Summary
Second Episode
A wagon carrying Andromache (dressed in mourning for Hector), her youngest son Astyanax, and spoils from Troy enters.
The chorus announces her to Hecuba and asks Andromache why they are taking her away from Troy with Hector’s armor.
Andromache and Hecuba begin to sing together. Hecuba groans her pain and laments the vanishing of Troy and the “noble ancestry of our children” (63). Andromache yearns for her husband, now in Hades. Hecuba calls for Priam. Both women speak of their deep longings and their “pain heaped on pain” (65).
Andromache points out that when Hecuba was pregnant, there was a prophecy that Paris would be a firebrand and he was thus taken away by Priam to be hidden in Hades rather than killed. His escape from Hades and his desire for Helen began this disaster; now, Troy’s people are dead and Athena puts Troy under the yoke of slavery.
Both women weep for Troy. Hecuba cries that she is abandoned by her children as she was abandoned by Troy. She thinks her cries will never end.
Andromache asks Hecuba if she sees these spoils of war and how she and her son are being carried off as if they too were plunder.
Hecuba replies that “force is the most terrible thing about necessity”’ (66) and bemoans Kassandra being taken away by brute force.
Andromache confirms to Hecuba that Polyxena is dead. Hecuba now understands Talthybios’s words and screams out in pain. Andromache sighs that Polyxena’s fate is better than her own since she must go on. Hecuba disagrees, for there is still some hope in life.
Andromache asks Hecuba to heed her words, proclaiming that living a life of distress is worse than being dead. The dead are done and feel no pain; Polyxena knows nothing of the troubles that befell her. But Andromache still remembers her past and her self. She remembers keeping inside the house, avoiding gossip and the outside world. She had good sense and did not need other women. This made her a good wife for Hector, but it is why Achilles also chose her as his wife. Now she will have to live among murderers. If she embraces Achilles, her people will think she is a traitor; if she repels Achilles, her masters will hate her. It only takes one night, they say, in a man’s bed to forget one’s resistance, but she scorns a woman who does this.
Andromache looks away. She speaks of Hector and how she loved him for his intelligence, nobility, wealth, and courage. She knew no other man but him. Now, though, she must be carried off to Greece as a slave.
Turning back to Hecuba, she asks if she does not see that living is worse.
The chorus acknowledges her.
Hecuba describes herself as a ship beset by troubles, incapable of uttering a word because the “disastrous surge of a god-sent storm overwhelms me” (69).
She suggests that Andromache not dwell too much on Hector’s fate: instead, she should respect her current master and owner. She can raise her son Astyanax to be Troy’s salvation, and sons of her son will found Troy again.
Talthybios returns and addresses Andromache. He seems nervous. He tells her that the army, led by Odysseus, has voted to kill her son.
Andromache is stricken. Talthybios explains that Odysseus does not want the son of a heroic father to grow up to be a man. Astyanax will be thrown from Troy’s towers.
When Andromache clings tightly to her son, Talthybios warns her that she has neither power nor strength; she is under their control and she should do nothing that brings resentment or disdain upon her. If she says anything to enrage the army, her son will get no burial, no rites of mourning.
Andromache looks at Astyanax and mourns that his father’s noble birth has been the cause of his undoing. Her nuptials and her marriage were doomed, she now knows, for her son is doomed. She sees Astyanax weeping and wonders if he senses what is to happen. She whispers that his father cannot avenge him; no one can. His soul is soon to break from his body. All her love of him and all her labor were in vain.
She kisses him and curses the Greeks. She cries out for Talthybios to drive away his plunder and to feast on the child’s flesh.
The chorus laments how a single woman—Helen—and a loathsome marriage resulted in the loss of thousands.
Talthybios tells his attendants to take Astyanax away. Hecuba settles into a mourning position as she considers what is happening to her grandson. She says that she and the chorus will send up their cries. They lack nothing in terms of fodder.
The chorus sings of the past, of Heracles and the first Trojan War. They sing of Ganymede, beloved by Zeus, who now sits by the god’s side. For the gods now, though, Troy holds no charms.
Analysis
The two characters to consider here are Talthybios and Andromache. In regards to the first, Talthybios is a fascinating and rather nuanced character. As a herald for the Greeks, he represents the victorious forces, which, except for Menelaus, are unseen. He also delivers the most gut-wrenching news to the Trojan women, especially that of Astyanax needing to die. At times he is stern and urges the women to behave in the way that befits their sex and their status as vanquished. He admonishes Kassandra for her prophecies, misleads Hecuba about Polyxena, and prevents Hecuba from taking her own life at the end.
However, there is more to Talthybios than his status as a mere lackey (which Kassandra deems him). He is palpably distressed at having to deliver the news to Andromache that Astyanax is to be killed. Even when he warns her against protesting this too audibly, he seems to bear a measure of concern. And once Astyanax is killed, Talthybios washes the body and cleanses its wounds. Perhaps this is to help speed along the time to get ready to go home, but it seems that he has sympathy for the dead boy and his grieving grandmother.
So, how do we make sense of the herald? Critic J.J. Sullivan identifies Talthybios as a rather unique Euripidean messenger in that he is “an active agent in the narrative, rather than a narrator of actions.” He is quite human and displays partiality and emotion. He is important not just as a character but also as a plot device, for his communications are narrative catalysts that “sustain the structure of the drama.” He is “the dramatic agent of the fate of the Trojan women.” Talthybios is ultimately presented as very human, affected by the women whom he encounters. He is a figure whose presence “adds a dimension of commonality to the experiences of people as disparate as victorious soldiers and captive women.”
Andromache’s story is as tragic as any other woman’s, and perhaps even more so given what she has to endure with Astyanax. She speaks of the past when she was a good and loving wife, sacrificing all her own needs and desires, to a husband whom she revered, and how that ironically led her to be chosen by Achilles’s son Neoptolemos as his spoils. Her argument that death is preferable to a life of concubinage and slavery is compelling even before she learns about Astyanax’s fate.
What happens to Astyanax is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence to suggest Euripides’ antiwar theme. As Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz writes, “this is in effect ethnic cleansing: Troy must not rise again, so this child of a noble father must die. The murder of Astyanax makes it clear that innocent noncombatants pay for their lives for decisions they never made.” Astyanax is one of many non-speaking figures that haunt the text, but his broken body packs the most powerful punch and fully shows the audience that women and children bear the brunt of war’s suffering.
