Euripides' THE TROJAN WOMEN Complete

Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Gilbert Murray.

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89 pages - You are on Page 25

Leader

Thy fate thou knowest, Queen: but I know not
What lord of South or North has won my lot.

Talthybius

Go, seek Cassandra, men! Make your best speed,
That I may leave her with the King, and lead
These others to their divers lords.... Ha, there!
What means that sudden light? Is it the flare
Of torches?

[Light is seen shining through the crevices of the second hut on the right. He moves towards it.

Would they fire their prison rooms,
Or how, these dames of Troy? -- 'Fore God, the dooms
Are known, and now they burn themselves and die [18]
Rather than sail with us! How savagely
In days like these a free neck chafes beneath
Its burden!... Open! Open quick! Such death
Were bliss to them, it may be: but 'twill bring
Much wrath, and leave me shamed before the King!

[18] Burn themselves and die.] -- Women under these circumstances did commit suicide in Euripides' day, as they have ever since. It is rather curious that none of the characters of the play, not even Andromache, kills herself. The explanation must be that no such suicide was recorded in the tradition (though cf. below, on p. 33); a significant fact, suggesting that in the Homeric age, when this kind of treatment of women captives was regular, the victims did not suffer quite so terribly under it.

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