Hecuba

Also Known As: Greek Ἑκάβη, Hekabe; the Latin form Hecuba is the one English inherited; the sources cannot agree who her father was, offering Dymas of Phrygia in one tradition and Cisseus of Thrace in another
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: She survives everything, which in Greek tragedy is not presented as a blessing.
Role in Mythos: Queen of Troy and mother of Hector, Paris, Cassandra and Helenus, she outlives the city and nearly all her children and takes a revenge that turns her into an animal.
Relation to Humans: She is entirely mortal and ends the story as a slave allotted to Odysseus. What the plays do with her is watch an ordinary woman at the far end of ordinary grief and ask what is left.

Before she had him, she dreamed she gave birth to a burning torch, and the fire got out and took the city. The seer told Priam to expose the child. That is the beginning of the Trojan War as the Trojans tell it, and it happens inside her.

Homer has almost no room for her. She gets a handful of moments and they are all sharp. In the twenty-second book she stands on the wall and pulls open her dress and holds up her own breast to Hector, begging him to come inside the gates and not fight Achilles, reminding him what that breast is. He fights anyway. Two books later, with his body still out there being dragged in the dust, she says she wishes she could take hold of Achilles and eat his liver. Homer does not editorialise. He puts the line in and moves on.

The Athenian tragedians looked at those few scenes and built two entire plays on them, which is a strange thing to have happened. Greek tragedy is mostly about kings and killers and young women who die well. Hecuba is an old woman with nothing, no throne, no army, no god on her side, and Euripides put her at the centre of the stage twice and kept her there.

In the Trojan Women she never leaves. The city is already ash when the play starts and the whole thing is an allocation. The herald comes out and reads the list: Cassandra to Agamemnon, Andromache to Achilles’ son, Hecuba to Odysseus, whom she loathes. She learns that her daughter Polyxena has already had her throat cut over Achilles’ grave. Then they bring her Astyanax, Hector’s little boy, dead, because the Greeks have thrown him off the wall to be sure of him, and they have brought Hector’s shield to carry the body on, because it is the right size. She washes and dresses the child herself. Nothing is resolved. The ships load and the play ends.

The other play does something harder. In the Hecuba she is on the Thracian shore, and the sea gives her back her youngest son. Polydorus had been sent away to safety before the siege closed, with gold, to a family friend called Polymestor. Polymestor took the gold, killed the boy and threw him in the water. So Hecuba asks Agamemnon for nothing except to be left alone for an hour, and she invites Polymestor into the women’s tent with his two small sons to discuss more treasure. The Trojan women shut the flap. They kill the children in front of him and then they put out his eyes with the pins from their own dresses, and he comes out of the tent on all fours, blind, feeling along the ground for them.

He is the one who tells her what she has become. Blinded and raving, Polymestor prophesies: she will turn into a dog with burning eyes, she will climb the ship’s mast and fall from it into the sea, and the headland where she washes up will be called Kynossema, the dog’s grave, and sailors will steer by it. He also tells her, in the same breath, that Cassandra will be killed by Agamemnon’s wife, and that the same woman will lift the axe and bring it down on Agamemnon himself.

There is a real headland called Kynossema on the Thracian Chersonese, and ships really did navigate by it. The story ends by nailing itself to a piece of coastline that an Athenian audience had sailed past.

She has no powers at any point. That is the whole design. Everything she does in both plays she does with an old woman’s body and a slave’s total lack of standing, and the only leverage she ever finds is that nobody thinks she is dangerous. Polymestor walks into the tent because who would be frightened of the women’s quarters. Her one weapon is the accurate assumption that she has been written off.

Her limit is that all of it comes too late to matter. She cannot save Hector, she cannot save Polyxena, she cannot save Astyanax, and by the time she can reach anybody at all it is a man in Thrace whose death changes nothing about Troy. The plays are honest about this. Revenge is available to her and rescue is not, and the transformation at the end is not a reward or even really a punishment. It is a description. She has been howling for two plays, and eventually the form catches up with the sound.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Hecuba in Greek mythology?

Hecuba was the queen of Troy, wife of King Priam and mother of Hector, Paris, Cassandra, Helenus, Polyxena and Polydorus. She survives the fall of the city and is taken as a slave, and she is the central figure of two plays by Euripides, the Hecuba and the Trojan Women.

Why does Hecuba turn into a dog?

At the end of Euripides’ Hecuba, the blinded Polymestor prophesies that she will become a dog with fiery eyes, climb the ship’s mast and fall into the sea. The headland where she is buried is to be called Kynossema, meaning the dog’s grave, which was a real navigational landmark on the Thracian Chersonese.

What does Hecuba do to Polymestor?

Polymestor murdered her youngest son Polydorus for the gold sent with him. Hecuba lured him and his two young sons into the women’s tent, where the captive Trojan women killed the children and blinded Polymestor with the pins from their dresses. Agamemnon judged the act afterwards and let it stand.

What happens to Hecuba in the Iliad?

Homer gives her only a few scenes but they are memorable. She stands on the wall and bares her breast to beg Hector not to face Achilles, and after Hector is killed she says she wishes she could eat Achilles’ liver. She is a minor figure in Homer and became a major one in Athenian tragedy.

What was Hecuba’s dream before Paris was born?

While pregnant she dreamed she had given birth to a firebrand, and that the fire spread through the whole city and burned it. Priam consulted the dream interpreter Aesacus, who said the child would destroy his country and should be exposed, so the infant Paris was left on Mount Ida.