Le masque de Troie. De la fiction tragique à la réalité (Euripide, Les Troyennes, 1322-1324)

International audienceIn Euripides' Trojan Women, as I will argue, the mythical drama of Troy's catastrophe serves as a mask hiding the face of contemporary Athenian events, mainly the crimes committed in Melos and the preparation of the Sicilian expedition. At the end of the play, the women of the chorus lament over the vanishing of their wretched city. The words they use, when pronounced orally, can be understood either as "Troy doesn't exist anymore" (οὐδ' ἔτ' ἐστιν/ ἁ τάλαινα Τροία) or "Troy doesn't even exist" (οὐδέ τ' ἐστιν/ ἁ τάλαινα Τροία), which echoes Gorgias' treatise on Non-Being. Although all modern editors choose to print the first phrase, the second one is the one attested in the best manuscripts, where –unlike in modern editions – it is also marked as the chorus's last cue, the following lines being attributed to Hecabe and finally Talthybios. I will try to demonstrate that this statement, which can function as a conclusion to the play and is, as I will suggest, accompanied by a remarkable theatrical use of the audience's response to what may seem a false ending, bears a strong meta-theatrical meaning. As Troy disappears within the fiction, it also vanishes as the theatrical illusion, the mere phenomenon that it has been from the prologue on. The reality that it has been covering then takes precedence as the poet invites the spectators to recognize themselves as being – and thus having been from the start – a part of the play