Despite the age of Euripedes’ play, and the fact that the events it refers to take place almost a thousand years before his own work, it’s striking how little has changed. For all our technological progress, as a species, the same abuses continue to the modern day. Slavery- whether in the form of debt bondage or sexual servitude- persists, and, of course, violence towards women has never ended. In the contemporary era, the figure of Talthybius persists in new and different forms, and the sad truth is, as Hannah Arendt suggested, that evil is banal. Talthybius isn’t some monster; he’s all too human.