Helen

Euripides’ Helen, produced in 412 BC, is a tragedy built on the story told in the Palinode of the lyric poet Stesichorus, according to which Helen never went to Troy with Paris. In this version Hera made a phantom (eidolon) of Helen out of the sky for Paris, while Hermes carried the real Helen to Egypt, to the house of King Proteus. Years later, with Proteus dead, his son Theoclymenus wants to marry her. The Greek archer Teucer brings her news that Menelaus is lost at sea and that all Greece hates her. Then Menelaus is shipwrecked on the same coast, with the phantom he thinks is Helen, and the two spouses meet and escape together by a trick. The Dioscuri, Helen’s brothers, appear at the end to end the quarrel.

Date and Historical Background

According to the ancient scholia on Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria, Helen was produced together with Euripides’ lost Andromeda in the year before that comedy, that is, in 412 BC, and Aristophanes parodied both plays the following year. The parody is long: Euripides’ kinsman, disguised as a woman, plays Helen and opens with the very first line of the play, “These are the fair-maiden streams of the Nile” (Women at the Thesmophoria 855), while Euripides himself appears as Menelaus in a scene taken from Helen (855–928); the Andromeda is parodied afterwards (1010–1135). No ancient source records how the play fared in the competition.

The story of Helen in Egypt is older than the play. Plato quotes the Palinode of Stesichorus, in which the poet retracts his earlier story with the words “That saying is not true; you did not go in the well-benched ships, nor did you come to the towers of Troy” (Plato, Phaedrus 243a–b; compare Republic 9.586c, where the wraith of Helen is attributed to Stesichorus). Herodotus tells the Egyptian story in a different form, in which Proteus keeps Helen and her goods in Egypt until Menelaus comes for them, so that the Greeks fought for nothing (Herodotus 2.112–120).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Helen, the daughter of Zeus and Leda, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta
• Menelaus, Helen’s husband
• Theonoe, daughter of Proteus and the sea-nymph Psamathe, sister of Theoclymenus; a prophetess
• Theoclymenus, son of Proteus and king of Egypt
• Teucer, the Greek archer, half-brother of Ajax
• An Old Woman, the gatekeeper of the palace
• A servant (messenger) of Menelaus, one of the men he left behind
• A second messenger, a servant of Theoclymenus, and a servant of Theoclymenus who tries to restrain him
• The Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, Helen’s brothers
• The Chorus, captive Greek women

Setting

The play is set in Egypt, before the palace of Theoclymenus (lines 1–15 give the setting, on the Nile, with Proteus having lived on the island of Pharos) and in the vicinity of the tomb of Proteus, where Helen has taken refuge as a suppliant (lines 64–67).

Summary of Helen

Prologue

The play opens with a monologue by Helen (lines 1–67), which begins with two genealogies. The first gives the family of Proteus, who had lived on Pharos and ruled Egypt; he married the sea-nymph Psamathe and had a son, Theoclymenus, and a daughter, called Eido as a child and Theonoe when grown, who knows all things divine, past and future (lines 4–15). The second is Helen’s own: her country is Sparta and her father Tyndareus, though a story says that Zeus came to her mother Leda in the shape of a swan (lines 16–22).

She then tells her story. Three goddesses came to Alexander (Paris) on Mount Ida to have their beauty judged, and Aphrodite won by promising him Helen’s beauty (lines 23–30). Hera, angry at losing, “made Paris’ marriage into wind”: she gave him not Helen but a living image fashioned from the sky, and Paris thinks he has her though he has only an empty fancy (lines 31–36). Zeus meanwhile had his own plan, to bring war to Greece and Troy and thin out the crowds of mortals (lines 36–41). Hermes wrapped the real Helen in a cloud and set her down in the house of Proteus, the most chaste of mortals, to keep her marriage bed unspoiled for Menelaus (lines 44–48). While Menelaus gathers an army to recover her, many have died at the Scamander because of her, and she is cursed everywhere as a traitor (lines 49–55). Hermes had told her that she would live again in Sparta with her husband, once it was known that she had not gone to Troy (lines 56–59). While Proteus lived she was safe from marriage, but now that he lies in the earth, his son Theoclymenus wants to marry her, and she kneels at the tomb of Proteus to keep her marriage bed for her husband (lines 60–67).

Teucer enters, and when he sees Helen he is shocked at her likeness to the woman who destroyed him and the Achaeans: if he were not in a foreign land, he says, she would die by an arrow as the price for looking like the daughter of Zeus (lines 68–77). Helen does not reveal herself. She asks why he hates the woman, since she is not to blame for her fate, and he answers that all Greece hates Zeus’ daughter (lines 78–82). He tells her that he is Teucer, son of Telamon, and that his father has driven him from his home, a matter bound up with the death of his brother Ajax (lines 87–104). The city of Troy has fallen, and the Greeks stayed there ten years (lines 105–114). He tells her that Menelaus and his ships have disappeared in the storm and no one has seen him (lines 123–131); that Leda, the mother of Helen, is dead, having hanged herself for the disgrace of her daughter (lines 133–136); and that the Dioscuri are said to be both alive and dead (lines 137–142). He has come to consult the prophetess Theonoe, hoping to learn how to find a fair wind for Cyprus, where Apollo has told him to found a new Salamis (lines 144–150). Helen warns him to leave, because the king of this land kills every Greek that he finds (lines 151–155). Teucer thanks her and goes, wishing her a better fortune and noting that she has the same body as Helen, but a heart unlike hers (lines 157–163).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The Chorus of captive Greek women enters, and Helen sings with them a lament (lines 164–251). They mourn the heroes who died at Troy, among them Menelaus, whom Teucer has said to be lost, and Helen mourns for herself, who is innocent but universally condemned. She asks what kind of marvel she is: no woman, Greek or barbarian, ever laid a white egg in which another woman was born, as men say of her birth from Leda (lines 255–259), and her life is a marvel, partly because of Hera and partly because of her beauty (lines 260–261).

First Episode

After hearing out the Chorus’ lament, Helen concludes that she has no reason to go on living: her mother is dead and she is thought to be the cause; her husband is lost at sea, thinking her a traitor; and a marriage with a barbarian awaits her (lines 255–305). She vows to die. The Chorus urges her not to do anything rash before she consults Theonoe, “who knows all things”, and who might give her some advice in these times (lines 317–329). Helen agrees and they go into the palace.

As soon as the doors close behind them, Menelaus appears before the tomb of Proteus and tells the audience that he has just been shipwrecked on this coast, and that his ship has been broken into many pieces against the rocks. He is now “a shipwrecked man who has lost his friends” (lines 386–436). Ashamed of his rags, he hasn’t made inquiries so far, but he has decided to come to this palace because sailors can hope to get something from a wealthy house. He also reveals that he has hidden Helen, the woman who caused all his troubles, in a cave, and has left some of his surviving friends to guard her. The gatekeeper, an Old Woman, answers his calls and tells him that the house belongs to the Egyptian king, that Greeks are killed here, and that he must leave at once (lines 437–482). She adds that the daughter of Zeus, Helen, is inside. Menelaus cannot believe his ears; he concludes that there must be many persons and cities in the world with the same names (lines 483–514).

Menelaus’ confusion returns when Helen comes out of the palace. The Chorus returns and reports what the prophetess has said: Menelaus is not dead, but is still wandering the sea and has not yet reached his homeland (lines 515–527), and Helen, who has learned from Theonoe that her husband is alive and has been shipwrecked on this coast, hurries out to the tomb (lines 528–540). She does not see him at first; he catches sight of her at the tomb, and, scarcely believing his eyes, speaks to her (lines 541–560). The two question each other, and he finds her very like his wife. When Helen explains who she is, and that the woman he took from Troy was a phantom, he does not believe her and prepares to leave, believing that the gods have merely added one more misfortune to his troubles (lines 561–596). At that moment a servant of his arrives from the cave and reports that the wife he left there has vanished, “taken up into the folds of the sky”, after saying that she was never at Troy: the Trojans and Achaeans had died through Hera’s contrivances, thinking that Paris had Helen when he did not (lines 597–621).

Now convinced, Menelaus embraces Helen in a recognition scene (lines 625–699). “I have found you,” he exclaims, but there are many questions to ask, and he does not know where to begin. When the servant learns that the woman for whom the Greeks fought was not the real Helen, he asks: “What are you saying? We labored over a cloud for nothing?” and adds that the god is intricate and hard to read (lines 700–712).

The servant goes to tell the other men the news (lines 713–760). Helen begs Menelaus to flee, since Theoclymenus will kill him, but now that he has found her he refuses to leave without her (lines 805–812). Helen then says that their only hope is Theonoe, who knows everything and might be persuaded not to tell her brother that Menelaus is in the country (lines 813–864). If they fail, Menelaus will be killed and Helen forced to marry the king.

Theonoe comes out of the house attended by women carrying torches (lines 865–893). Helen and Menelaus plead with her in two speeches (lines 894–995). Theonoe decides in their favour. She has a natural inclination to piety, she says, loves herself, and will not stain her father’s fame or do a favour for her brother that will make her infamous; there is a great shrine of justice in her nature, which she has from Nereus (lines 998–1004). She says that Hera wishes to benefit them and she will vote with her, while Aphrodite, she hopes, will forgive her for wishing to remain a virgin always (lines 1005–1008). And if her father were alive, he would have returned Helen to Menelaus and Menelaus to her; the mind of the dead, though it does not live, keeps an immortal awareness once it has passed into the immortal sky (lines 1009–1016). She will keep silent, will not give advice that might help her brother in his folly, and tells them to find a way themselves, to ask Aphrodite to let Helen go home, and Hera to keep her good intentions (lines 1017–1029).

When Theonoe and her attendants go inside, Menelaus proposes plans for the escape. He first asks whether she could persuade someone to give them a chariot, but they do not know the country; then he suggests hiding in the palace and killing the king, but Helen answers that the sister would not keep silent if he meant to kill her brother (lines 1035–1046). He observes that they have no ship, since the sea has taken the one he had (lines 1047–1048). Helen then proposes that Menelaus should be reported dead, and that she should ask the king for a ship to hold funeral rites at sea in the Greek manner for her husband’s body (lines 1049–1085). Menelaus agrees to play the messenger, in his rags, and Helen goes in to prepare herself, cutting her hair and putting on black (lines 1086–1106).

In the first stasimon (lines 1107–1164) the Chorus first addresses the nightingale (lines 1107–1121). Then they recall the Greeks who lie dead at Troy and the ship in which Menelaus sailed back with the “sacred image of Hera”, the phantom (lines 1122–1136), and ask who among mortals, searching, has found out what is god and what is not god (lines 1137–1150).

Second Episode

Theoclymenus returns from hunting, greets the tomb of his father, and learns that a Greek has come to the land to take Helen; he finds her missing from the tomb and calls for chariots, then sees her in mourning (lines 1165–1200). As planned, Helen, with her hair cut and clad in mourning clothes, tells him that a Greek stranger has arrived to report that her husband has died at sea. She asks for permission to carry out his funeral rites in the Greek manner and to put out to sea with all that is due to the dead. Theoclymenus is suspicious, but the supposed messenger (actually Menelaus) tells him that this is the custom, and that the offerings must be sent out to sea so that the waves do not wash pollution back to shore. Menelaus replies to the king’s suggestion that the stranger should do it without her that this belongs to a mother, wife or child, and that piety demands the dead should not lose their due. Theoclymenus eventually agrees to all of Helen’s requests, since she has promised to marry him afterwards (lines 1165–1300).

As the three go into the palace, the Chorus sings the second stasimon (lines 1301–1368), the so-called “Mountain Mother” ode, which tells how the Mother of the gods roamed the mountains after her daughter was lost, and how, when Zeus sent the Graces and the Muses to soothe her anger, Aphrodite took up the bronze cymbals and the drum and the goddess laughed and accepted the deep-sounding pipe (lines 1338–1352).

Third Episode

Helen comes out of the palace alone and tells the Chorus that Theonoe has kept her word and told her brother that Menelaus was not alive (lines 1369–1385). Theoclymenus and Menelaus appear soon after (lines 1386–1450). The king tries once more to persuade Helen to remain ashore, afraid that she might throw herself into the sea, but in the end he agrees to all her wishes and orders an attendant to give the Greek stranger and his companions “a Sidonian ship of fifty oars, and oarsmen” (lines 1411–1413). He then goes back into the palace, and Menelaus and Helen and their train head for the harbour.

In the third stasimon (lines 1451–1511) the Chorus sings of the ship and imagines the return of Helen to Sparta and the dances that they will dance in their homeland. They ask the Dioscuri, sons of Zeus, to come over the sea and free their sister from her ill fame, for she never went to Troy and never married a barbarian.

Exodos (Exit Song)

A second messenger, a servant of Theoclymenus, reports to the Chorus that Helen and Menelaus have escaped (lines 1512–1525) and then tells Theoclymenus how it happened (lines 1526–1618). The Sidonian ship was launched, and at the harbour Menelaus kept the Egyptian sailors from touching the offerings, and his own men lifted a bull on board (lines 1531–1570). Helen sat in the middle of the benches, with armed Greeks beside her, their swords under their cloaks (lines 1571–1576). Once the ship was out of sight of land, Menelaus stood by the bull, called on Poseidon and the sea-gods to bring him and his wife safely home (lines 1577–1588), and ordered the Greeks to attack the crew. In the fight that followed the Egyptians were killed, and Menelaus took the helm and steered for Greece (lines 1589–1618). Theoclymenus is furious at being deceived by women’s tricks. He vows to take revenge on his sister Theonoe, who saw Menelaus in the house and did not tell him, so that she will never again mislead any man with her prophecies (lines 1619–1626). A servant of his tries to hold him back, but Theoclymenus threatens to kill him too. The servant answers that it is glorious for a noble slave to die for his masters (lines 1627–1641).

Suddenly the Dioscuri appear above the palace and tell him to stop (lines 1642–1649). They say that Helen was never fated to marry him, that his sister has done nothing wrong, but has honoured the gods and her father’s just commands (lines 1646–1649). Helen was to live in his house only until Troy fell; now she must return to her husband (lines 1650–1655). They tell him to put away his sword, for his sister acted wisely (lines 1656–1657). They themselves would long ago have saved their sister, but were weaker than fate and the gods (lines 1658–1661). They will ride beside the ship over the sea and send her safely home (lines 1663–1665). When Helen has finished her life, she will be called a goddess, share the libations of the Dioscuri and receive the gifts of strangers with them (lines 1666–1669). The island where Hermes first set her down on his way from Sparta will be called by her name “Helen” (lines 1670–1675), and for the wandering Menelaus the gods have decreed a home on the island of the Blessed (lines 1676–1679). Theoclymenus gives way: he will no longer kill his sister and wishes Helen well (lines 1680–1687). The Chorus ends with the words that the gods have many shapes and accomplish many things unexpectedly: what was expected did not happen, and for the unexpected a god found a way (lines 1688–1692).

A Brief Analysis

Like Iphigenia in Tauris, Helen is set in a foreign land, has an escape by a trick that deceives a barbarian king, and ends well. The play is concerned with the difference between a name and a person. Helen says that Greeks fought for her name, not for herself (lines 42–43), that her body stays chaste though her name is disgraced (lines 66–67), and that she is hated everywhere for something she did not do (lines 52–55, 79–82). Menelaus fought for a phantom, and his servant, hearing the truth, asks whether the labours at Troy were all for a cloud (lines 704–707). The Chorus’ question about the gods in the first stasimon (lines 1137–1150), and its closing lines (lines 1688–1692), return to the same theme: no one can say what a god is, and the gods bring the unexpected to pass.

The play also contrasts Theonoe, who is prepared to let justice outweigh her brother’s wishes (lines 998–1029), with Theoclymenus, who kills any Greek stranger he catches (lines 153–155) and, when he learns the truth, wants to kill his own sister (lines 1619–1626). The Dioscuri’s speech explains the end by fate and the gods (lines 1646–1661).

Helen Sources

Euripides, Helen (lines 1–1692); Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria 855–928 and 1010–1135, with the ancient scholia, for the date; Plato, Phaedrus 243a–b and Republic 9.586c, for Stesichorus’ Palinode; Herodotus 2.112–120, for the Egyptian story of Helen. An English translation of the play can be read on Perseus (Helen).

See Also: Helen, Menelaus, Teucer, Euripides