hurling him from the earth to barren rock.
CHORUS: Gods, may the House of Tantalus, one day,
be happy! May their suffering have an end!
HELEN: It’s just my luck! I seem to be accursed!
We’re finished, Menelaus! Here she comes,
the priestess, Theonoë. I can hear
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the clang of doors unlocking. Run away!
But what’s the use? She must already know
that you are here, whether she comes or not.
Though you survived barbarian Troy, you’ll die
upon a barbarous sword right here. I’m done for!
(Enter Theonoë, with female attendants.)
THEONOË: (to one of her servants) You, lead the way, carry the burning lamp,
and fumigate the corners of the air,
our holy ritual, so we breath pure sky.
(to another servant) And you, make clean the path with fire, wherever
someone has marked it with unholy feet;
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and tap the torch in front, so I may pass.
When we have paid the gods our usual service
take back the fire to the palace hearth.
(to Helen) So, Helen, what about my prophecies?
Your husband, Menelaus, is right here,
without his ships, without that replica of you.
Poor man! You’ve been through so much pain already,
and still don’t know if you’ll get home or not.
Today the gods will argue: they’ll debate
about your future at the throne of Zeus.
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Hera, who was your enemy before,
is kindly now, and wants your safe return
with Helen, so that Greece may know that Paris
was only falsely married by the gift
of Aphrodite. Aphrodite wants
to spoil your journey home, to save her face,
if it’s revealed she bought the prize for beauty
for weddings with no pay-off, and no Helen.
It’s up to me, whether she gets her wish:
either I tell my brother you are here,
and ruin you, or else I side with Hera,
and save your life by hiding you from him,
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although his orders are that I must tell him
if ever you should travel to this land.
(to one of the servants)
so I can keep myself from any danger.>*34
HELEN: (kneeling in front of Theonoë and clasping her knees)
Maiden! I fall as suppliant at your knees!
My situation here is miserable,
since I’m about to watch this poor man die,
when I just got him back after so long.
Don’t tell your brother that my darling husband
is here and in my arms. Save him, I beg you!
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Do not betray your holy piety,
buying your brother’s favor at the price
of wickedness and injustice. As you know,
god hates brute force, and orders everyone,
don’t grab the property of other people.*35
The sky belongs to every human being,
as does the earth. We must not rob or steal
to fill our homes with other people’s things.
Hermes whisked me up in time of need
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and gave me to your father, to keep safe
for my own husband, who is here, and wants
to get me back. How can he, if he’s dead?
And how can Proteus pay back living debts
to dead men? Think now of the gods, and think
of your dead father. Would they wish
to give back neighbors’ property, or not?
I think they would. Do not pay greater heed
to your rough brother than your noble father.
You are a priestess; you believe in gods.
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If you betray your father’s moral code
to please your wicked brother, it’s a shame!
For you to know so much about religion,
the future and the present, yet not know
what’s right and wrong. And as an extra favor,
protect me! I am in most dreadful danger.
There’s nobody who doesn’t hate poor Helen.
In Greece they call me an adulteress,
who cheated on her husband and now lives
in Trojan palaces bedecked with gold.
But if I can go back, set foot in Sparta,
when people hear and see that all those deaths
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were caused by machinations of the gods,
and that I never did betray my friends,
they’ll give my good name back to me again!
I’ll organize a wedding for my daughter
whom no one wants to marry now. No more
of grief and poverty. I’ll get the goodness
of my own property in my own home.
If he’d been burnt to ash upon a pyre
in distant lands, I would have been content
to weep for him. How can I lose him now,
when he’s alive and safe? No, maiden, please,
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I beg you! Grant me this, and imitate
your worthy father’s ways. The greatest honor
a child of a true nobleman can have
is to turn out exactly like the father.
CHORUS: The subject of your speech arouses pity,
and so do you. Now what will Menelaus
say, for his life? That’s what I want to know.
MENELAUS: I will not kneel to supplicate, or weep.
I would not stoop to it, since it would shame
Troy, if I suddenly turned coward now.
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They say it’s proper for a well-born hero
to let his eyes shed tears in times of crisis.
This may be fine, but I refuse to do it:
I will maintain my fortitude instead.
I am a stranger and a guest: I ask
for my own wife back—as is right and proper.
If you agree, return her and save me.
If not, it would be nothing new to me:
I’ve suffered many times. But you’ll reveal
your wickedness! I fall upon the tomb
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of your own father, and I’ll tell him what
will touch your heart: the justice I deserve.
(addressing the tomb) Old man, inhabitant of this stone grave,
I beg you, give me back my wife, whom Zeus
sent here to you, to keep her safe for me.
I know you’ll never give her back: you’re dead.
But still, I call on you below the earth:
your daughter’s in control, and she will shrink
to taint her noble father’s reputation.
And Hades down below, I call on you
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to be my ally. With my sword I gave you
a wealth of fallen corpses, killed for Helen.
Either give back those men, alive again,
or make this girl give back my wife to me,
showing herself more pious than her father.
But if you rob me of my wife, I’ll tell you
what Helen’s speech left out. Just so you know,
priestess, we’re bound by promises: the first
is that I’ll fight a duel with your brother:
one of us two must die. Simple as that.
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If he will not step up to fight, but hunts
by starving us, poor suppliants at this tomb,
we have a plan: I’ll kill my wife, then drive
this sharp sword through my liver, on this mound,
so that our streams of blood may soak the grave.
Upon the polished marble we will lie,
coupled in death at least. We’ll give you pain
forever, and bring shame upon your father.
Your brother’s never going to marry her,
and nor is any other man. If I
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can’t bring her home, I’ll take her down to death.
(He begins to cry.)
No, I must stop this! If I start to cry,
just like a woman, I’ll be pitiful,
not active. If you want to kill us, do it!
We’ll die as heroes. Or, better yet, obey me,
then you’ll be good, and I will get my wife.
CHORUS: Maiden, it’s up to you to judge their words.
Make a decision that will please us all.
THEONOË: Piety is my nature and my wish.
I care about myself, nor would I taint
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my father’s name. I will not help my brother
with favors that dishonor me. I have
a mighty temple in my character,
to Justice, left to me by Nereus.
I’ll always try to keep that temple safe.
If Hera wants to do you good, I add
my vote to hers. May Aphrodite look
gently on me, though I’m not on her team.
I hope to stay a virgin all my life.
I say the same to that aggressive speech
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you hurled at Father’s tomb. I would be wrong
if I refused to give her back, since Father,
were he alive, would give you her, her you.
Everyone, those below and up on earth,
is punished when they sin. When people die
their mind is dead, but has an understanding
that lives forever in the immortal air.
In brief, I’ll keep your prayers to me a secret;
I’ll never join my brother in his folly.
1020
I’ll do him good, though he will not believe it,
converting him to piety from sin.
You find a way to get out for yourselves;
I’ll stand aside, and I will keep your secret.
Start with the gods, first pray to Aphrodite
to let this woman go back to her homeland;
pray Hera that her mind remain the same,
to save you and your husband. My dead father!
You have the noble name of holiness.
You’ll never lose it, if it’s up to me.
1030
CHORUS: Justice never guarantees good fortune,
but justice holds out hope of our salvation.
HELEN: The girl has done her part to save us, husband.
Now you must think things through and make a plan,
for both of us so we can get away.
MENELAUS: Then listen. You’ve been in that house a while,
and got to know the servants of the king.
HELEN: Why do you say this? What do you hope to do
that may be advantageous to us both?
MENELAUS: Could you persuade one of the men who drive
1040
the four-horse chariots, to give us one?
HELEN: I’ll try. But how would that help us escape?
We do not know the land; it’s foreign to us.
MENELAUS: That won’t work then. What if I hide inside
and kill the king with this, my sharp edged sword?
HELEN: His sister wouldn’t stand for it—she’d talk,
if you were making plans to kill her brother.
MENELAUS: But there’s no ship in which we could escape.
The one I used to have is out at sea.
HELEN: Listen, in case a woman can be smart.
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Do you want to die in word, but not in fact?
MENELAUS: An evil omen! Still, if it brings me gain,
yes, I will die in word but not in fact.
HELEN: I’ll cut my hair in mourning and I’ll wail,
as widows do, to that blaspheming king.
MENELAUS: How could doing that help us escape?
This whole idea just seems a bit cliché.
HELEN: I’ll tell the Egyptian tyrant that you died
at sea, and ask if I can bury you.
MENELAUS: If he says yes, still, how can we escape,
1060
without a ship, by empty burial?
HELEN: I’ll say he has to give a boat, so I
can take your grave gifts to the sea’s embrace.
MENELAUS: There’s just one problem: this pretense is useless
if he tells you to build my tomb on land.
HELEN: I’ll say it’s not the way it’s done in Greece,
for those who died at sea to rest in earth.
MENELAUS: You solved that, too! Then I will sail with you
and help you make the offerings from the boat.
HELEN: Of course you have to be there, and your men,
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those of the crew who have survived the wreck.
MENELAUS: If I can have an anchored ship, my men
will stand close ranked together, swords in hand.
HELEN: You be in charge of everything. Let’s hope
fair winds will fill our sails and stir the ship.
MENELAUS: They will. The gods will end my suffering.
Who will you say told you about my death?
HELEN: You! Tell him you sailed out with Menelaus,
and saw him die. You were the sole survivor.
MENELAUS: These rags I’m dressed in will confirm your story,
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since they bear witness I was in a shipwreck.
HELEN: Bad at the time but now it’s turned out well.
Your suffering may soon turn into good.
MENELAUS: Should I go with you now inside the palace,
or sit here quietly beside this tomb?
HELEN: Stay here. If he tries anything aggressive,
this tomb will surely save you. And your sword.
I’ll go inside and cut my curly hair,
and scratch my cheeks all bloody with my nails.
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A lot’s at stake in this. I see two endings:
either I’m caught, and then I’ll have to die,
or else I’ll save you, and I’ll go back home.
Queen Hera, you who share a bed with Zeus,
set free two wretched mortals from our toils.
We beg you, as we lift our hands to heaven—
your home among the spangles of the stars.
And you, who sold my marriage for your beauty,
Cypris, Dione’s daughter, don’t destroy me.
You’ve hurt me quite enough before. You gave
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my name if not my body, to barbarians.
But if you want to kill me, let me die
in my own country. Why are you never sated
with wickedness: deceit and tricks and lust,
and charms that spill the blood of families?
You’d be the sweetest of the gods to humans
if you were less excessive. That’s the truth.
(Exit Helen into the palace.)
strophe 1
CHORUS: I’ll call to you, up through the tangles of forest,
up where you nest in some melodious plot,
poet of birds,
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singing sweet music of tears:*36
join with me now in the labor of lamentation,
trilling from your trembling tawny throat,
as I sing of the sorrows of Helen,
and weep for the fate
of Troy, laid low
by the spears of the Greeks.
The barbarian man in barbarian ship swooped away
over the rushing gray waves, far distant from Sparta,
bringing the sorrows of sleeping with Helen, with you,
1120
to the people of Priam. Destroyer of marriage, destructive in
marriage,
it was Paris. He was led by Aphrodite.
antistrophe 1
The Achaeans hurled lances and rocks that sent many men
down to the bleakness of Hades; they breathed out their last.
Their wives were bereaved and in grief cut their hair,
and their homes became empty of marriage.
The solitary oarsman ignited the Cape of Euboea
with his fiery flare, and killed many Achaeans,*37
hurling their ships
at the rocks of Caphereus,
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shining his star of deceit
on the cliffs of the sea, the Aegean.
And then Menelaus took away in his ships
that prize that was no prize, the source of the struggle,
the phantom, the image, the icon of Hera.
The breath of the storm blew him far from his homeland,
to sad harborless borders, where the costumes are strange.
strophe 2
What mortal can think it all through and explain
what is god, what is not god, and what’s in between?
1140
The most one can hope is to glimpse how their works
leap around, back and forth and around,
in a world of surprises and self-contradiction.
Helen, descendent of Zeus, Zeus’ daughter:
your father turned to a swan and he flew
to between Leda’s thighs and there fathered you.
Then all through the country of Greece you were labeled,
treacherous, trustless, immoral and godless.
I don’t know for sure what truth I can find
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of the gods among mortals.
antistrophe 2
They’re fools who win glory in war
by stabbing and thrusting with spears,
stupidly seeking an end to their labors in death.
If the contest of blood is the judge, there will never
be an end to the conflicts between cities, between humans.
What they won by the fighting was a bed to lie down in, beneath Priam’s earth,
when they could have resolved it with words,
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all that wrangling for Helen.
Like lightning from Zeus, the fire of killing fell down on the walls,
and you must bear pain upon pain,
poor suffering woman. We pity your life.
(Enter Theoclymenus.)
THEOCLYMENUS: Hail to my father’s tomb, hail, Proteus!
I set you at the entrance of my house,
so that whenever I go in or out
I greet you. I am Theoclymenos,
your son. Now slaves, take in my hounds, and these,
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my hunting nets, inside the royal palace.
I’ve often had occasion to regret
The Greek Plays Page 85