Euripides Day 3: Trojan Women Prologue

Troades, (the Trojan Women), was produced in 415 BCE, last of three tragedies, following the lost Alexandros and Palamedes. The lost satyr play was about Sisyphus.  From the extant fragments and scholia, we learn that the three tragedies have a theme in common besides the Trojan War, that of how situations and people can become or reveal that they are the opposite of what they appear to be:

1.Alexandros is the story of how the exposed child Paris/Alexandros is not a low-born herdsman, but a prince, and his happy return designates the beginning of disaster

2. Palomedes appears to be a traitor without being one, “framed” for treachery by Odysseus and Diomedes.

3. In the Trojan Women, the Greeks seem to think they won, but as we know and Cassandra predicts, the Greeks will lose more than they gained in the war.

            There are “ring structures” and “mirroring” between the plays as well. In Trojan Women, Andromache’s entrance echoes Hector’s role and ethical stance in Alexandros, and Helen as cause of the war mirrors Alexandros. The ruse and malice of Odysseus in Palamedes might have been echoes in the satyr play, since according to one myth, Sisyphus seduced Anticleia on the night before her wedding and so was the real father of Odysseus.

            Trojan Women begins with a Euripidean prologue featuring two gods, Poseidon, who helped build Troy and was on their side, and Athena, who was behind the Greeks until they desecrated her temple in Troy when Ajax drag suppliant Cassandra from the altar. The Greeks did nothing and so Athena says  literally “I want to throw in for them a homecoming that is no homecoming.” "δύσνοστον αὐτοῖς νόστον ἐμβαλεῖν θέλω.(75). Thus the prologue creates an ironic framework within which the last hours of Troy are to be viewed. Poseidon’s final words open out, as lines at ends of scenes ten to do, beyond the immediate situation. 
"A fool is he who sacks the towns of men, with shrines and tombs, the dead man's hallowed home, for at the last he makes a desert round himself and dies."
μῶρος δὲ θνητῶν ὅστις ἐκπορθεῖ πόλεις,
ναούς τε τύμβους θ᾽, ἱερὰ τῶν κεκμηκότων,
ἐρημίᾳ δοὺς αὐτὸς ὤλεθ᾽ ὕστερον.
These lines give a clear signal that the following is to be taken as a cautionary tale.

          The Greeks try to undermine the power that language grants to the women in order to create an increasingly wider gap between themselves and their captives. In the prologue, Poseidon employs a palette of expressions indicating emptiness and lifelessness which represents a prelude to the attempted annihilation of the women. 65 He uses terms such as ὄλωλε (“to destroy,” 9), πορθηθεῖσ᾿(“to plunder,” 9), ἔρημα (“deserted,” 15), φόνῳ (“bloodshed,” 16), πέπτωκε (“to fall,” 17), λείπω (“to leave behind,” 25), ἐρημία (“desolation,” 26, 97), φροῦδος (“vanished,” 41), κατῃθαλωμένην (“to burn to ashes,” 60), ἔπερσάν (“to waste,” 72), and ἐκπορθεῖ (“to pillage,” 95). These expressions anticipate how the Achaeans will empty the women of their life and divest them of subjectivity through silencing. In fact, not only do the Greeks treat the Trojan women as mere objects at a physical level, but they also intend to dehumanize them psychologically by suppressing their ability to speak.