Helen

“Men died for me in thousands by Skamander, / and I, the passive sufferer in it all, / became anathema, for it seemed to the world / that I had betrayed my husband and that he / had pushed Greece into a disastrous war.”

Here Helen relates the painful duality of her condition: Her reputation is ruined because she is assumed to have been the cause of all the pain of the Trojan War, while in fact she never had anything to do with it. Thus she becomes a “passive sufferer” who, while not actually bearing physical wounds from the battles at Troy, is nonetheless wounded by the conflict.

“You have sorrow enough, we know; but one must bear / the burdens of life as lightly as one can.”

The Leader tries to comfort Helen in her grief after hearing Teucer’s report. It was common in Greek theater to have the Chorus and its members (like the Leader) give voice to the moral maxims and practical applications of a dramatic narrative.

“This is the doom and depth of my despair: / the very beauty that makes other women / happy has proved for me a blasting curse.”

Helen sums up the paradox of her life: that while her world-famous beauty is often seen as a great blessing, it has instead proved to be a curse of immense proportions, both to her and to all those around her. Appearance (the idea that beauty is a desirable attribute in one’s life) is once again contrasted with reality (the cruel truth that her beauty has been the cause of her troubles).

“Dear heart, don’t leap ahead of your fear, / don’t play the prophetess / to your own woe.”

Here the Chorus advises Helen not to jump too quickly to assumptions, arguing that what Teucer has told her may not be true. Their advice not to “play the prophetess” ties in with Euripides’s broader theme of not seeking knowledge of the future.

“Accept the future, whatever / face it may wear, as a friend.”

Once again, the Chorus serves to deliver the practical and moral application of the narrative to the audience. In this instance, the Chorus’s advice to Helen is simply to accept the outcome, whatever it may be, in the brightest perspective she can.

“Still, what must be must be. It was a wise / philosopher, not I, who coined the phrase, / ‘Nothing’s as strong as brute necessity.’”

This is one of the most-quoted sayings from Euripides’s works, often in the following form: “Nothing has more strength than dire necessity” (from the translation by Richard Lattimore). Menelaos gives voice to this quote in the play, as he resigns himself to the indignity of having to beg for help after his shipwreck. The philosopher referred to may be Heraclitus, who wrote about the importance of necessity in determining events in a world where everything is in flux.

“The hardships you endured were all for nothing!”

This short line, delivered by Menelaos’s servant, encapsulates the play’s implications for the history of the Trojan War. If the Helen at Troy was not the real one, then the whole thing was a sham, and all the suffering poured out there was for naught. The Athenian audience, hearing this line in 412 BCE, may have felt much the same about their recent misadventures in the Peloponnesian War.

“Lucky misfortune, husband, has brought us together / after a long, long storm; but now that it’s fair / I pray to enjoy the weather.”

This quote is spoken by Helen in her reunion scene with Menelaos, and she plays on the paradox of their situation: “Lucky misfortune,” a juxtaposition of contrary words, refers to Menelaos’s wandering voyages and recent shipwreck, which have brought them back together. Helen draws on the metaphor of weather for their circumstances, a metaphor that is apt considering that it was a series of storms that cast Menelaos up on the shores of Egypt.

“With two like us, who must share, / joy and sorrow cannot be separated.”

Here Menelaos responds to the previous quote from Helen, in words that sum up the way that even contrary emotions interweave through the experiences of those who are close to one another, like (in this instance) a husband and wife. This quote also reflects the way that joy and sorrow interweave throughout the play, making its classification as solely a tragedy or a comedy nearly impossible.

“There’s pleasure in hearing of an ancient woe.”

Menelaos encourages Helen to explain what actually happened in the events of their separation 17 years before, which Helen is reluctant to do for fear of opening old wounds. Menelaos believes that turning one’s thoughts to past sorrows, if done from a place of peace and resolution, actually elicits pleasure from the contrast.

“Daughter, the ways of God are intricate / and hard to fathom. With a curious wisdom / he disarranges everything to make / new patterns. Some attempt and strive and fail, / others effortlessly prosper, then one day / run into ruin, for no man is certain / of holding fortune steady in his hands.”

Menelaos’s servant reflects on all that he has heard concerning the truth about Helen’s backstory, which has turned all that he thought he knew about his master’s family upside-down. Euripides uses his reflections to give voice to his theme about the unknowability of divine plans.

“Then why do we mix with oracles? Much better / to sacrifice and pray to the gods and leave / prophets alone. Prophecy was invented / as a bait for gullible man, but no one ever / got rich without hard work by studying magic. / The best prophets are care and common sense.”

Here the servant reflects upon the kind of divination that was often used to discern whether a king should go to war. He sees that such acts are worthless, as has proved so in the case of the Trojan War, and counsels instead a more general piety and sense of discretion as better guides.

“To attempt the impossible is folly.”

This is one of many lines by which Helen must tactfully rebuke Menelaos’s ill-conceived plans for escape before suggesting her own ideas. Throughout the play, Euripides uses male bravado as a foil to show the better value of women’s practical sensibility.

“If there are gods above and wise ones, / they let the earth lie lightly on the brave man / slain by his enemies, but the corpse of a coward / they cast unburied on some barren reef.”

Menelaos uses poetic imagery about death and burial to make his case for courageous action. This also ties into a prominent theme in Greek drama: the meaning of death, especially in view of the gods’ judgments over human actions.

“God abominates violence; his commandment / to all of us is: get and enjoy possessions, / but not by robbery. For just as the sky / belongs to all men, so too does this earth / where each may fill his house with goods, so long as / they are his own and not snatched from his neighbor.”

“God abominates violence; his commandment / to all of us is: get and enjoy possessions, / but not by robbery. For just as the sky / belongs to all men, so too does this earth / where each may fill his house with goods, so long as / they are his own and not snatched from his neighbor.”

“As a suppliant I implore you, / grant me this favor and in so doing follow / your noble father’s footsteps; for the child / of a fine man can win no glory greater / than matching the example of his life.”

These closing lines of Helen’s plea to Theonöe make the case that the prophetess should walk according to the example of the late King Proteus, who vowed to keep Helen safe while in Egypt. Here virtue is displayed not only as something built up in the individual, but as the shared heritage of social and familial ties.

“By nature and vocation I love piety; / I cherish myself, and I would never sully / my father’s name or do my brother a favor / at the cost of my own dishonor. In my heart / there’s a great shrine of Justice: […] / I mean to keep it holy all my life.”

Theonöe’s response provides a paean to virtue and piety. This quote underscores the importance of personal virtue to Euripides’s exploration of character and reputation, which in most of the play has to do with Helen but here relates to Theonöe.

“Listen—a woman can plan wisely too.”

Here Helen tells Menelaos to stop coming up with half-baked ideas for their escape because she has a better one. This quote exemplifies Euripides’s insistence on the intelligence and moral character of women.

“What is god, what is not god, what lies in between / man and god? Who on this earth, after searching, / can claim to have been / to the end of that question’s torturous lane? / For every man has seen / the plans of the gods lurching / here and there and back again / in unexpected and absurd vicissitudes.”

The Chorus, as part of one of its central odes, gives voice to the most persistent theme of the play: the capricious nature of the gods’ plans. As a consequence of that capriciousness, we cannot rest secure in any knowledge we might hope to have about the future.

“Madmen, all who seek glory in war, / trusting in ignorance / to the sheer weight of the lance / to end mortal debate! / If battle and blood are to settle the score, / grief and hate / will never leave the cities of men.”

In this later section of the same ode as above, the Chorus offers the most clearly pacifistic statement of the play. These lines alone have led some scholars to suggest that Euripides intended Helen to be an anti-war statement. Others are uncertain whether he intended to convey an overarching anti-war philosophy, and they suggest instead that these lines merely reflect the emotional weight felt by a society in the midst of a devastating war.

“To cheat the dead of their due offends the gods.”

Here Menelaos (acting as merely a shipwrecked Greek sailor) tries to convince King Theoklymenos that Helen herself must perform the funeral rite for her lost husband. While the quote comes in the context of a deception, the truth of this line would have been immediately accepted by the play’s audience, just as it was by Theoklymenos within the play’s narrative. It sums up a familiar sentiment in Greek tragedy, seen most clearly in Sophocles’s play Antigone.

“Healthy mistrust, I’ve learnt, / is the quality that stands one in best stead.”

These lines close the account from the messenger bearing bad news back to King Theoklymenos. As in many cases throughout the play, it is the voices of functional characters like the Chorus, the servant, and the messenger, who relate the practical applications of the narrative. Here, that application is to approach life with a good dose of clear-eyed skepticism.

“Heaven never hates the high-born, but it’s true, / they’re given more trials than the nameless crowd.”

Here the demigod Kastor finishes his monologue at the end of the play. The idea conveyed is that the nobles, the famous, and the wealthy have been granted blessings but that they pay for such advantages in ways that commoners don’t have to deal with.