The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trojan women of Euripides, by Euripides

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Title: The Trojan women of Euripides

Author: Euripides

Release Date: November 16, 2003 [EBook #10096]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE TROJAN WOMEN OF EURIPIDES

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D.LITT.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

1915

THE TROJAN WOMEN

In his clear preface, Gilbert Murray says with truth that _The Trojan
Women_, valued by the usage of the stage, is not a perfect play. "It is
only the crying of one of the great wrongs of the world wrought into
music." Yet it is one of the greater dramas of the elder world. In one
situation, with little movement, with few figures, it flashes out a
great dramatic lesson, the infinite pathos of a successful wrong. It has
in it the very soul of the tragic. It even goes beyond the limited
tragic, and hints that beyond the defeat may come a greater glory than
will be the fortune of the victors. And thus through its pity and terror
it purifies our souls to thoughts of peace.

Great art has no limits of locality or time. Its tidings are timeless,
and its messages are universal. _The Trojan Women_ was first performed
in 415 B.C., from a story of the siege of Troy which even then was
ancient history. But the pathos of it is as modern to us as it was to
the Athenians. The terrors of war have not changed in three thousand
years. Euripides had that to say of war which we have to say of it
to-day, and had learned that which we are even now learning, that when
most triumphant it brings as much wretchedness to the victors as to the
vanquished. In this play the great conquest "seems to be a great joy and
is in truth a great misery." The tragedy of war has in no essential
altered. The god Poseidon mourns over Troy as he might over the cities
of to-day, when he cries:

"How are ye blind,
Ye treaders down of cities, ye that cast
Temples t