The Trojan Women and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics) by Euripides & James Morwood & Edith Hall

Author:Euripides & James Morwood & Edith Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

ANDROMACHE

Characters

ANDROMACHE, Neoptolemus’ slave, formerly wife of Hector, prince of Troy

SERVING WOMAN of Neoptolemus’ house

HERMIONE, daughter of Menelaus and wife of Neoptolemus

MENELAUS, king of Sparta

BOY, son of Neoptolemus and Andromache

PELEUS, grandfather of Neoptolemus

NURSE of Hermione

ORESTES, cousin of Hermione

MESSENGER

THETIS, sea-goddess and former wife of Peleus

CHORUS of women of Phthia

The play is set at Thetideion in Phthia in Thessaly in front of the palace of Neoptolemus. ANDROMACHE sits at a shrine of Thetis which contains an altar and a statue of the goddess.

ANDROMACHE. O Asian land, O city of Thebe,* from which I came long ago with a lavish dowry of rich gold* to Priam’s royal hearth when I was given to Hector to be his wife and bear his child,* I, Andromache, in days gone by a woman to be envied, but now the most wretched of all of them. [Has there been or will there ever be a woman as wretched as myself?] Yes, I saw my husband Hector killed by Achilles, and Astyanax, the son I bore to my husband, flung from our

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sheer towers after the Greeks took the land of Troy. I myself, born in a home once counted the freest of all, have arrived in Greece as a slave, given to the islander* Neoptolemus as a choice spear-prize from the spoils of Troy. And I live in the grassy plains which skirt this land of Phthia and the city of Pharsalus. Here the sea-goddess Thetis found a refuge from humans and lived in privacy with Peleus.* The people of Thessaly call this place Thetideion because of the marriage

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with the goddess. And the son of Achilles took possession of this house, allowing Peleus to rule the Pharsalian land, since he refused to hold the sceptre himself while the old man was still alive.* I slept with Achilles’ son, now my master, and have borne a male child for this house.

And until now, despite my evil lot, I was kept going by the hope that, if my son stayed alive, I would find some help and protection amid my misfortunes. However, after my master married the Spartan girl Hermione* and stopped sleeping with me, his slave, I have been hounded by her

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cruel reproaches. For she says that I am using secret drugs to make her childless and hateful to her husband,* and that I want to supplant her with myself as mistress of this house and will resort to anything to break up her marriage. In fact, I never wanted a relationship with Neoptolemus,* and now it is all over. May great Zeus be my witness that I went to bed with him against my will! But I can make no impression on her. She wants to kill me, and her father Menelaus is abetting his daughter in this. And now he is in the house.

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He has travelled from Sparta for this very purpose. I am frightened and have come to sit at this shrine of Thetis beside the palace in the hope that the goddess can save me from death.

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