Menelaus threatens to kill his son-in-law's "Slave Baby Mama." Euripides' Andromache notes continued.

 Second Episode (309-463).

The sudden arrival of Menelaus, leading in the supposedly hidden child of Andromache and Neoptolemus, steps up the pace of the action.

Andromache, having got the better of Hermione in their agon (debate), now faces Menelaus. With Menεlaus, however, it is quite different. The disparity is not in their age, but in their sex, and right behavior between man and woman is a different thing from appropriate behavior between mistress and slave. After Andromache questions Menelaus’ ability to reason, the chorus reproaches her for going too far as a woman speaking to a man (363). Menelaus also holds real power over Andromache because he has her son. She cannot dismiss his threats the way she ignores Hermione’s. He threatens to kill her son if she refuses to leave the altar; if she does leave the altar, she herself will be killed. Andromache responds with a defiant speech in which she tries to deter Menelaus from his threat (319-63).  When he repeats the threat (380-3) she makes a second speech in which she chooses to die instead of her son (384-420). Menelaus then reveals he intends to kill them both. The act concludes with a denunciation of the Spartans by Andromache (334-51).

Andromache outlines the undesirable consequences for Menelaus of killing either her or her son, subdividing the various possibilities with rhetorical precision. If she is killed, Hermione will incur pollution and Menelaus will be guilty as an accomplice (334-7); if the child is killed, Neoptolemus will divorce Hermione (338-44); no one else would then marry her (344-51).

It seems that in her confrontations with Hermione and her father, Andromache reveals certain aspects of the situation that the two Spartans cannot or do not want to perceive: in the first case she indicates the real fault in Hermione’s relationship to Neoptolemus (205– 212), while in the second she underlines the consequences for Hermione’s marital life of her or her son’s murder (342–351). Moreover, Menelaus’ suggestion that his daughter will decide whether the boy will live or die strengthens the view that it is Andromache, not her son, who is considered a threat to Hermione. In facing the dilemma of whether she or her son will die, Andromache tries to convince herself that her life is not worth living (394–405). Finally, when the plot is revealed, she addresses to Menelaus a tirade against the Spartans (445–452) that has created the impression with some scholars that it is the cause for which the whole play was written!           

Having with these words eliminated the faintest chance of appealing to the man's good nature, Andromache next presents Menelaus with a list of excellent reasons why she should not die. She can come no closer to a plea. Hermione and Menelaus both will carry the pollution of blood guilt. If the boy is slain, Neoptolemus will avenge his death. Hermione will be flung from the land: she will return home, unwanted, and grow gray with age in her father's house. If Andromache is a witch, she should stand trial as one. "That is my opinion about this matter," she concludes, then adds one more comment that she cannot keep back although she knows it will enrage Menelaus even more:

"But there is one part of your thinking that I fear:

it was also because of strife over a woman that you destroyed poor Troy.”

            As the chorus tells her, she spoke the truth but has said too much. But Andromache does draw an interesting parallel: Menelaus here as at Troy is puffing about imperiously over a matter which should go unnoticed by an important military dignitary. (Again, the shadow of the war.) For all his faults of cruelty, Menelaus' greatest weakness may be a systematic susceptibility to the women of his family. His reply to Andromache (366-383) makes no effort to disguise his mission, but only, in the midst of inept platitudes, to justify it. True, he says, the business of his son-in-law’s “slave baby mama” is a small matter. But it has his attention at the moment, and that makes it more important even than capturing Troy (ignoring Andromache's grouping of the two as "female strifes"). Although Andromache has pointed out that Hermione will lose Neoptolemus should anything happen to her or the child, Menelaus implies the opposite: Andromache must die to secure the marriage: "A wife may suffer other, lesser calamities, but if she fails with her husband she fails with her life." Further, even though Andromache is not his own slave, he thinks he still has an ethical right to kill her, "for with friends, if they are truly friends, nothing is privately retained. Rather, all possessions are jointly shared." At any rate (the mother is told) either she or her son must die.

            The contrast of Menelaus’ speech and its pointless generalities with the economically logical rhesis of Andromache is almost too obvious. With his opening lines Menelaus assures us that he is as evil a character as the stage can tolerate. Now we are led to suspect that he will turn out to be, as well as evil, stupid. Menelaus boasts of his cleverness, but it amounts to blackmail and murder disguised as concern for his philoi (loved ones.)  The ethics of retaliation, the claim to be doing both Greece and Neoptolemus a favor, are shown to be merely a front for petty revenge and self-aggrandizement. The perversion of language by Menelaus  reveals the corrupted individualism of a society disfigured by war.

            Menelaus tricks Andromache into leaving the sanctuary of the altar to Thetis by threatening to kill her son. When mother and child are reunited, she learns that not only will she surely die, but that Hermione will decide the fate of her son. In the next installment, I will discuss the duet of mother and son and some notes about singing children in Euripides.