Andromache (play)

Andromache
Captive Andromache (detail)
by Frederic Leighton
Written byEuripides
ChorusWomen of Phthia
CharactersAndromache
Maid
Hermione
Menelaus
Molossus
Peleus
Nurse of Hermione
Orestes
Messenger
Thetis
Original languageAncient Greek
SubjectAndromache's life as a slave
GenreAthenian tragedy
SettingPhthia in Thessaly (northern Greece) before the temple of Thetis.

Andromache (Ancient Greek: Ἀνδρομάχη) is an Athenian tragedy by Euripides. It dramatises Andromache's life as a slave, years after the events of the Trojan War, and her conflict with her master's new wife, Hermione. The date of its first performance is unknown. Some scholars place the date sometime between 428 and 425 BC.[1] Müller places it between 420 and 417 BC.[2] A Byzantine scholion to the play suggests that its first production was staged outside Athens, though modern scholarship regards this claim as dubious.[3]

  1. ^ Ley (2007, 112).
  2. ^ Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 107. ark:/13960/t9f47mp93.
  3. ^ Walton (1997, xi–xii).