Polyxena

Also known as: POLYX. · Family: Troy · Role: daughter of Hecuba and Priam · First appears: Euripides, Hecuba — Scene 1

Polyxena is the daughter of Hecuba and Priam, and the sister of Polydorus, Hector, and Cassandra. As the Greek army prepares to depart, Achilles demands her as a sacrificial victim for his tomb; Odysseus persuades the army to accept the demand, and the Greek council decrees her death. Hecuba tells her, “My child, the common decree of the Greeks unites to slay thee at the tomb of the son of Peleus.”

At Achilles’s tomb, Odysseus is ordered to conduct Polyxena to the sacrifice. He refuses to withdraw the decree despite Hecuba’s plea, while Agamemnon later orders the young men to release her. Polyxena nevertheless chooses death rather than enslavement and dishonor, declaring, “I will quit this light from mine eyes free, offering my body to Pluto. Lead on then, Ulysses, conduct me to death”.

Polyxena is sacrificed beneath the sword at Achilles’s tomb, and Talthybius comes to tell Hecuba to entomb her body. Before her death, she says that Polydorus lives and will close Hecuba’s dying eye. In The Trojan Captives, her death is again recalled as a sacrifice at the tomb of Peleus’ son, while Hecuba mourns the daughters torn from her arms.