The Golden Apple

The absence of Athena in The Trojan Women (after Euripides) is the greatest deviation from Euripides’ original text. When Athena appears on stage in the original text, she appears to Poseidon almost as a suppliant, even asking Poseidon for the privilege of addressing him before speaking. The enmity between the gods is diminished within the written scene, whereas solitary Poseidon rages on the stage in the adaptation, making it seem as if concession with Athena were an impossible feat. Poseidon’s fury—as opposed to his contained passion within the original work—brings him down to a more human level. Poseidon, however, is depicted as controlling (or possibly mirroring) the actions and emotions of the actresses on the stage, distancing himself from the weeping women. The adaptation focuses on human struggle and its relationship to the conflict between the will of the gods and fate itself.

Throughout the play, Poseidon is depicted as lurking in the background, matching the motions and emotions of the actresses in the foreground. While doing so, he ominously brandishes a representation of the golden apple that Paris famously gave to Aphrodite. The golden apple fittingly represents that which is out of the control of the gods—Aphrodite, Artemis and Athena all desperately wanted and had to fight for this material item. Poseidon wields it before the audience during his opening monologue, after which he dramatically drops it to the ground, producing a hollow, unimpressive thud. At this point in the story, Poseidon has relinquished control over the Trojan War and has recognized it as beyond his realm of influence—much like the golden apple was out of the reach of the three female goddesses that vied for it. The golden apple also functions as a symbol of greed, the single factor that, in its many manifestations, destroyed the Trojan city. It was, in effect, the first domino to topple in a long line of tiles.

Moreover, Poseidon’s will may or may not have been exercised on the humans in the foreground throughout the play. He is mysteriously depicted as mirroring the actions and facial expressions of the actresses, which might lead to the interpretation that Poseidon acts as a puppeteer throughout the play. However, another interpretation of this might dictate that Poseidon is unable to control the actresses on the stage, instead only helplessly acting as a mirror to their woes, as he wishes that he could reverse the destruction.

Whereas the written play conveys the idea that dissention among the Greek pantheon led to the destruction of Troy (a battle of the will of the gods versus a foretold prophecy), in the adaptation Athena is absent. Without Athena, the explanation for the destruction of Troy is simply that the Trojan gods were defeated by the Greek deities, diminishing the impact of the conflict between fate and gods. Was the will of the gods important in the judgment of Paris, though? According to prophecy (and thus, fate) Paris was destined to bring about the destruction of Troy. The exclusion of Athena as a role in the play possibly serves to bring this notion into question—how important was the goddess in reality, when the fate of Troy was foretold?