I have nevertheless thought it useful to include it in my discussion, because there are several components of the play that shed light on the captive woman’s lament. First, with Andromache we witness another important dimension of the captive woman’s role in Greek tragedy, that of the captive war prize whose introduction into the home initiates death and destruction. As a captive woman, Andromache’s safety continues to be in jeopardy even after she is well established in Greece as the sexual slave of Neoptolemus, and she therefore resorts to lament at several points in the play. Finally, the play’s supposed anti-Spartan sentiment, discussed briefly in Chapter 3, raises new questions about the role of the captive Trojan women in fifth-century tragedy.

If Cassandra were not consistently portrayed as mad or else in the frenzy of prophesy (or both), it would have been logical to begin this chapter with a discussion of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, which is the earliest extant play to feature prominently the speech and songs of a captive woman. In that play Cassandra, like Andromache, is brought to the home of her Greek captor, but unlike Andromache, she has no one to save her from the murderous designs of her captor’s wife. Cassandra’s presence on stage in that play is marked by her exceptional lyrics, which she sings in exchange with the spoken words of the {151|152} chorus. Most of her song consists of prophetic visions of the murder taking place within the house, but there are occasional moments where Cassandra reflects upon her own situation, particularly in the following two passages:

Whereas in the Agamemnon Cassandra laments only sparingly and in the Trachinian Women Iole remains silent throughout, in the Andromache lament plays a crucial role. It is the means by which Andromache gains the sympathy of the local women and other characters, her sole defense in a land of strangers against a hostile and indeed murderous mistress. The play begins with a prologue spoken by Andromache in which she narrates her Trojan past, her present life in Phthia as sex slave of Neoptolemus, and the impending danger. Jealous of the fact that Andromache has had a son by her husband Neoptolemus, the still childless Hermione threatens to kill both Andromache and her child with the help of her father Menelaus. The contents of this speech, as we will see, get reshaped in the form of laments at key moments elsewhere in the play.

Immediately following the prologue is a brief conversation with a fellow Trojan captive, after which Andromache introduces an extraordinary lament:

Andromache makes clear that what she is about to sing is a lament; in the same verse we find not only the two primary terms for laments, goos and thrênos, but also tears (δακρύμασι 92). The themes of her lament are laid out clearly as well. Unlike a traditional lament for the dead, which, though often wide-ranging, is primarily concerned with one source of grief, Andromache has many causes of sorrow. She laments the loss of city, husband, and freedom, which are as we have seen the defining sorrows of captive women. In the song that follows, Andromache narrates her own particular past, but also the pasts of all the Trojan women.

I turn now to Andromache’s elegiac lament, which I give here in full:

And finally, as I noted above, Andromache’s lament comes to its conclusion in the seventh couplet with a comparison of Andromache to a rocky spring. In her tears she melts:

This simile is remarkable in that it is likely to have evoked for its ancient audience several archetypal scenes of lamentation in Greek epic and tragedy at the same time. First there is the verb τάκομαι (“I melt”), whose epic contexts I have already discussed in connection with the Hecuba. The spring gushing forth from the rock likewise has epic resonance: Patroklos is compared to just such a spring when he laments the suffering of the Greeks in Iliad 16. But the quintessential context for a mourner as a rocky spring is probably the myth of Niobe, adduced within the lament-filled final book of the Iliad as the ultimate mourner:

On this note Andromache’s elegiac lament comes to a close. The chorus of women of Phthia then enters, and reiterate many of the themes of Andromache’s lament:

The chorus understands well Andromache’s plight, and having heard her lament they now pity her, though they are powerless to help. Twice in the {161|162} next five lines they express their pity, calling Andromache “most pitiable” (οἰκτροτάτα 141; see also 144). As in the Hecuba it seems that the Greeks within the play (in this case the chorus) point to the expected emotional reaction of the audience. Indeed, Andromache retains the sympathy of all throughout, with the obvious exceptions of the Spartan Hermione and her father Menelaus.

If we try to place this blurring of Greek and Trojan in its larger context, however, we face some inevitable interpretive difficulties due to our ignorance of the play’s intended first performance. Certainly the play was produced during the Peloponnesian War, and as I noted in Chapter 3, many have read the vilification of Hermione as anti-Spartan sentiment within this context. Because Hermione and Menelaus are acting on their own and independently of the collective Greek expedition to Troy, I admit here with reservations that it is possible that the Andromache would have been appreciated as an anti-Spartan play. There is a danger in taking this hypothesis too far, because as in the case of the Persians, I do not believe we should reduce the complex drama that is the Andromache (or any tragedy) to patriotic propaganda. But if the Andromache is an anti-Spartan play, it is possible only because the events that transpire are clearly separated from the Trojan War itself, and because the Trojans were never fully enfolded in the Greek concept of the barbarian. The Athenians (or whatever population was the original intended audience) are not being asked to examine their own actions against those of the Greeks in a paradigmatic war, but rather to sympathize in a new context with a figure who has always been sympathetic, Andromache, the archetypal lamenting widow and future captive woman we see in the Iliad. {162|}