The Sacrifice of Polyxena, 1647, by Charles Le Brun, Metropolitan Museum of Art 

What this project is about.  

This one is from Book 13.

How long it took to read this (aloud): 3 mins 54s

What it’s “about”: It ends badly twice – first for one of Priam’s sons, then for a brave young lady.

Words I didn’t know: none

Quotable quotes: 

When the Trojan fortunes 

Began to slip, the wicked Polymestor 

Slit the boy’s throat and then, as if this crime 

Would disappear soon as the body vanished, 

He tossed the boy’s remains from a rock cliff 

Down to the swirling waters of the sea.

And

she the last hostage 

Of that woman’s love, unlucky girl, 

Yet brave, with more than girlish spirit 

Walked to her pyre to grace Achilles’ tomb. 

She kept her poise, even facing the dread altar, 

And knew that ceremony was her death, 

Even as Neoptolemus held sword to strike, 

And as her eyes met his, she said distinctly, 

“Now is the time to take my gentle blood, 

Your sword has choice of either throat or breast.” 

Then as she offered her breast and throat to him, 

We may be sure that she’d be no man’s servant.

AND

All those who heard her wept, her eyes were dry. 

And as the weeping priest stepped to her side 

He drove his knife home to her waiting breast. 

Even to the last and as she fell to earth, 

Her white face held its look of brave decorum, 

And as she fainted into death she swept 

Her cloak around her limbs to shield her body.

How it lands to my eco-sensibility: xx

Obvious allusions, ways it was used (that I am aware of already) : xx

What I know I didn’t ‘get’: xx

To my knowledge, who’s used it why/how (RACC): xx

Further research questions: xx

Anything else: xx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyxena

The story of Polyxena features in Hecuba by Euripides, Troades by Seneca and the Polyxena of Sophocles, of which only a few fragments remain.^[16] Apart from these classical dramas, there are:

• Achille et Polyxène, an opera begun by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who died from a conducting injury having only completed the first act. It was completed by his pupil Pascal Collasse, and premiered in Paris in 1687.
• Polixène, an opera by the French composer Antoine Dauvergne, first performed at the Paris Opéra on 11 January 1763
• Polyxena is also a character in Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz.
• She is mentioned by William Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida III,3,207-215 and V,1.40-43.