Helen
Choose a text
id="mobileReaderAuthor" class="mobile-reader-author" href="/authors/euripides" aria-label="More works by Euripides">
—
⋯
Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
733
This is my bidding to you, while I say to my sister: Sail on with your husband; and you shall have a favorable breeze; for we, your two savior brothers,
734
riding over the sea, will send you to your fatherland. And when you make the last turn of the race-course and end your life, you will be named as a goddess, and share libations with the Dioskouroi, and receive gifts from men with us; for such is the will of Zeus.
735
And the place where the son of Maia first set the boundary to your course through the air, when he took you away from Sparta, stealing your body so that Paris would not marry you—I mean the island stretched like a sentinel along the coast of Attica—shall be called by your name among men for the future, since it welcomed you
736
when you were stolen from your home. And it is destined by the gods that the wanderer Menelaos will dwell in the islands of the blessed; for deities do not hate the well-born, but the sufferings of the multitude are greater.
737
737
Theoklymenos
737
You sons of Leda and Zeus, I will let go my former quarrel over your sister; and mine I shall no longer try to kill. Let Helen go home, if the gods think it right. Know that you are born from the same blood as a sister
738
who is the best and also most self-controlled; may you fare well, for the sake of Helen’s most noble mind, a quality not to be found in many women.
739
739
Chorus
739
Many are the forms of divinities, and many things the gods bring to pass unhoped for.
740
And what was expected has not been fulfilled; for what was not expected, a god finds a way. Such was the result of this action.
95
95
Helen
95
Oh! Oh! Maidens of Hellas, the prey of barbarian sailors! An Achaean sailor
96
came, he came bringing tears upon tears to me. Ilion has been destroyed and is left to the enemy’s fire through me, the death-giver, through my name, full of suffering.
97
Leda sought death by hanging, in anguish over my disgrace. My husband, after much wandering in the sea, has died and is gone;
98
and Castor and his brother, twin glory of their native land, have vanished, vanished, leaving the plains that shook to their galloping horses,
99
and the schools of reed-fringed Eurotas, scene of youthful labors.
100
100
Chorus
100
Alas, alas! for your mournful fate and destiny, lady! You were fated, fated to have a life full of pain, when Zeus begot you on your mother,
101
shining through the air on the wings of a snow-white swan. What evil is not yours? What life have you not endured? Your mother is dead;
102
the twin beloved sons of Zeus do not enjoy happiness; and you do not see your fatherland, while through the cities a rumor goes, mistress, which hands you over
103
to the bed of a barbarian; your husband has lost his life in the salty waves, and never again will you bring glee to your father’s halls and Athene of the Bronze House.
506
506
Chorus
506
What is god, or what is not god, or what is in between— what mortal says he has found it by searching the farthest limit,
507
when he sees divine affairs leaping here and there again and back, in contradictory and unexpected chances? You, Helen, are the daughter of Zeus;
508
for a winged father begot you in Leda’s womb; and then you were proclaimed throughout Hellas, betrayer, faithless, lawless, godless. I do not know whatever certainty is among mortals,
509
but the word of the gods I have found true.
510
510
Chorus
510
You are fools, who try to win a reputation for virtue through war and marshalled lines of spears, senselessly putting an end to mortal troubles;
511
for if a bloody quarrel is to decide it, strife will never leave off in the towns of men; by it they won as their lot bed-chambers of Priam’s earth, when they could have set right by discussion
512
the strife over you, O Helen. And now they are below in Hades’ keeping, and fire has darted onto the walls like the bolt of Zeus, and you are bringing woe on woe . . . .
621
621
Chorus
621
When she made an end to banquets for gods and the race of men, Zeus spoke out, appeasing the
622
Mother’s gloomy wrath: Go, holy Graces, go and with a loud cry take from Demeter’s angry heart her grief for the maiden;
623
and you, Muses, with song and dance. Then Kypris, fairest of the blessed gods, first took up the rumbling voice of bronze and the drum with tight-stretched skin; and the goddess smiled,
624
and received in her hand the deep-toned flute, pleased with its loud note.
625
625
Chorus
625
You made burnt offerings that were neither right nor holy, in the chambers of the gods,
626
and you have incurred the wrath of the great mother, child, by not honoring her sacrifices. Oh! Great is the power of dappled fawn-skin robes,
627
and green ivy that crowns a sacred thyrsos, the whirling beat of the tambourine circling in the air, hair streaming wildly for the revelry of Bromios,
628
and the night-long festivals of the goddess. . . . You gloried in your beauty alone.
669
669
Chorus
669
Oh, that we had wings to cleave the air, where the birds of Libya go in their ranks,
670
leaving the winter rain, obedient to the piping of their veteran leader, who raises his exultant cry
671
as he wings his way over unmoistened and crop-bearing plains of the earth. O you winged long-necked comrades of the racing clouds, go on beneath the Pleiades in their central station
672
and Orion of the night; deliver the message, as you settle on Eurotas’ banks, that Menelaos has sacked the city of Dardanos, and will come home.
673
673
Chorus
673
May you come at last, speeding over your horses’ path through the sky, sons of Tyndareus, under the whirling of the radiant stars; you who dwell in heaven, Helen’s rescuers,
674
go over the gray-green swell and the dark gray surge of sea-waves, sending the sailors
675
favoring breezes from Zeus; and cast away from your sister her ill-fame from marriage with a barbarian, the punishment she received from the contest on Ida;
676
but she never went to the land of Ilion, to the towers of Phoebus.
680b
680b
Menelaos
680b
How? Tell me.
681b
681b
Menelaos
681b
O unhappy one!
685b
685b
Menelaos
685b
What do you mean?
1514b
1514b
Messenger
1514b
Go to work on the courtship of another
1630b
1630b
Servant
1630b
Yes, for I am in my right mind.
1631b
1631b
Servant
1631b
No, I will not let you!
1632b
1632b
Servant
1632b
No, she is most pious.
1633b
1633b
Servant
1633b
It was a noble betrayal, correctly done.
1634b
1634b
Servant
1634b
To the one who had a better right.
1635b
1635b
Servant
1635b
The one who received her from her father.
1636b
1636b
Servant
1636b
And necessity took her away.
1637b
1637b
Servant
1637b
Yes, if my counsel is better.
1638b
1638b
Servant
1638b
Subject to do right, not wrong.
1639b
1639b
Servant
1639b
Kill me;