Hecuba

Hecuba (Greek Ἑκάβη ) and Hecuba (Latin Hecuba ) or cisseis, is in Homer's Iliad, the queen of Troy and wife of Priam.

Myth

The ten -year-long siege of Troy and the eventual conquest of the city rush Hecuba of the highest happiness of motherhood and pride of a queen in deepest poverty, dependency and despair of a slave and rob them of her husband and all her children.

Hecuba is the mother of Hector, Paris, Helenus, Troilus, Cassandra, Polydorus and 12 other children. She lost Hector and Troilus by Achilles, Paris by Philoctetes Deiphobos by Menelaus and the remaining children in the destruction of Troy by the Greek army. She herself was a slave of Odysseus. In the Hecuba of Euripides it becomes the avenger by Polymestor, the murderer of her son Polydorus displayed. Hecuba is the embodiment of the deepest unhappiness and misery, women in the war.

According to Hyginus also one of the Danaids bore the name of Hecuba; murdered on their wedding night her husband Dryas. In Apollodorus, however, is called the wife of Dryas Eurydice.

Reception

The saying "This is me Hecuba " in the sense of "That means nothing to me " goes back to a point in Shakespeare's Hamlet. There, Hamlet wonders about the ability of an actor in order to shed the fate Hekubas, the schlotterigen queen from ancient Sage tears while he, Hamlet, despite only just committed to his father crime, completely numb stay: