Tragedies: The heart of Grecian verses. Women of Troy - Research Paper Example

? Tragedies: The heart of Grecian verses The history of Troy stretches as far back as the beginning of time. When Paris decided to snatch Helen from under the nose of Menelaus the Spartan king that is when things took a wrong turn for Troy and for the Trojan women. The Trojan War as depicted in Euripides’s ‘The Trojan Women’ displays the plight of Trojan women and furthermore the plight of Trojans when the Achaeans besiege Troy for almost ten years and finally plundering the city through the ingenious wooden horse. They came with torches and set the city ablaze and within no time Troy ceased to be an empire and was reduced to rubble, ashes and armies of slaves. The tragedy experienced in this play is one of a kind and perfectly blended to break even the coldest of hearts and melt them as butter melts before a hot iron. Euripides takes time to curve out the tragedy from the mythical Greek legends and out of it comes a masterpiece that can only be compared with Homer’s Iliad, verses from Sophocles and also Aeschlylus. It has been a Greek thing to write beautiful stories of heroes and gods but nothing beats the Greeks at bringing out emotions in people as such with tragedies. In as much as most of the former plays of those times used unskilled performers and actors, the Grecian playwrights such as Homer still drove the point home by employing numerous theatrical techniques to keep their audience satisfied and entertained (Kirk, 20). At the onset of the events of that led to the Trojan War, Athena, Hera and Aphrodite are seen to fight over the rights of the fairest of them all. Zeus, the king of all gods, send the three goddesses to the Trojan prince Paris who then chooses Aphrodite and in return she makes Helen the fairest of women in Sparta winning the heart of Paris, and what follows next is one of the epic battles to ever go down in the Grecian history and history of the world. It is from this epic battle that we get to learn of the Trojan women and their plights before and after the war. Hecuba, the queen of Troy, wife to Priam and mother to Hector and Paris, is the first one to enter the stage full of grief and lamenting for the deaths of his two sons and husband and the fall of Troy. Later on, after the news from the Grecian herald of woe Talthybius, enters the cursed Cassandra with the ability to foresee the future but otherwise incapable of wooing her adversaries to believe her and she later ends up dying in the house of her Greek Patron. Then enters Andromache full of tears for her dead husband Hector and soon after her son is killed by the Greeks. Then finally enters Helen the cause of the Achaean War now on trial by the Spartan king Menelaus who revenged his brother’s death by reducing Troy to rubble and a city of ashes. ‘The Trojan Women’ begins with Poseidon lamenting over the death of Trojan heroes and the fall of Troy at the hands of the Greek as a result of the Achaean war. The war for Helen of Troy cost the lives of Achilles a Spartan warrior together with the lives of the Achaean king and Hector a Trojan prince. The war also cost both nations more than ten thousand troops and ten years of fighting. Afterwards, after the war, Talthybius the Greek Herald brings the bad news for the women. Hecuba, who was also the queen of Troy, is condemned to be the slave of Odysseus a Greek General after the loss of her husband. Her daughter Cassandra is to be dragged away as the concubine of Agamemnon. Talthybius also hides the sacrifice of Hecuba’s other daughter Polyxena and instead tells her that her daughter is a maid at the tomb of Achilles. To rub it in further, Andromache, Hector’s widow tells her about the death of her daughter which further throws her into a frenzy of sorrow and sobs. Of all the heathen gods that survived the past few centuries, it comes without a doubt that the Greek gods as portrayed in the various Grecian odes, plays, verses and manuscripts remain the most famous and the most known among men. Talthyibius returns with yet another message for Andromache. Knowing what the Achaeans had done with killing Hector and dragging his body for everyone to see, Talthybius bears the bad news for Andromache’s son Astyanax who has to be killed to avert the probability of revenging his father’s death. This throws Andromache into a melange of emotions and grief as her son is thrown off a cliff further deepening the hatred between the Trojan women and the Achaeans. Odysseus actions claim the life of yet another Trojan and to him this is just the beginning. From the bosom of war enters Menelaus the Spartan king and in a judgmental tone and deeply infuriated summons Hecuba and Helen. He begins by condemning the war and says that it was not the love of Helen that caused the war but Paris’s stupid move to snatch her away under his nose and furthermore during a peace council between the Spartans and the Trojans. From the metallic stance in his voice he expresses a desire to kill Helen for the loss of his fellow countrymen. Helen takes the stand to defend herself tears and fear welling up in her. Helen blames Aphrodite for her beauty and for the charm that attracted Paris to her. She further defends herself by telling Menelaus that the Trojans prevented her from joining the Greek army soon after the war but this is not sufficient for Menelaus. On the other hand Hecuba reproaches Helen’s acts saying she absconded with Paris and switched sides only to protect herself and taking the side that seemed to be on top. It is clear from Menelaus’s tone that he is not impressed by Helen and sends her back to Sparta on a different ship (Murray, 16). Hecuba’s plight and sorrow grow deeper when Talthybius arrives with the body of Astyanax, and offering it to her for burial explaining that Andromache had already been taken by Neoptolemus. The sight of the body tears her soul to pieces and she laments for the fall of Troy. She afterwards performs burial rites for the baby before departing with the Achaean soldiers. Her eyes burn with tears as the Achaeans drag her away and set Troy on fire and leave it burning. She laments over the fall of a once impregnable city now reduced to nothing devoid of heroes and all its women and children taken as slaves. After Hector kills Agamemnon, he leaves Troy at the mercy of the Menelaus who chose to avenge his brother by burning Troy and leaving his men to take all they can and they do so with such a passion plundering all they can from looting the Trojan temples to taking slaves and raping the royal maidens of the temples. So why did Euripides decide to use these Trojan women? One reason is because during his time, the legends depicted Troy as the city of the gods and was favored by the gods. From Poseidon introduction it is clear that it was crafted from the god’s own hands. This fact made the Trojans a chosen person and more so their women who were considered the only women who gave birth to real men. The fall of Troy created a perfect environment and a perfect setting for the play the Trojan Women (Stevenson, 12). Many of the tragedies by Euripides depict the plights of Grecian women. From his early works it is vivid that nothing caught his eye more than tragedies and suffering of women. Works such as Hecuba, Andromache and the Phoenician Women depict the lives of women suffering. In one of his works Euripides writes “there are three classes of citizens. The first are the rich, who are indolent and yet always crave more. The second are the poor, who have nothing, are full of envy, hate the rich, and are easily led by demagogues. Between the two extremes lie those who make the state secure and uphold the laws”( Euripides, The Suppliant). From this statement it is clear that he actually felt pity for the poor and since he could not command an army to fight for them he chose a rather humble approach of fighting by cutting into the hearts of people with his plays and verses which found their way even to the most adorned king’s palaces. However, tragedies were not the only pieces that made it into the hearts of men, to shed some light on the sadness, various other artists and authors cropped up all over Greece and further to Macedonia and Egypt and Rome thus forming the hub of all great legends and epic battles that ever made it to the history books. A further dip into tragedies shows the works of Sophocles who not only wrote just for the passion of it but also wrote to educate and implore members of certain groups and societies. The setting of his verses and plays take time around the same period and tend to focus on the same mythical Grecian figures, fro heroes to paupers. Both Sophocles and Euripides used public stands and theaters to portray their works from an early time but as time went by they reverted to manuscripts which over time gained popularity among scholars and other great personalities around Greece. Manuscripts were also known to circulate far and wide and circulated as far as Egypt in the South and Rome to the East and thus their works ended up not being read in Greece but also the rest of Europe and consequently the rest of the world. The ancient art of epic writing can be traced back the Grecian age and time. Tragedies have been the way of life for many Grecian authors and play right and most of them took more or less the same format and structure. For an instance, 'The Trojan Women' starts at a low note as Poseidon god of the mighty seas and Hera are shown conversing on what to do about the fall of Troy which was dear to them. Afterwards we see the chorus of the Trojan Women lamenting and in grief of their fallen husbands and sons. As the play continues the plights and conflicts and drama consecutively build up and then progressively die out as the play fades into an emotional ending where Hecuba is dragged away from a home she confesses was her own fro birth to death. The consequent playwrights took the same approach in writing most of the famous plays we have today like William Shakespeare’s plays. The basic structure usually took an introductory phase otherwise known as the prologue, a first episode and stanza, a second episode and stanza, a third episode and stanza, a fourth episode and stanza and finally the epilogue and exit. It comes without a doubt that Grecian tragedies and furthermore the Grecian theater is the birth of all tragedies and theater arts that we see today. From Homer’s Iliad to Shakespear’s Hamlet it is without a doubt that they bear one thing in common, the mastery and art of using tragedy to reach into the hearts of every man, woman and child. In conclusion, what Euripides emphasized in his tragedies was the importance and the immeasurable value of life whether big or small. Theater arts have been and still remain the best way to reach people and more so generations all over the world in this age and the next. Works Cited Murray, Green. The Trojan Women of Euripides. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1915. Ebook # 10096. www.gutenberg.net. 3rd April 2013. Print. Kirk, Samuel. Homer (The Poet). Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th Edition 2007. Print. Stevenson, Daniel C. Classical Greek Mythology. Web Atomics. The Internet Classics Archive, 2000. 3rd April 2013. Print. Read More