Part 1 (2/2)

So it was with Euripides. The _Troades_ itself has indeed almost no fierceness and singularly little thought of revenge. It is only the crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into music, as it were, and made beautiful by ”the most tragic of the poets.” But its author lived ever after in a deepening atmosphere of strife and even of hatred, down to the day when, ”because almost all in Athens rejoiced at his suffering,” he took his way to the remote valleys of Macedon to write the _Bacchae_ and to die.

G. M.

THE TROJAN WOMEN

CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

THE G.o.d POSEIDON.

THE G.o.dDESS PALLAS ATHENA.

HECUBA, _Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother of Hector and Paris_.

Ca.s.sANDRA, _daughter of Hecuba, a prophetess_.

ANDROMACHE, _wife of Hector, Prince of Troy_.

HELEN, _wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta; carried off by Paris, Prince of Troy_.

TALTHYBIUS, _Herald of the Greeks_.

MENELAUS, _King of Sparta, and, together with his brother Agamemnon, General of the Greeks_.

SOLDIERS ATTENDANT ON TALTHYBIUS AND MENELAUS.

CHORUS OF CAPTIVE TROJAN WOMEN, YOUNG AND OLD, MAIDEN AND MARRIED.

_The Troades was first acted in the year_ 415 B.C. ”_The first prize was won by Xenocles, whoever he may have been, with the four plays Oedipus, Lycaon, Bacchae and Athamas, a Satyr-play. The second by Euripides with the Alexander, Palamedes, Troades and Sisyphus, a Satyr-play_.”--AELIAN, _Varia Historia_, ii. 8.

THE TROJAN WOMEN

_The scene represents a battlefield, a few days after the battle. At the back are the walls of Troy, partially ruined. In front of them, to right and left, are some huts, containing those of the Captive Women who have been specially set apart for the chief Greek leaders. At one side some dead bodies of armed men are visible. In front a tall woman with white hair is lying on the ground asleep._

_It is the dusk of early dawn, before sunrise. The figure of the G.o.d _ POSEIDON _ is dimly seen before the walls._

POSEIDON.[1]

Up from Aegean caverns, pool by pool Of blue salt sea, where feet most beautiful Of Nereid maidens weave beneath the foam Their long sea-dances, I, their lord, am come, Poseidon of the Sea. 'Twas I whose power, With great Apollo, builded tower by tower These walls of Troy; and still my care doth stand True to the ancient People of my hand; Which now as smoke is perished, in the shock Of Argive spears. Down from Parna.s.sus' rock The Greek Epeios came, of Phocian seed, And wrought by Pallas' mysteries a Steed Marvellous[2], big with arms; and through my wall It pa.s.sed, a death-fraught image magical.

The groves are empty and the sanctuaries Run red with blood. Unburied Priam lies By his own hearth, on G.o.d's high altar-stair, And Phrygian gold goes forth and raiment rare To the Argive s.h.i.+ps; and weary soldiers roam Waiting the wind that blows at last for home, For wives and children, left long years away, Beyond the seed's tenth fullness and decay, To work this land's undoing.

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