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| Euripdes (484 - 407 B.C.) |
Hekabe, widow of the Trojan king Priam, is taken hostage to Thrace. The Tracian king, Polymestor, has murdered Hekabe's son Polydorus. Her daughter, Polyxena is to be sacrificed on the grave of the Greek hero Achilles.
The Polydorus and Polyxena stories are separate sagas, yet they both flow through Euripides's presentation of their mother. The British classical scholar H. D. F. Kitto writes, "The play, quite simply, makes its own impression, and that is its 'meaning' .... [Hekabe herself] is a symbol ... and the play derives its unity and power not from the symbol, but from the thing symbolized."*
*Kitto, H.F.D., Greek Tragedy, 3rd edit. (London: Methuen, 1961), p. 222.
