What greater grief than the loss of one’s
native land.

The line laments exile as a uniquely devastating form of suffering: to lose one’s homeland is to lose the web of language, customs, family ties, civic identity, and the protective familiarity that makes life intelligible. In Euripidean drama, such grief often belongs to displaced figures—captives, refugees, or the politically banished—whose personal tragedies are intensified by being cut off from their city and its gods. The quote’s rhetorical question frames homeland not as mere territory but as the ground of belonging; its loss becomes a grief that eclipses other misfortunes because it threatens one’s sense of self and continuity.