Euripides’ Critique of Luck and Courage in Trojan Women

Abstract Euripides stages a complex critique of traditional accounts of luck and courage in his Trojan Women. The tragedy is rife with the language of luck (tuchē), as the eponymous women often invoke familiar tropes of bad luck and reversal to describe their plight. Sometimes, however, they offer more precise explanations of their situation as resulting from compulsion (anagkē) or force (bia)—a view supported by the action of the tragedy, which highlights the cruelty of the Greek conquerors of Troy. Could it be the case that motifs of bad luck and reversal obfuscate the operation of political power and the responsibility of men (and gods) for what they do? Moreover, if courage, andreia, often degenerates into cruelty, effecting the so-called bad luck of the conquered, then is it not paradoxical to identify andreia as the best response to calamities in which it is implicated? In fact, Euripides’ critique of courage in Trojan Women is uniquely ambitious in two respects. First, Euripides illuminates and explores the abject suffering of the conquered. Second, Euripides shows that the Trojan women themselves exhibit an unnamed virtue that rivals andreia. The chapter offers an account of resilience as Euripides’ transvaluation of courage.