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Hecuba
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?
Hamlet (2.2.536-7)
Thrace
Polyxena
Polydorus
Polymestor
Polyxena
Polydorus
Polymestor
Polyphemus
Polyxena
Polydorus
Polymestor
Polyphemus
Polyxena
Polydorus
Polymestor
Polyphemus
Polyxena
Polymestor
Polydorus
Achilles
Xenos
Dorus
Chiasmus
Lament
So too Odysseus, pitiful in his grief
5.575
A woman wails as she throws herself upon
Her husband’s body. He has fallen in battle...
She clings to him and shrieks, while behind her
Soldiers prod their spears into her shoulders and back,
And as they lead her away into slavery
Her tear-drenched face is a mask of pain..
Inappropriate emotional appeals
Hecuba
Justice - I appeal first for justice.
And more: the debt you owe me now comes due.
292
Odysseus
... Achilles deserves full honors
He died, our finest man, for Greece.
Regard him alive as a friend, disregard him
now he's dead - would that not shame us?
334
Hecuba
Keeping the law depends on you
If its transgressed,
and if no punishment is dealt to those who murder
friends...then no justice - none - exists for humankind.
845
Agamemnon
The army thinks that man its ally,
the dead one its enemy. And if he's dear to you,
that's your concern, not shared by the army.
See it my way.
918
gods?
Nomos
Keeping the law
depends on you.
Violence
Rhetoric
Hecuba
Why do we spend our short lives straining,
craving after knowledge of all sorts but one --
Persuasion, who alone is [hu]mankind's queen?
858
Hecuba
No one should ever speak well of injustice.
Clever minds (sophoi), of course, know how to lie,
but cleverness does not sustain them in the end.
They die ugly deaths. Not one escapes.
1273