Hecuba, Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother of Hector and Paris.

Cassandra, daughter of Hecuba, a prophetess.

ANDROMACHE, wife of Hector, Prince of Troy.

HELEN, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta; carried off by Paris, Prince of Troy.

TALTHYBIUS, Herald of the Greeks.

MENELAUS, King of Sparta, and, together with his brother Agamemnon,
General of the Greeks.

SOLDIERS ATTENDANT ON TALTHYBIUS AND MENELAUS.

CHORUS OF CAPTIVE TROJAN WOMEN, YOUNG AND OLD, MAIDEN AND MARRIED.

The Troaedes was first acted in the year 415 B.C. “The first prize was won by Xenocles, whoever he may have been, with the four plays Oedipus, Lycaon, Bacchae and Athamas, a Satyr-play.  The second by Euripides with the Alexander, Palamedes, Troaedes and Sisyphus, a Satyr-play.”—­AELIAN, Varia Historia, ii. 8.

THE TROJAN WOMEN

The scene represents a battlefield, a few days after the battle.  At the back are the walls of Troy, partially ruined.  In front of them, to right and left, are some huts, containing those of the Captive Women who have been specially set apart for the chief Greek leaders.  At one side some dead bodies of armed men are visible.  In front a tall woman with white hair is lying on the ground asleep.

It is the dusk of early dawn, before sunrise.  The figure of the god POSEIDON _ is dimly seen before the walls._

POSEIDON.[1]

Up from Aegean caverns, pool by pool
Of blue salt sea, where feet most beautiful
Of Nereid maidens weave beneath the foam
Their long sea-dances, I, their lord, am come,
Poseidon of the Sea.  ’Twas I whose power,
With great Apollo, builded tower by tower
These walls of Troy; and still my care doth stand
True to the ancient People of my hand;
Which now as smoke is perished, in the shock
Of Argive spears.  Down from Parnassus’ rock
The Greek Epeios came, of Phocian seed,
And wrought by Pallas’ mysteries a Steed
Marvellous[2], big with arms; and through my wall
It passed, a death-fraught image magical. 
  The groves are empty and the sanctuaries
Run red with blood.  Unburied Priam lies
By his own hearth, on God’s high altar-stair,
And Phrygian gold goes forth and raiment rare
To the Argive ships; and weary soldiers roam
Waiting the wind that blows at last for home,
For wives and children, left long years away,
Beyond the seed’s tenth fullness and decay,
To work this land’s undoing.