Aristotle considered Euripides the “most tragic” of the dramatic poets (Poetics 1453a29). If “tragic” connotes “serious and unsparing”, then Hecuba, which documents the effects of atrocious suffering on the human psyche and maps the shifting terrain of justice and revenge, must count as one of Euripides’ most tragic plays. Euripides returned time and again to the matter of Troy. Of the playwright’s eighteen surviving plays, the posthumously produced Iphigenia in Aulis concerns events leading up to the Trojan War, while six others—Andromache, Hecuba, Trojan Women, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Helen, and Orestes—are set in the postwar period. Hecuba has not come down with a date attached, but is in all likelihood the second of the six.
Euripides’ evolving metrical practice offers the surest guidance to dating his extant plays. Iambic trimeter predominates in the dialogue...
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Citation: Gregory, Justina. "Hecuba". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 July 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13367, accessed 09 June 2026.]
