Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When the killing paused, the Achaeans divided the women and treasure. Hecuba fell to Odysseus in some allotments (or remained a contested prize); Cassandra was given to Agamemnon; Andromache to Neoptolemus; other houses received other captives. From Achilles’ tomb—or in a dream to the leaders—his ghost rose demanding a blood portion: Polyxena, Priam’s and Hecuba’s daughter, to be slaughtered on his grave. Euripides’ *Hecuba* stages the army’s vote, Odysseus’s hard embassy to the mother, and Polyxena’s chosen dignity as she bares her throat rather than live a slave. Neoptolemus cuts her down at the mound. The same Euripidean play binds that sacrifice to a second atrocity: Polymestor’s murder of Polydorus in Thrace and Hecuba’s revenge—geographically already on the road of the nostoi, but thematically the spoils’ moral hangover. *Troades* opens on the morning after the allotment, with Athena and Poseidon already planning the storm. This entry keeps to the division and Polyxena’s death as the last major blood-rite before the fleet sails.