Home Classical, Ancient Near Eastern & Egyptian Studies Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy

  • Ioanna Karamanou

    Ioanna Karamanou is Professor of Classics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her research interests include Greek drama and its reception, papyrology, and ancient literary criticism. She has authored Euripides: Danae and Dictys (Leipzig/Munich 2006), Euripides: Alexandros (Berlin/Boston 2017, Academy of Athens Award for Classical Philology), Refiguring Tragedy: Studies in Plays preserved in Fragments and their Reception (Berlin/Boston 2019), and Fragmenta Comica 25.2: Diphilus’ Paralyomenos-Chrysochoos (Göttingen 2024). She is currently completing Fragmenta Comica 25.3: Diphilus frr. inc. 86–137. She has edited four volumes and enumerates more than 60 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and collective volumes. She has participated in five international research projects and is a main editor for Greek Drama in De Gruyter’s Greek and Roman Humanities Encyclopedia.
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill
Explore this Subject How to publish with us
Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

A comparison of Euripides’ Trojan Women with the fragments of the other two plays in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy, Alexandros and Palamedes, reveals a series of thematic and narrative parallels that highlight the connections between ritual, memory, and identity. The lament of Hecabe and the chorus for Astyanax in Trojan Women invokes the memory of his father’s valor and his city’s glory, and is prefigured by laments for the title characters in the previous plays of the trilogy, particularly by Hekabe’s lament for Alexandros in the first play. The lament for Alexandros thus forms the first element of a ring composition to which Hecabe’s later lament for Astyanax responds. This pattern exemplifies Euripides’ use of ritual, memory, and identity as thematic elements and confirms this trilogy as one of the “connected trilogies” in the tragic corpus.

Abstract

A comparison of Euripides’ Trojan Women with the fragments of the other two plays in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy, Alexandros and Palamedes, reveals a series of thematic and narrative parallels that highlight the connections between ritual, memory, and identity. The lament of Hecabe and the chorus for Astyanax in Trojan Women invokes the memory of his father’s valor and his city’s glory, and is prefigured by laments for the title characters in the previous plays of the trilogy, particularly by Hekabe’s lament for Alexandros in the first play. The lament for Alexandros thus forms the first element of a ring composition to which Hecabe’s later lament for Astyanax responds. This pattern exemplifies Euripides’ use of ritual, memory, and identity as thematic elements and confirms this trilogy as one of the “connected trilogies” in the tragic corpus.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-016

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 19.12.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111197456-016/html
Scroll to top button