Euripides’ play Andromache dramatizes the plight of Hector’s
wife years after the sack of Troy. Written in the middle of the
Archidamian War (the first of the Peloponnesian wars between
Athens and Sparta), the play is chiefly noteworthy for the harsh
characterization of the Spartan king, Menelaus, and his family;
as an admirer of the third of the great Greek Tragedians, I must
say that I don’t really feel there is much “meat” in this
particular Euripidean drama. To briefly summarize the plot:
Andromache, a suppliant at the temple of Thetis in the household
of Peleus and Neoptolemus (the father and son of Achilles,
respectively), dominates the first half of the play. She seeks
protection at the shrine from her rival, the new wife of
Neoptolemus, Hermione, and her father Menelaus. Both have come
to kill her and her son. After tricking Andromache away from the
shrine, both mother and son (the bastard of Neoptolemus), are
threatened with death, saved only at the last minute by old
Peleus. Menelaus exits without b