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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

slides.com/sarahspring/hecuba

Hecuba

By Sarah Spring

Hecuba

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