Euripidean agon rarely achieves anything. But he reaches this judgement first because he believes that tragic conflicts are not soluble by rational or rhetorical discussion (possibly true but . . .), 7 but also because he is most keen to compare an agon in one play with one in another; and he is not alone in this. In these terms the debate in Troades conforms in some respects but not in others. It is certainly marked out as a debate (see lines 903-4), as is common in Euripides. Both Duchemin and Lloyd note that, normally in Euripidean debates, the defendant speaks second; Duchemin notes in addition that the defendant is normally the winner. But in Troades Helen, the defendant, speaks first, perhaps because she has been so much accused in the play already. 8 Whether Helen or Hecuba wins or loses the debate – both in terms of the argument and whether she is executed or not – remains a matter of debate. 9 It is more certain, however, that trying to understand the function and meaning of the debate in Troades by reference to the apparent convention of agones in other plays may be to miss the point. Better to look at the debate scene in Troades in the context of the play itself. By doing that we may be able to make more sense of what makes Troades’ debate scene so distinctive: it is not only clearly marked out and perceived as separable ( qua Lloyd); it is also obviously but importantly anomalous in tone. The (imagined) background of the play is the completely destroyed city of Troy. Such a scene is unique in tragedy. 10 The destruction is total (see e.g. 8, 60, 145, 586): all Trojan males (except one) are dead; all the women have been enslaved and are about to be allocated to their new masters (see e.g. 246ff., 659ff.). The scene we see before us – the tents ( skenai ) that the women are supposed to inhabit (though we never see or see used the inside in Troades : this is unique) – is temporary , and will be gone when the play ends. The Trojan Women are to be dispersed under conditions of slavery throughout the Greek world (note 159-62; 180-1). Troy has become a desolation; its name as well as its walls gone (1260ff.). The Trojan women’s experience of the war is to have witnessed ritual practice and even religious belief collapse; they have also witnessed – or the play makes clear – the inversion, collapse, complication or unworkability of constitutive polarities, such as Greek/Barbarian; Free/Slave; Friend/Enemy; Man/Woman. Hecuba, present in all scenes, is in all scenes except the debate scene an obvious example of the appalling effects of war, often indeed so oppressed that she is on the floor. The context Troades is arguably the grimmest play ever written.
The agon: is it anomalous?
The obvious answer is: yes. Here are some of the reasons:
a. It is the first and only appearance of a senior Greek (Menelaus), and is the first and only appearance of Helen; b. the (new) character of Hecuba; c. the arguments themselves.
I shall deal with these three points in reverse order.
i. The arguments are anachronistic; Helen borrows some of the arguments used by Gorgias or, at least, argues in a similar way; Hecuba’s arguments are also sophistic. 11
7 Lloyd 1992: 15-16. 8 Duchemin 1968: 139; Lloyd 1992: 17, 101
9 Some think that Helen wins the argument; most, Hecuba; see Croally 1994: 157-60 for references and discussion. 10 Easterling 1989; 1997: 173. Stieber 2011: 2 n.3 quotes Burian, P. (1999) ‘Melos or Bust: Reading the Trojan Women Historically’, AJP abstracts p. 90: Troades ‘is the only extant tragedy that actually shows the destruction of a polis’. 11 On the relation between Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen and Helen’s speech in Troades , see e.g. Conacher 1998: 51-8; Spatharas 2002. I think some critics get themselves tied up in knots as to how Gorgianic Helen’s speech is, and how sophistic the debate as a whole is. In relation to Gorgias, I think I was right – and Spatharas 2002: 166 agrees – that it
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