This image is the cover for the book Trojan Women

Trojan Women

A powerful look at the lives of a people destroyed by military conflict, from the writer Aristotle called “the most tragic of poets.”

Produced in 415 BC, The Trojan Women is a remarkable look at human suffering in the aftermath of war. Unlike The Iliad and The Odyssey, which focus on the Greek victors of the Trojan War, Euripides shines his moral imagination on the Trojan survivors: the women held captive by the Greek army. Showcasing the tragedian’s empathy for the plight of the female victims, The Trojan Women gives the modern reader a view into the grief of Hecuba, a grandmother who lost generations of her family, and the grace of Andromache, who endures the hardship of living as a slave and a concubine at the hands of the enemy. Profound and provocative in his examination of the brutality of his own countrymen, Euripides’s The Trojan Women offers a searing viewpoint on the horrors of war by giving voice to a people grappling with the destruction of an entire way of life.

Euripides

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. He was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC to his mother, Cleito, and father, Mnesarchus, a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. He became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education. The details of his death are uncertain.

Open Road Media