The Troy War took place: Greek ships and their captive procession will return home from the shore of Chersonese. But the shadow of Achilles, the "best of the Achaeans", demands that he be honored with the blood of a virgin (response to the inaugural sacrifice of Iphigénie?): the victim will be Polyxene, daughter of Priam and Hecube. Meanwhile, another shadow appeared, the ghost of Polyxene's brother, Polydore, killed by the Thrace king Polymestor, to which his parents had entrusted him with many sums of gold. Everything then converges towards Hecube, the old queen of Troy, whom it seems powerless, but who is assisted by the resources of the trick and the complicity of the choir's women: her revenge will spare the Greeks, against whom she can nothing, and will be fully exercised on Polymestor and her children.
Far from all manicheism, Euripide's play is a reflection on the effects of war, which reveals the hearts of men at least as much as it shapes: subtly, but inevitably, the borders are blurred between Greeks and Barbarians, between victims and executioners, between humanity and bestiality. The adequacy of words, thoughts and acts is unfailing and for a long time. Euripide is decidedly a contemporary capital.