Hecabe has to be one of the most tragic figures in the canon. Wife and Queen of King Priam, she’s lost close to 50 sons and 50 daughters by the start of this tragedy play. Not only that, she’s lost her husband, Hector, Paris, and Troy where she was queen.
This play starts with one of her only surviving sons, Polydorus, appearing as a ghost and telling of his demise. Hecabe doesn’t know he’s dead yet, but we soon find out she has something else to lament. The ghost of Achilles has demanded the sacrifice of Polyxena, Hecabe’s daughter. Hecabe pleads with Odysseus to spare her daughter to no avail.
The fact that Agamemnon shows up in this play is quite striking. Ten years earlier, he had sacrificed his own daughter Iphegenia to ensure favorable winds to Troy for the Greek ships. Here, he’s present while another sacrifice, this time from the Trojan side, is required to bookend the Trojan War. The damning thing in these tragedies is that it’s the innocent who usually suffer the most.
It’s also fascinating that the last page provides a prophecy about Hecabe and Agamemnon. Hecabe is told (through Dionysus as told by Polymestor) that she will be transformed into a dog. It provides some insight into the effect of overwhelming grief on the mind. Agamemnon is told that his wife will kill him with an axe upon his return home (and that she will also kill Cassandra, another daughter of Hecabe). It makes you wonder if that was going through Agamemnon’s mind as he returned home to Clytemnestra.
In this episode, I give some backstory to Hecabe, share the themes and quotes that impacted me the most, and close with the One Thing I keep thinking about from this incredible tragedy by Euripides.
*Correction - in segment 1, I mistakenly say Priam killed Achilles. It was Paris that killed Achilles.
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