Euripides, Hecuba

Justina Gregory (Smith College)
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Aristotle considered Euripides the “most tragic” of the dramatic poets (

Poetics

1453a29). If “tragic” connotes “serious and unsparing”, then

Hecuba

, which documents the effects of atrocious suffering on the human psyche and maps the shifting terrain of justice and revenge, must count as one of Euripides’ most tragic plays. Euripides returned time and again to the matter of Troy. Of the playwright’s eighteen surviving plays, the posthumously produced

Iphigenia in Aulis

concerns events leading up to the Trojan War, while six others—

Andromache

,

Hecuba, Trojan Women

,

Iphigenia among the Taurians, Helen

, and

Orestes—

are set in the postwar period.

Hecuba

has not come down with a date attached, but is in all likelihood the second of the six.

Euripides’ evolving metrical

1713 words

Citation: Gregory, Justina. "Hecuba". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 July 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13367, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13367 Hecuba 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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