Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hecuba.
The gallery
Hecuba and Polyxena
Merry-Joseph Blondel, after 1814
Oil painting by the French Neoclassicist Merry-Joseph Blondel, now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After the fall of Troy, the aged queen throws a protective arm around her daughter Polyxena, whom the Greeks claimed for sacrifice at the tomb of Achilles.
Hecuba Blinds Polymestor
Giuseppe Maria Crespi, early 18th century
Oil painting by the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Hecuba takes her revenge on Polymestor, the Thracian king who murdered her youngest son Polydorus for his gold: with the captive Trojan women she falls upon him and blinds him, a scene told in Euripides' Hecuba and in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
In play
Hecuba (play)
Euripides
Euripides' tragedy keeps the Trojan queen's grief and revenge on every modern stage — Polyxena sacrificed, Polydorus murdered, Hecuba made a dog in some tellings.
The Trojan Women
Euripides
Hecuba stands at the centre of the captive chorus — the fallen queen as the face of war's aftermath.
Hecuba
Priam's wife endures as motherhood ruined by Troy — fifty sons mourned, and a name still synonymous with tragic queenship.