“For all that followed I must question my own heart, not thee; what frantic thought led me to follow the stranger from thy house, traitress to my country and my home? Punish the goddess, show thyself more mighty e’en than Zeus..”
~ ‘The Trojan Women’ by Euripides (Edward P. Coleridge translation. GB5 - p. 278)
The play is set in the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War. The women of Troy are waiting to hear what would become of them, most expecting to be slaves in the homes of Greek warriors. The play starts with a dialogue between Poseidon and Athena. Poseidon laments the destruction of Troy, a city that he loved. Athena wants to punish the Greeks for desecrating the temples in Troy and asks Poseidon to create dangerous conditions in the sea when the Greeks go back.
The scene then shifts to Hecuba, who is crying and lamenting about her sad fate. Talthybius, the Greek herald, comes in, and Hecuba asks about what would happen to them. She names women in her family one by one, and Talthybius tells her what happens to them. Her daughter Cassandra is to be taken by Agamemnon, not as a slave but as his concubine. She is shocked to hear this since Cassandra was dedicated to Apollo as a virgin priestess. Her daughter-in-law, Andromache (Hector’s wife) is given to Neoptolemus (Achilles’ son). Her daughter Polyxena has been sacrificed at Achilles’ tomb (Talthybius mentions this cryptically and it becomes clear later). She herself will be a slave to Odysseus.