Euripides' Trojan Women, Day 13: Rapid Exchanges in Song

One of the many ways in which Trojan Women is exceptional is that it has the largest number of half-line exchanges in the extant corpus. In tragedy, characters exchanging clipped dialogue to suggest rapidity and drama would speak in hemistichs (in hemistichomythia). The record breaking exchange begins with Andromache’s entrance in a cart, holding her baby son and sitting amid the spoils of war, namely the armor of her slain husband Hector.

     The dialogue is actually a lyric duet (577-607) where each speaker partly responds to what her interlocutor has said, and partly pursues her own line of thought. These utterances, so falteringly articulated by Euripides, dramatically indicate a degree of despair on the part of the women where words are made to seem in danger breaking down altogether, so great is their grief. The meter is syncopated iambic then dactylic.

Here is the E.P. Coleridge translation, which in is the Public Domain.

Andromache
My Achaean masters are leading me away.

Hecuba
Ah me!

Andromache
Why do you in note of woe utter the dirge that is mine?

Hecuba
Alas—

Andromache
For these sorrows—

Hecuba
[580] O Zeus—

Andromache
And for this calamity.

Hecuba
O my children!

Andromache
Our day is past.

Hecuba
Joy is gone, Troy is gone.

Andromache
Unhappy!

Hecuba
For my gallant sons

Andromache
Alas!

Hecuba
Alas indeed, for my

Andromache
[585] Misery!

Hecuba
Piteous the fate

Andromache
Of our city,

Hecuba
Smouldering in the smoke.

Andromache
Come to me, my husband, c!

Hecuba
Ah, hapless wife! you call on my son who lies in the tomb.

Andromache
[590] Your wife's defender!

Hecuba
Oh, you, who before made the Achaeans grieve, eldest of the sons I bore to Priam, take me to your rest in Hades' halls!

Andromache
[595] These great griefs—

Hecuba
Unhappy one, bitter these woes to bear.

Andromache
Our city ruined—

Hecuba
And sorrow to sorrow added.