context in mind, we can see that Euripides demonstrates a wariness of persuasive speech throughout Trojan Women. The figure of the cunning Greek hero Odysseus, though he does not even appear on stage, encapsulates this disapproval. He is mentioned several times, often in a negative context. When Talthybius informs Hecuba that she will go with Odysseus, for example, the queen laments, “I’ve been assigned as a slave to a loathsome foe of justice...deceptive and lawless, who twists with his double-edged tongue everything this way and that; what was loved becomes hated when he’s had his way with it!” (lines 290-294; pages 130-131). This fear or even hatred of those who can make weak arguments appear the strongest directly reflects contemporary criticism of the Sophistsand contains a veiled warning against listening to demagogues.

Euripides’ distrust of persuasive speech is encapsulated in the agôn between Helen and Hecuba. In an exchange of forensic-style speeches, emulating the layout of a court trial, Helen speaks in her own defense, and Hecuba refutes her arguments. Helen’s ease with rhetoric is signposted in the extremely competent structure of her speech: she opens with an acknowledgement of the ‘jury’s’ bias, and a request for a fair hearing, which any Athenian would have recognized from their own experiences in the courtroom: “I know that, whether I speak well or badly, you may not answer; you consider me your foe” (lines 938-940; page 157).

She proceeds with a narrative description of the events leading up to this point, offering evidence through logical arguments, and even imaginary witnesses: “As witnesses I call the watchmen at the walls and towers” (lines 985-986; page 158). While this is a persuasive device, it is likely a useless one, since the watchmen are probably all dead now. Helen’s rhetorical ability, though anachronistic and uncharacteristic of a woman, helps to illustrate her character to the audience. She is crafty and untrustworthy, confusing everyone with her persuasive words just as persuasive speakers in contemporary Athens might do. Hecuba’s speech, though also persuasive, is less technically precise as Helen’s; she focuses primarily on attacking Helen’s character, a strategy that would carry force both with her fictional listeners and with her Athenian audience.

With questions of fate and free will in the face of adversity dominating the interactions in this play, Euripides often turns to nautical metaphors to illustrate the psychological challenges facing his characters. In her opening monologue, Hecuba uses sailing metaphors to communicate her present sufferings and choices to her audience. In her opening lines, she tells herself, “Sail with the changes, sail with the current, sail with your fate, not against it. Don’t turn your prow toward the oncoming wave; it will crush you” (lines 104-106; page 122). We immediately learn her strategy for coping with this disaster: go with it, because resistance will make it worse.

Hecuba continues the metaphor, reflecting, “Our importance, our ancestry—as it turns out they meant nothing at all. Those sails have been shortened” (lines 109-110; page 122). Since Hecuba identifies herself with a ship, we can understand this to mean that she was once secure, with a clear path in life (she was, after all, Queen of Troy), so long as Troy had its heritage and its importance. Without those ‘sails’ to direct her course through life, though, she is now helpless against what fate brings her. Hecuba likens herself to a ship once more, describing her lamentations: “This is brutal—my head, and my ribs!—how I wish I could roll from one side to the other, from starboard to port, shift my spine, swirl through the swells of my tears and keening” (lines 115-118; pages 122-123). Though she is riding out the storm of fate, Hecuba still suffers.

Hecuba returns to nautical symbolism in her conversation with Andromache, and uses it to flesh out her strategy for facing her difficulties. She tells her daughter-in-law:

I’ve learned that sailors, when a storm at sea is one that they can manage, are intent on safety: one man takes the helm, another is stationed at the sails, one checks the bilge. But when the sea is wildly agitated, too much for them to bear, they just go and ride the waves, wherever fortune drives them. That’s how it is with me...This wave the gods have sent has overwhelmed me (lines 715-724; page 147).

This metaphor ties in with Hecuba’s advice for Andromache not to kill herself but to follow wherever fate will guide her. The nautical metaphor that Hecuba has relied on before therefore informs her reaction to a key theme of this play: how does one endure the vicissitudes of fortune? For Hecuba, like a ship caught in a storm it can’t power through, the only option available is to go where fate leads her. For Andromache, resisting the wave and turning to face it means self-destruction.

The importance of ships as a metaphor in this play is set against the background of the actual Greek ships that are waiting to take the Trojan women to their new life of slavery. What the audience knows, and as we see Poseidon and Athena plotting in the Prologue, is that the Greek ships will almost all be wrecked in a storm sent by the gods before they reach home. Most of these Trojan women will face a literal situation not unlike the one highlighted by Hecuba, but we know already that her advice will not save them.