The Trojan Women of Euripides

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                           THE TROJAN WOMEN





                          THE ATHENIAN DRAMA
                         FOR ENGLISH READERS


              A Series of Verse Translations of the Greek
                 Dramatic Poets, with Commentaries and
                          Explanatory Notes.

            =Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 7s. 6d. each net.
                  Each Volume Illustrated from ancient
                     Sculptures and Vase-Painting.=

AESCHYLUS: _The Orestean Trilogy._ By Prof. G. C. WARR. With an
    Introduction on _The Rise of Greek Tragedy_, and 13 Illustrations.

SOPHOCLES: _Oedipus Tyrannus_ and _Coloneus_, and _Antigone_. By Prof.
    J. S. PHILLIMORE. With an Introduction on _Sophocles and his Treatment
    of Tragedy_, and 16 Illustrations.

EURIPIDES: _Hippolytus_; _Bacchae_; _Aristophanes' 'Frogs.'_ By Prof.
    GILBERT MURRAY. With an Appendix on _The Lost Tragedies of Euripides_,
    and an Introduction on _The Significance of the Bacchae in Athenian
    History_, and 12 Illustrations. [_Second Edition._


                   ALSO UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE

THE HOMERIC HYMNS. A New Prose Rendering by ANDREW LANG, with Essays
    Critical and Explanatory, and 14 Illustrations.


                      THE PLAYS OF EURIPIDES

Translated into English Rhyming Verse, with Explanatory Notes, by Prof.
    GILBERT MURRAY. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. each net.

                       _The Trojan Women._
                  _Electra._      [_In the Press._


_Hippolytus._ Third Edition. } Paper Covers, Impl.
_Bacchae._                   } 16mo, 1s. each net.





                               THE

                           TROJAN WOMEN

                                OF

                            EURIPIDES


              TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH RHYMING VERSE
                   WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

                 GILBERT MURRAY, M.A., LL.D.

           EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY
                 OF GLASGOW; SOMETIME FELLOW OF
                      NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD


                              LONDON
               GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
                               1905

                      [All rights reserved]





                Printed by BALLANTYNE HANSON & CO.
                     At the Ballantyne Press





                         INTRODUCTORY NOTE



Judged by common standards, the _Troaedes_ is far from a perfect play; it
is scarcely even a good play. It is an intense study of one great
situation, with little plot, little construction, little or no relief or
variety. The only movement of the drama is a gradual extinguishing of
all the familiar lights of human life, with, perhaps, at the end, a
suggestion that in the utterness of night, when all fears of a possible
worse thing are passed, there is in some sense peace and even glory. But
the situation itself has at least this dramatic value, that it is
different from what it seems.

The consummation of a great conquest, a thing celebrated in paeans and
thanksgivings, the very height of the day-dreams of unregenerate man--it
seems to be a great joy, and it is in truth a great misery. It is
conquest seen when the thrill of battle is over, and nothing remains but
to wait and think. We feel in the background the presence of the
conquerors, sinister and disappointed phantoms; of the conquered men,
after long torment, now resting in death. But the living drama for
Euripides lay in the conquered women. It is from them that he has named
his play and built up his scheme of parts: four figures clearly lit and
heroic, the others in varying grades of characterisation, nameless and
barely articulate, mere half-heard voices of an eternal sorrow.

Indeed, the most usual condemnation of the play is not that it is dull,
but that it is too harrowing; that scene after scene passes beyond the
due limits of tragic art. There are points to be pleaded against this
criticism. The very beauty of the most fearful scenes, in spite of their
fearfulness, is one; the quick comfort of the lyrics is another, falling
like a spell of peace when the strain is too hard to bear (cf. p. 89).
But the main defence is that, like many of the greatest works of art,
the _Troaedes_ is something more than art. It is also a prophecy, a
bearing of witness. And the prophet, bound to deliver his message, walks
outside the regular ways of the artist.

For some time before the _Troaedes_ was produced, Athens, now entirely in
the hands of the War Party, had been engaged in an enterprise which,
though on military grounds defensible, was bitterly resented by the more
humane minority, and has been selected by Thucydides as the great
crucial crime of the war. She had succeeded in compelling the neutral
Dorian island of Melos to take up arms against her, and after a long
siege had conquered the quiet and immemorially ancient town, massacred
the men and sold the women and children into slavery.