Euripides reacts to the severe repression by the Athenian empire on the island of Melos with The Trojan Women, highlighting the theme of captivity. The central character of the drama is Andromache, who, like all the women left widowed after the fall of Troy, is assigned as a slave to one of the victors. Andromache—a free spirit who struggles with her enslavement—becomes the voice of a clear description of the mechanism that leads slaves to submission: Euripides thus provides a crucial contribution to the study of the psychology of slavery. This ancient experience is key to understanding the contemporary relationship between new slaves and the opulent West, which hypocritically plays a behind-the-scenes role in the conflicts that give rise to modern forms of slavery.
