Wednesday 4 March 2015
On the Subject of Wars, Reflection and Plots
At our next Classics meeting we are discussing and reading from Euripides' play The Women of Troy. This play is about what happened to the women and children of Troy after the famous battle. Euripides wanted to show the Athenian audiences what had been done in their name to the people of the island of Melos when they tried to stay neutral in the war between Sparta and Athens. In 416 BC the Athens fleet, 'diplomats' on board, was sent to sort out the Melians. Their idea of diplomacy was to tell the islanders to join Athens or die. They refused. All the men were executed, the women and children sold as slaves and Melos was colonised by Athenians. The Athenian state was established.
Through the words of Cassandra, Women of Troy issues a warning against the futility of aggression and war and like most of the plays of the Ancient Greeks it asked society to reflect. I think reflection is a very underrated human capacity. If we allow ourselves to reflect we have at least a chance of avoiding aggression and other actions we may come to regret afterwards.
Apparently Euripides didn't have a plot for The Women of Troy and this freed him up to develop a reflective theme without recourse to suspense, surprise or cliffhangers at the end of scenes. For some reason I feel encouraged by this thought.
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I agree that The Women of Troy shows that 'suspense' or 'surprise', those two valuable but over-stressed components of writing, can be replaced by poetry and insight. As part of your Classics group, I of course read the play and, in the Phillip Vellacott introduction, about the Athenian invasion and destruction of the island of Melos which happened a year before the play was written. There is a strong sense in this play and other plays of Euripides dealing with the war with Troy ('Helen', 'Iphigenia at Aulis', 'Andromache') that Troy is an equal civilization to Athens and its destruction for the pride of a king is a tragedy and a folly. They make a strong contrast with the Trojan War as a heroic Achaean (Greek) adventure in Homer's works. In particular Odysseus, presented as 'wise' and 'brave' in Homer, in Euripides' plays is without fail shown-- yes, as brave, at least in the heat of battle f-- but also cold-blooded, ambitious, and manipulative. It is Odysseus in 'The Women of Troy' who convinces the victorious Greeks (against some dissent) that Hector's son Astynax should be thrown from the walls of the ruins of Troy, on the cold and unsporting (at least) basis that otherwise he might grow up to threaten the Greeks later. I recall too Cassandra's speech about the invading army having the worst time of it in comparison to the defending army, which has the comfort of burial in their homeland and the knowledge that they are fighting for their homes and families-- obvious parallels can be drawn between the Americans in Vietnam (fighting for some pale ideal of halting Communism in Asia) versus the North Vietnamese --and many South-Vietnamese rebels-- fighting against corruption and starvation and foreign occupation. Very rich play, this, like all of Euripides, and very sophisticated. Thanks for sharing!
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