I still have a few back-logged book jots I want to post. Here is one from December 2021:

I just finished reading the play Andromache by Euripides (late 5th century BC), translated by Philip Vellacott. It is one of many tales from antiquity describing the rippling effects of the Trojan War and the lives of those who survived. Andromache was the wife of Hector, a prince of Troy. She was taken captive after the Greeks took Troy, and brought back to Greece by Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.

This story weaves together the fates of the family of Achilles (including his father Peleus, his son Neoptolemus, and his grandson Molossus), the House of Atreus (the descendants of the infamous Tantalus, including Hermione, the daughter of Helen and Menelaus, and Orestes, son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon), and the royal family of Troy (Andromache and her son Molossus).

Like many of Euripides’ plays, themes of war, women’s social existence, and revenge are prominent. This play was written during Athen’s protracted war with Sparta, and the brutal realities of war were more than just a fictional device for both the dramatist and his audience.

And in the streets of Hellas many mothers
Raised the sad music of mourning for their sons;
Many widows left their homes behind
And went to another husband.
Not alone on you and yours, Andromache,
The bitterness of sorrow has fallen;
This plague – Hellas too has endured the plague.
The thunder that shattered Troy
Has passed to our pleasant fields,
And death is with us in a rain of blood.