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| Crispijn van de Passe the Elder Hector asks his mother Hecuba and his sisters to offer sacrifice to Minerva 1613 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Luigi Ademollo Hecuba offering sacrifice to Minerva before 1849 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Merry-Joseph Blondel Hecuba and Polyxena (Hecuba swoons, hearing that Polyxena is to be sacrificed by the Greeks) before 1853 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Francesco Allegrini Hecuba finds the dead Polyxena before 1663 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
from The Metamorphoses
Embracing the brave Polyxena's lifeless body, Hecuba
shed for her daughter the tears she so often had shed for her country,
her sons and her husband. She washed her dear child's wounds with those tears;
she covered her lips with kisses and rained fresh blows on her own poor
breasts; then sweeping her white hair over the clotted blood
and tearing her bosom, she cried in the course of a long lamentation:
'My daughter, the last of your mother's sorrows – what else can befall me? –
my child, you are dead and I see your wound, my wound no less.
Yes, you too have a wound: I wasn't allowed to lose
one child without blood being spilt. I thought, since you were a girl,
you'd be safe from the sword; but girl though you were, the sword has destroyed you.'
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| Damiano Pernati Hecuba discovering the body of her youngest son, Polydorus 1804 etching Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Antonio Tempesta Hecuba discovering the body of Polydorus, killed by Polymestor before 1630 etching Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
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| Leonaert Bramer Sorrow of Hecuba ca. 1630 oil on copper Museo del Prado, Madrid |
So saying, the luckless Hecuba hobbled down to the shore,
tearing her hoary locks. As she called to her Trojan women
to hand her a pitcher for drawing water out of the waves,
she saw, cast up on the beach, the corpse of her son Polydorus,
mangled with gaping wounds, from the sword of the Thracian king.
Her attendants screamed, but the queen was totally dumb in her anguish.
Her voice was stifled; the tears which were welling behind her eyes
never came. She stood there frozen in grief, as rigid as granite.
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| Karl Russ Hecuba and her children 1809 etching and aquatint Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Pierre Peyron Despair of Hecuba ca. 1784 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
She stared at the ground directly before her, or else, with a grim look,
lifted her eyes to the sky, then gazed on her son as he lay there,
gazed on his face and gazed on his wounds, his wounds above all,
while she armed herself with smouldering fury and marshalled her wrath.
As her anger burst into flames, she resolved to punish the killer –
Queen Hecuba still! – and her mind was filled with her picture of vengeance.
As a lioness out on the warpath, newly deprived of her suckling
cub, discovers and follows the trail of her unseen foe,
so Hecuba, after her grief was mingled with anger, forgetting
her age, but not forgetting her rage, made straight for the vile
Polymestor, the man who had foully contrived to murder her boy.
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| Johann Wilhelm Baur Hecuba enraged by the sight of the bodies of her children ca. 1640 etching Harvard Art Museums |
She requested a meeting, and told the king that she wanted to show him
a hoard of gold that she'd hidden, to be returned to her son.
The Thracian tyrant believed her and, scenting the whiff of yet further
booty, he came to the lonely spot. Then craftily smiling
he said to the queen, 'Come on, now, Hecuba; give me the gold
for your son. I swear to the gods in heaven that all you give now
and gave in the past shall be his.' As he perjured himself by these lies,
she ferociously watched, till her temper mounted and boiled right over.
And then she grabbed hold of him tight, with a shout to her posse of female
captives, and dug her fingers into his treacherous eyes,
to gouge the balls from their sockets – the power was lent her by anger.
– Ovid (8 AD), translated by David Raeburn (2004)
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| Crispijn van de Passe the Elder Hecuba tears out the eyes of Polymestor ca. 1602-1607 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Johann Wilhelm Baur Hecuba tears out the eyes of Polymestor ca. 1640 etching Harvard Art Museums |
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| Antonio Tempesta Hecuba and the Trojan women murdering Polymestor before 1630 etching Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
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| Crispijn van de Passe the Elder Abduction of Hecuba ca. 1602-1607 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Johann Wilhelm Baur Ulysses abducts Hecuba, the mother of Hector ca. 1640 etching Harvard Art Museums |
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| Antonio Tempesta The Greeks carrying away Hecuba before 1630 etching Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |