It depicts Hecuba's grief over the death of her daughter Polyxena and the revenge she takes for the murder of her youngest son, Polydorus.

In the play's opening, the ghost of Polydorus tells how when the war threatened Troy, he was sent to King Polymestor of Thrace for safekeeping, with gifts of gold and jewelry.

The Trojan queen Hecuba, now enslaved by the Greeks, mourns her great losses and worries about the portents of her nightmare.

Greek commander Odysseus enters, to escort Polyxena to an altar where Neoptolemus will shed her blood.

In the first Choral interlude, the Chorus lament their own doomed fate, cursing the sea breeze that will carry them on ships to the foreign lands where they will live in slavery.

Hecuba sends a slave girl to fetch water from the sea to bathe her daughter's corpse.

The arguments take the form of a trial, and Hecuba delivers a rebuttal exposing Polymestor's speech as sophistry.

Polymestor, again in a rage, foretells the deaths of Hecuba by drowning and Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, who also kills Cassandra.