ΛΟΓΕĩΟΝ

LOGEION
Περιοδικό για το αρχαίο θέατρο
A Journal of Ancient Theatre

12
2022

ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΑΚΕΣ ΕΚΔΟΣΕΙΣ ΚΡΗΤΗΣ

David Konstan

EMOTION AND ABJECTION: VOICES OF DESPAIR

A B ST R AC T: I argue in this paper that Troades is a study in the psycholo-

gy of helplessness, of the hopes, the evasions, the self-deceptions and tran-
sient highs, the lows as the bitter realities reassert themselves, that Hecuba
and the other enslaved women experience over the course of the play. There
are momentary pleasures that derive from fantasies of revenge, or from escapist
thoughts of suicide, or from the belief that one can reason with the masters and
thereby exercise at least a minimal form of agency. In the end, however, there
is no refuge in the mind, no way in which the women can salvage their moral
identity in the face of slavery. The play thus flirts with allowing the women an
illusion of agency, with which to counteract the hopelessness of their situation,
but then immediately deprives them of it, drawing them back to despair.

E uripides’ Troades is a play about the response, emotional and intellec-

tual, of women whose city has been conquered and who henceforward
will be distributed to the conquering forces as slaves. The play has been
described as episodic, since, although Hecuba remains onstage the entire
time, the action is punctuated by the appearance of various characters who
interact with her. Her main interlocutors are women: first Cassandra, then
Andromache, and finally Helen, though men do appear, specifically the
herald Talthybius and Menelaus, before whom the debate between Hecu-
ba and Helen is staged. It has been said that there is no apparent order in
which three women enter,1 but in fact there is, as I hope to show, a logic to
it. What is more, as Hecuba engages with each successive fellow slave, she
acquires an ever greater sense of agency, which, although ineffectual, lifts
her out of her initial despair and helps her to face her destiny.
Now, to the details. To begin with, I agree with David Kovacs that
Troades is not a morality play, intended to instill a sense of guilt or anxiety

1. Cf. Kovacs (2018) 52: “as far as plot is concerned the Cassandra, Andromache, and Helen
episodes could have been presented in any order”.

LogeΙoΝ 12 (2022) 118-126 g DOI : https://doi.org/10.26225/1mar-jb67

 EMOTION AND ABJECTION: VOICES OF DESPAIR 119

in the Athenians for their extermination of the male population of Melos

and the enslavement of the women and children, shortly before the tragedy
was performed. It is true, of course, that, in the prologue, Poseidon agrees
to cooperate with Athena in bringing hardship to the Greeks as they sail for
home, because they did not condemn Oilean Ajax for violating her temple
and carrying off Cassandra. But there is no hint that Greek cities will be
destroyed and their populations enslaved, as happened to Troy. What is
more, as Kovacs observes, Athens comes in for special praise several times
in the play.2 Kovacs himself takes the theme of the tragedy to be the un-
certainty of human life. As he writes, “The unity to which these episodes
contribute [...] is a meditation on the ways of the gods, sometimes inscruta-
ble, sometimes perfectly intelligible, and the fragility of human happiness”
(2021, 52). This seems to me too general an account, one that could be ap-
plied to virtually any tragedy. Troades is about women facing slavery. Yes,
this can happen, in theory, to anyone; but it has already happened to the
women of Troy, and they must now process the consequences.
When we first see Hecuba, she is prostrate and overcome with grief and
despair. Although the term is not used in the passage (it is largely restricted
to prose), I would describe her condition as athumia, “despondency”. She is
paralyzed, and sees no point either in speaking or in keeping silent (τί με χρὴ
σιγᾶν; τί δὲ μὴ σιγᾶν; 110). It is the zero grade of emotion, and requires, not
argument or exhortation, but some unexpected sign or event to snap one out
of it.3 The passions singled out as tragic by Aristotle are not absent. Hecu-
ba recognizes that her condition is pitiable (cf. οἰκτρῶς, 142), and the cho-
rus (or half-chorus) hear her cries as pitiful (ἄιον οἴκτους οὓς οἰκτίζῃ, 155).4
They also experience fear (φόβος, 156), since they are still uncertain about
when they will be shipped off to slavery. The second half-chorus too expe-
riences fear, or rather, shock: ἐκπληχθεῖσ᾽ ἦλθον φρίκᾳ (183), and instinctive
shudder, a reaction more elementary than phobos. They have a moment in
which they seem briefly to console themselves with fantasies about the love-
ly and exotic places to which they may be transported (214–29), but this is
interrupted by the arrival of Talthybius, with word about the assignments of

2. This is why I believe that, contra Kovacs, the prior enmity that Athena mentions between
herself and Poseidon must refer to their contention over Athens, now happily resolved,
rather than, as Kovacs maintains, to the fact that they were “on opposite sides in the war”
(2018, 133 ad v. 50: ἔχθραν τὴν πάρος). Indeed, they were on the same side during the
Trojan War.
3. See Konstan (forthcoming).
4. But οἶκτος may suggest just misery, rather than pity proper; cf. vv. 197, 206.
120 D. K onsta n

Cassandra, Andromache, and Hecuba herself. Talthybius obscurely refers

to the fate of Polyxena, who was sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles, declaring
simply that she is well (ἔχει καλῶς, 268), and free of troubles (270). But at
the news that she has been allotted to Odysseus, Hecuba lapses into anguish
once again, undercutting any illusions about the charms of slavery.
The first sign of an other-regarding sentiment on Hecuba’s part is her
sense of the shame (αἰσχύναν, 171) that Cassandra’s appearance before the
Greeks will cause her.5 But until Cassandra’s appearance, Hecuba remains
“an image of a corpse” (νεκροῦ μορφά, 193). The first moment in which
Hecuba does more than weep and rail is when her daughter Cassandra
enters. As Kovacs notes, Cassandra’s behavior is extraordinary, and must
have been a shock to the audience.6 She chants a wild bridal song, joyful-
ly celebrating her coming marriage to Agamemnon (308–41).7 It turns out,
however, that the source of her joy is not marriage at the cost of her sa-
cred virginity or the privilege of being the concubine of Agamemnon, but
her foreknowledge that she will witness, and in part be instrumental in,
his death at the hands of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. As she says, “I will
kill him and take vengeance for my brothers and father” (κτενῶ γὰρ αὐτόν,
κἀντιπορθήσω δόμους / ποινὰς ἀδελφῶν καὶ πατρὸς λαβοῦσ᾽ ἐμοῦ, 359–60).
Although her words are opaque to Hecuba and the chorus of Trojan wom-
en, the audience knows that they are prophetic, and will be one element of
Athena’s vengeance against the Greeks. Cassandra further argues that the
Greeks died far from their homes and families, while the Trojans died for
their country, were buried in their own land, and Hector himself died in
glory. She concludes that Hecuba should not pity Troy or her marriage, for
by it she will destroy their greatest enemies (404–5).
Hecuba pities her delusion, and Talthybius avows that he ignores her
dire proclamations only because she hasn’t all her wits (οὐ γὰρ ἀρτίας ἔχεις
φρένας, 417). But both, as the audience knows, are mistaken. Cassandra’s
anticipated revenge is true, and her claims concerning the superior fortune
of the defeated Trojans at least deserves a hearing. The question is whether
her elation is warranted, given her imminent servitude and death at Clytem-
nestra’s hands. Imagining that misery has befallen and will befall her captors

5. Cf. Kovacs (2018) ad v. 171.

6. Kovacs (2018) 53: “To call Cassandra’s entrance surprising is to understate the matter: it
administers a shock as great as any in tragedy.”
7. Her appearance with torches may echo a similar entry in the Palamedes, the first play of
the trilogy.
 EMOTION AND ABJECTION: VOICES OF DESPAIR 121

is one way in which a woman destined for slavery might reconcile herself,
at least momentarily, to her condition. Still, there is undeniably something
manic about Cassandra’s ecstatic outburst; as Talthybius says, Apollo put
her wits in a Bacchic frenzy (Ἀπόλλων ἐξεβάκχευεν φρένας, 408; cf. 500,
Hecuba speaking). She replies haughtily to Talthybius, predicting the trib-
ulations of Odysseus and dubbing herself as one of the Erinyes (457), who
will die victoriously (νικηφόρος, 461) upon wiping out the house of the
Atrides — an exaggeration, this, but part of her aspirations. Aristotle avers
that the anger provoked by belittlement is not just painful but also brings
some pleasure in imagining the vengeance one hopes to exact. But such ex-
ultation offers no comfort to the other women of Troy.
When Cassandra is led off, Hecuba collapses to the ground, and then
offers what is effectively a refutation of Cassandra’s euphoria. She is a fallen
queen, aged, who has seen her sons slain and her husband slaughtered be-
fore her eyes, her daughters carried off, and herself bound for servitude. She
is without hopes (505), and her thoughts turn to suicide (506–9). It is true
that she does not believe her daughter’s claims, but her behavior is, I think,
a rejection of such fantasies of vengeance, which do nothing to alleviate the
pathos of her decline. Her suffering is too great to be sublimated that way.
The chorus then sing of how Troy was captured unawares by the ruse of the
wooden horse, blood running everywhere, a victory wreath for Greece and
grief for the Phrygian nation (566–67).
The next episode begins with the entry of Andromache, carried in,
along with her infant son Astyanax, on a wheeled cart. She laments along
with Hecuba in what almost amounts to a competition in misery, until An-
dromache springs on her mother the news that Polyxena has been slain
(622–23). Andromache, however, insists that Polyxena’s fate is superior to
her own (630–31), to which Hecuba replies that death is sheer annihilation,
while in life there are always hopes (632–33). The difference in their views
gives rise to the second grand agôn, in which Andromache maintains that
death is preferable to a life of misery, beginning with the earliest version
I know of what would later be called the symmetry argument, that being
dead is like never having been born (636–37).8 Andromache emphasizes
the high station from which she has fallen, and the ethical dilemma she faces
in transferring her loyalties from her blameless husband to her new master.
She concludes by directly challenging Hecuba’s final claim, asserting that

8. Cf. Kovacs (2018) ad v. 638, who cites Lucretius 3.832–842; the idea likely goes back to
Epicurus.
122 D. K onsta n

she has not even hope, for she cannot deceive herself into believing that she
will accomplish anything good or joyful in the future (681–83).
Hecuba replies —despite declaring that she is speechless (ἄφθογγός
εἰμι, 69)— that there is indeed reason for Andromache to hope, since by
yielding to her new master, Neoptolemus (the son of Achilles, who killed
Hector), she may safely raise Astyanax, who may when he comes of age
restore Troy. Although Kovacs comments that Hecuba “does not explain
why, if she herself is without hope, she is encouraging Andromache to en-
tertain hopes for herself and Astyanax” (2021, 236 ad vv. 686–705), the
prospect of reestablishing Troy is, if not a reason why Hecuba herself
should continue living, nevertheless something to anticipate with pleasure.
It differs from Cassandra’s dreams of revenge against the Greeks, which,
though they will prove true, are no compensation for the slavery the women
must endure. That prospect gave no relief to Hecuba’s misery, but the hope
of rebuilding Troy might enable her and the Trojan women generally to
cope with their servitude.
This reverie, however, is immediately dashed when Talthybius enters to
announce the Greeks’ decision to kill Astyanax, the son of so valiant a father
(723); the implication is so that he may not, when mature, take vengeance
on the Greeks. He warns Andromache not to resist or curse the Greeks, lest
they refuse to let her give the boy a proper burial. Once again, the wom-
en are left with no hope or fantasy by which to lighten the doom of slave­
ry. Andromache takes tearful leave of her infant son —her words must have
roused the pity of the spectators— and, in her despair, her thoughts turn to
Helen as the cause of woes both to Trojans and to Greeks (766–73), though
she then ascribes the cause of Troy’s destruction to the gods (775–76). So
deep is her gloom that she is now indifferent to her enslavement, remarking
bitterly on the “fine marriage” (καλὸν [...] ὑμέναιον, 778–79) that awaits her
— an ironic reminiscence of Cassandra’s expectations. Hecuba too yields
once more to despondency (790–98). But the mention of Helen hints at the
third agôn, immediately following the choral interlude, a curiously nostalgic
recitation of the earlier sack of Troy by Hercules and Telamon and Zeus’s
passion for Ganymede, Dawn’s for Tithonus, both sons of Troy.
Menelaus enters abruptly, and orders his men to drag Helen from the
tent by her hair, declaring his intention to take her back to Sparta, where
he will slay her. His words exhilarate Hecuba, who praises Zeus, or what-
ever power it may be (an anticipation of her theological skepticism), for
guiding human affairs toward justice (884–88). Menelaus is puzzled by her
odd prayer, but Hecuba explains that she will be grateful if he will kill his
 EMOTION AND ABJECTION: VOICES OF DESPAIR 123

wife. This, she implies, will be justice enough for her. The formal debate
between Helen and Hecuba over her guilt has elicited various reactions and
interpretations on the part of scholars, who have expressed doubts about its
relevance, its appropriateness to the tragic context, and whether Hecuba or
Helen emerges victorious.9 What I wish to highlight, in connection with my
focus on the emotions of the enslaved women, is the way in which Hecuba
now fixates on the punishment of Helen as compensation for her sufferings.
Cassandra’s evocations of the future misfortunes of the Greek captains had
not comforted her, though to be sure she thought that these were mere rav-
ings of her demented daughter. The hope that Astyanax might restore Troy
gave her some solace, till they were dashed. The difference now is that Hecu-
ba believes herself to be in a position to influence the outcome, and prevent
Helen from persuading Menelaus to spare her. Her first recommendation is
that he not even look at her (891), but once she is on stage, Hecuba demands
that she be given license to speak, so that she in turn may expose the full tally
of Helen’s treacheries (906–10). Menelaus yields to her wishes. Of course,
a debate between the two women provides entertainment for the audience,
but why should Hecuba insist on it? The answer, I think, is that it allows her
to influence the course of events, it grants her agency, something that none
of the women had or imagined she had till now, not even Cassandra. This
is small satisfaction, but when all independence of action is stripped away
and a person can do no more than submit passively to greater force, even so
slight a chance to act is precious and restorative, if only temporarily.
Helen cites the judgment of Paris (and the failure of his parents to ex-
pose him as an infant) as the true cause of the war, in which she was simply
a pawn, the reward promised to Paris if he voted for Aphrodite as the most
beautiful of the goddesses. She alleges, moreover, that this choice was nev-
ertheless beneficial to the Greeks, since Athena and Hera had promised him
wide dominions, and so Greece was not subject to barbarian rule. Helen
further excuses her elopement with Paris by adducing the inexorable pow-
er of Eros, to which the chorus too had alluded, and claims that once Paris
was dead she sought to escape from Troy but each time was apprehended.
Hecuba, in turn, undermines her defense with a rationalistic critique that
subverts the mythological tradition, denying that the three goddesses would
ever have entered into such a tawdry competition or that Aphrodite would
have accompanied Paris to Sparta and instilled an irresistible desire in Hel-
en. The fact is, she avows, that Helen simply fell in love with the handsome,

9. Summarized by Kovacs (2108) 261–66.

124 D. K onsta n

elegant foreigner; she was not carried off by force. Once in Troy, she de-
clined Hecuba’s offers to help her steal away, nor ever once considered
suicide, as an honest wife ought to have in the circumstances. Within the
context of the play, Hecuba wins the debate hands down: Menelaus is per-
suaded by her arguments, and agrees also to send Helen home in a different
vessel, so as not to risk being seduced by her beauty and his former pas-
sion. What is more, she has dismantled the mythological armature and laid
responsibility for actions on the human actors. Whatever conjectures the
audience may have entertained about Helen’s ultimate fate, based on their
familiarity with traditional stories, for example the fourth book of the Odys-
sey, Hecuba can enjoy this moment of triumph, although Euripides does not
permit her to express her sentiments at this point.
Hecuba’s small victory represents the last shred of dignity that remains
for her or the Trojan women, and it will not endure. The chorus, perhaps
infected with Hecuba’s skepticism, wonder whether Zeus cares at all about
the destruction of their city (1077–80), and at the same time pray that Me-
nelaus and Helen may never reach Laconia (1110–17), thus raising the sus-
picion that, should he get home, he may not carry out his intention to kill
Helen. In the finale, Talthybius brings the body of the slain Astyanax for
burial by Hecuba, since Neoptolemus, in a hurry to depart, has taken An-
dromache with him and so she cannot offer the last rites for her son. Hecu-
ba, in a futile attempt to belittle her captors, ignores her earlier dream that
Astyanax might rebuild Troy and asks rhetorically whether the Greeks were
afraid that the boy would do just that (1160–61; cf. 1189–98), a lone child,
when Hector and his cohorts were no match for them. She scornfully dep-
recates such fear as irrational. Hecuba is given to gnomic utterances, which
Aristotle says befit the aged (Rhetoric 2, 1394al9–1395bl9), and she duly
remarks that fate is fickle and no one remains fortunate (1203–6). But the
scene as a whole is given over to mourning, accentuated by the young age
of Astyanax, a theme common in epitaphs for those who died ἄωροι, pre-
maturely. Hecuba repeats Cassandra’s wan consolation, that if the god had
not cast them down, the Trojans would have remained obscure and not a
theme for song for ages to come (1242–45), recalling too the sentiment ex-
pressed by Helen in the Iliad (6.357–58). But the thought is evanescent.
Upon seeing flames dart up from the walls of Troy, Hecuba contemplates
rushing into the fire and dying nobly, together with her burning city (1282–
83), a recollection of Andromache’s affirmation that death is preferable to
servitude. But it is all vain, the fleeting notions that pass through the minds
of people who have lost everything. As the chorus sing in what are almost
 EMOTION AND ABJECTION: VOICES OF DESPAIR 125

the final verses of the play, “the name of our land is obliterated” (ὄνομα δὲ
γᾶς ἀφανὲς εἶσιν, 1322). And with this the women march to the ships of the
Achaeans and the day of their enslavement, a variation on the epic phrase
δούλιον ἦμαρ.10 There is nothing more to say.
Troades, as I read it, is a study in the psychology of helplessness, the
hopes, the evasions, the self-deceptions and transient highs, the lows as the
bitter realities reassert themselves. There is the momentary pleasure of fan-
tasies of revenge, escapist thoughts of suicide, the belief that one can rea-
son with the masters and eke out some small token of justice, but in the
end there is no refuge in the mind, no way to salvage one’s moral identity.
The play flirts with allowing the women an illusion of agency, with which to
counteract the hopelessness of their situation, but at once deprives them of
it, drawing them back to despair. As Warren TenHouten writes (2023, 93),
“Following failure upon failure, without the psychological cushion of even
a bit of sanguinity, goal-seeking can be abandoned, and, bereft of hopes and
dreams, one can sink into a dark state of despair.”11
Why should Euripides compose a tragedy on such a theme, even allow-
ing that it is the third play in a connected trilogy, in which it may have pro-
vided a kind of resolution? Why stage so vividly the inner world of women
undergoing what Orlando Patterson called social death?12 What kind of
tragic pleasure would it have given the audience? Pity, perhaps, unless the
Athenians believed that the Trojans had it coming, not an implausible at-
titude. Fear? Perhaps, if they put themselves in the place of the women,
rather than the Greeks, a possibility, no doubt, but not one we can take
for granted. I suggest rather that what Troades offered was not empathy so
much as understanding. Athens was teeming with slaves, Athenians lived
with them in close quarters, they were nurses of their children. How did
they feel, when the unthinkable overtook them? What did they say to them-
selves and among themselves? It might not be wholly wrong to suppose that
the pleasure in viewing such a play was in part voyeuristic. Perhaps too it
was eye-opening to see how desperately the Trojan women grasped at the
least figment of autonomy. Something like this constituted, I think, the emo-
tional heart of the play.

10. Il. 6.463, Od. 14.340, 17.323; cf. Kovacs (2018) ad v. 1330.
11. Cf. Cherry (2023): “Learned helplessness occurs when a person who has experienced
repeated challenges comes to believe they have no control over their situation. They then
give up trying to make changes and accept their fate.” See also Lazarus (1999).
12. Patterson (2018).
126 D. K onsta n

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Cherry, K. (2023), “What Causes Learned Helplessness?”, VeryWellMind, available at

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-learned-helplessness-2795326; accessed
7 May 2023.
Konstan, D. (forthcoming), “The Varieties of Emotional Experience,” in G. Danzig
and T. van Berkel (eds.), Xenophon and the Emotions, Berlin.
Kovacs, M. (2021), Euripides: Troades, Oxford.
Lazarus, R. S. (1999), “Hope: An Emotion and a Vital Coping Resource Against De-
spair”, Social Research 66, 653–78. Accessible at http://www.jstor.org/stable/
40971343, accessed 7 May 2023.
Patterson, O. (2018), Slavery and Social Death, 2nd ed., Cambridge MA.
TenHouten, W. (2023), “The Emotions of Hope: From Optimism to Sanguinity, from
Pessimism to Despair,” The American Sociologist 54, 76–100.

New York University

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ΛΟ ΓΕΙΟ Ν Στο περιοδικό δημοσιεύονται πρωτότυπες επιστημονικές εργα­σίες,
οι οποίες αναφέρονται σε όλες τις όψεις του αρχαίου ελληνικού και ρωμαϊκού
θεάτρου και δράματος, στην πρόσληψή του από το νεότερο θέατρο, τη λογο­
τεχνία, τον κινηματογράφο και τις άλλες τέχνες, καθώς και στη σύγκρισή του με
το θέατρο άλλων περιόδων και γεωγραφικών περιοχών.

LO GEIO N A Journal of Ancient Theatre publishes original scholarly articles on

every aspect of ancient Greek and Roman theatre and drama, including its re­
ception in modern theatre, literature, cinema and the other art forms and media,
as well as its relation to the theatre of other periods and geographical regions.

ΠΕΡΙΕΧΟΜΕΝΑ / CONTENTS

IOANNIS M. KONSTANTAKOS ANTONIS K. PETRIDES

Ancient Comedy and Iambic Poetry: ἡμεῖς δ᾽ ἴωμεν: Menander and Sophocles in
Generic Relations and Character Depiction Intertextual Dialogue (Dyskolos and Philoctetes)
ΜΙΧΑΛΗΣ ΚΑΡΔΑΜΙΤΣΗΣ DIMITRIOS KANELLAKIS
Αἰσχύλος, ἀναγνώστης τοῦ Ὁμήρου: Lysistrata Against the Greek Military Junta
Ἀπὸ τὴν ὀλολυγὴ τῆς Εὐρύκλειας
στὸ εὖχος τῆς Κλυταιμήστρας HALLIE REBECCA MARSHALL
Tony Harrison’s The Common Chorus
EDITH HALL and Dramatic Trilogies
Tragic Temporalities in Euripides’ Trojan Women
ANTONIS K. PETRIDES
DAVID KONSTAN Euripides, The Trojan Women: A Comic by
Emotion and Abjection: Voices of Despair Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson. A Survey
ΑΓΙΣ ΜΑΡΙΝΗΣ EFIMIA D. KARAKANTZA
Η σκηνή της Κασσάνδρας στις Τρωάδες: Antigone Goes to School: Georgina Kakoudaki’s
Tελετουργική επιτέλεση και πολιτικό υπόβαθρο Production of the Sophoclean Play (2014)
C. W. MARSHALL for Teenage Audiences
Euripides’ Trojan Women and the Stagecraft ΘΕΌΔΩΡΟΣ Κ. ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ
of Memory Γρηγόρης Μ. Σηφάκης (1935 – 2023)
ΚΩΝΤΑΝΤΊΝΟΣ Ι. ΧΑΣΚΉΣ
Οι θηβαϊκοί μύθοι στην τραγωδία
του 4ου αι. π.Χ.

ISSN: 2241 - 2417