by Jack Lindsay
Hard-pressed, Helen progresses from a modest and apologetic tone to one of violence and aggression. She begins by accusing Hekabe of being the mother of all the troubles (that is, of Paris); Aphrodite has played a decisive role throughout; anyway the result of conflicts has been the supremacy of Greece over the Orient; she followed Paris only as the directed favourite of Aphrodite; Menelaos was to blame for so imprudently leaving her alone; and the responsibility for all the events lies with Aphrodite, who at times subdues even Zeus. She did her best, she claims, to escape from Troy. At the death of Paris the marriage arranged by the gods no longer existed; she attempted to leave her house and reach the Achaians. ‘I take as witnesses the guards of the towers and the sentinels of the ramparts; they often surprised me hung by a cord from the battlements and letting my body slip furtively to the ground.’ But Deiphobos wanted to keep her.
Hekabe in her reply is sarcastic, pitiless. All the mythological arguments are brushed aside. Not Aphrodite but Helen’s uncontrollable desire for luxury made her go off with Paris; no force was used. (Helen had described herself as forced — by the power of Aphrodite; Hekabe insists on taking the term literally.) At Troy she was an opportunist, vacillating with the changes of fortune on the two sides. When Menelaos was succeeding, she praised him to torment Paris; she swung round when the Trojans were doing well. ‘You watched the course of Fortune [Tyche] and followed her; you’d no concern for Virtue.’ That she tried to run off was a pack of lies; and she never tried to kill herself. Her one enduring motive was the wish to enjoy oriental luxury.
Menelaos, before he sees Helen, is eager to have her killed or to take her back to Greece for excution there. ‘Drag her out by the hair that reeks of murder.’ He does not want the debate. ‘I haven’t come to argue but to kill.’ When Helen and Hekabe have made their speeches, he still talks of death. ‘Get off to the stoners!’ He tells Helen to die and not dishonour him. She sinks down and clasps his knees, and he weakens, while trying to preserve his severe tone. But he has lost his resolution. Helen seeks to evade responsibility, ‘Don’t impute to me an evil come from the gods, don’t kill me, forgive me.’ He says that she is not to die till they reach Greece. The chorus of Trojan women lament that they are going into slavery, while Helen will be free to smile into her golden mirrors. (In the Andromache her daughter Hermione is shown as being as unpleasant as her mother.) In depicting the final triumph of Helen Euripides is following the tradition set out by the painter Polygnotos in the early classical period; his Sack of Troy in the leschē (clubhouse) of the Knidians at Delphoi showed Helen a prisoner yet enthroned among the lamenting Trojan women. ‘Briseis stands there with Diomede above her and Iphis in front of both of them; they seem to be scrutinizing Helen’s beauty. Helen herself is seated, with Eurybates near. I supposed he was Odysseus’ herald, though he didn’t yet have a beard. The handmaids Elektra and Panthalis are there; the latter stands next to Helen while Elektra binds sandals on her mistress’ feet.’[194]
In the five plays where Menelaos appears (apart from Helena) he is made ridiculous and despicable, a coward drawn on by a degrading passion, ready to sacrifice any number of men for his own end. He has one good impulse in Iphigeneia in Aulis, but ironically it occurs too late to have effect. There is some conflict in the accounts given of his confrontation with Helen. In the Trojan Women, as we saw, he calls for her death and others drag her out. But in the Andromache Peleus reproaches him: ‘As soon as you saw her breast, you threw your sword away and welcomed her kiss. You caressed this traitress bitch, you yielded to Cypris, you vile coward.’ Efforts have been made unnecessarily to reconcile the two versions.[195]
By the later fifth century Paris has become a gorgeous easterner under pressure of the ideas about the Trojan War which we noted in Herodotos. The first seeds of this image may have been present in the Cypria with its emphasis on the fine presents he brings to Sparta; later a fresco or vase may have shown him as a rich Phrygian. But such representations seem to appear only late in the fifth century, largely under Euripides’ influence. Thus an Attic hydria of the century’s last quarter shows Paris dressed in magnificent Phrygian vestments at the Judgement.[196] For some time however before 450 oriental elements had been coming in and vulgarizing Athenian middle-class culture. Eastern themes were the fight of Arimaspians with griffins, the fight of Phrygians with Amazons, the groups of Phrygians or Mainads with the god Sabazios. On vases of the late fifth or early fourth century a young Phrygian chases a woman or she is surrounded by a group of Phrygians. The image haunts Euripides. Paris is said to come to Sparta ‘flowery with his raiment, glistening with gold barbaric fripperies’. Hekabe taunts Helen, ‘You saw my son with his barbaric bravery, aglitter with gold, and your senses were distraught.’ The Kyklops makes a joke of the way she lost her head over his variegated loose trousers and his golden collar (klōion, a word used also for dog-collar and the wooden collar of prisoners).[197]
About 423 in the Andromache Euripides evoked the birth of Paris as a child with a curse. In 415 he wrote a trilogy: Alexandros, Palamedes and the Trojan Women — covering the whole war and developing with tragic insight the whole question of human responsibility. We now have a considerable part of the Alexandros and can reconstruct it; many points are still controversial, but the main pattern is clear.[198] The scene is Troy with the altar of Zeus Herkeios (of the front court, the household god) in middle of the stage; at the back, Priam’s palace and the sanctuary of Apollo. Priam enters, doubtless with a bird-tipped sceptre. Funeral games are being held for the son long past exposed on Ida as a baby; purifications are needed to stop various troubles come on the land. Paris as a herdsman wins in the games, unrecognized by his parents who still mourn for him; and Deiphobos, resenting the victory of a slave, quarrels with Hektor, trying to rouse him. Paris on his entry makes a strong denuncia-tion of wealth and praises poverty. ‘Wealth is unjust, it often makes a man swerve from the right. Poverty, however hard to bear, gives children a better school of endurance and energy.’ Priam confirms his claim to victory. The chorus of shepherds carry on the attack against the pride of the nobles. ‘True nobility lies in reason and intelligence, gifts of God not of money.’ The identity of Paris is at last revealed — by prophetic Kassandra, by Aphrodite arriving ex machina, by an old servant, or by Alexandros himself. (Tokens appear as proofs: birthmarks, valuables, or toys left with the baby.) At the end Aphrodite comes down from heaven to announce that Paris will gain the loveliest woman of Greece and that the whole thing is the will of Zeus, ‘who, wishing the Trojans’ misfortune and the trial of the Greeks, has formed this design’. Such a comment hardly seems encouraging and would fit better in the mouth of Kassandra than Aphrodite.[199]
A dozen years or so earlier Sophokles had written an Alexandros, which may have suggested to Euripides his previous references to young Paris and the dream of Hekabe. The child seems here to have been exposed in a pot of earth and nourished by a bear, though reared by a shepherd’s wife like the Persian Kyros (as told by Herodotos). In Sophokles’ Aleades, Telephos, exposed at birth, is fed by a hind and reared by herdsmen; he takes part in games at Tegea and beats the local nobility; the chorus reproach him with low birth; finally after a quarrel with his uncles he is recognized.[200]
There is a general contemporary reference in Euripides’ trilogy, with a particular point in the Alexandros. The moment is that of the Sicilian expedition connected with Alkibiades. Euripides is opposing war expeditions overseas, suggesting that events which seem at first to be all for the good, with the blessing of heaven upon them, can be the prelude to disaster, and that fascinating young leaders with a demagogic turn can be the worst omens for their country.[201]
Paris could be both prince and herdsman; but it has been argued that the earliest vases show him in his royal status. However, it is impossible to prove this point. An argument against the early coexistence of traditions about Paris as an exposed baby and a herdsman visited by the three goddesses is the extreme difficulty of fi
tting his arrival at the funeral games and his decision in the beauty contest in any convincing sequence. If the judgement occurred before the games, he is then already a man fated for great exploits and the advent of Aphrodite is not needed; if it occurred after the games, why has he gone back to his herds on Ida? There is as great a problem in making chronological sense of the various references to doom prophecies by Helenos or Kassandra.[202] In the Alexandros, at some point Kassandra seems to go into the temple of Apollo and emerge prophetically distracted. The version of the theme by the Latin poet Ennius (which like that in Hyginus is based on our play) states that she refers to the coming Judgement. Also, Deiphobos plans to kill Paris; this is a theme found on a series of Etruscan urns.[203]
In Helena Euripides makes a complete volte-face. Helen, who had been the most degraded of vanity-stricken coquettes, becomes a wholly blameless wife. She had been spirited off by Hermes from Paris and taken to Egypt, while Paris carried off the eidolon fashioned by Hera. For a while king Proteus protects her; then he died and his son Theoklymenos wants to possess her; she takes refuge at Proteus’ tomb. A stranded Greek tells her what has happened since she was carried off; a prophetess, Theonoē, sister of Theoklymenos, tells her that Menelaos disappeared seven years ago on his return journey from Troy. Then, on to an empty stage comes Menelaos himself, to tell of his wanderings. He knocks at the palace door and learns of Helen’s presence. They meet and plan their escape, which they manage with Theonoē’s aid. Menelaos in disguise announces his own death at sea and Helen gains permission to take offerings out for him. The Dioskouroi, who had related Helen’s apotheosis at the end of the Orestes, again appear here to save Theonoē from her brother’s wrath.[204]
The advent of the Twins in the Orestes has a deliberately jarring note, imposing the mythological interpretation on the realistic scene of Helen’s disastrous presence. Just what Euripides meant is a matter of opinion; the effect on the stage is of a savage parody, intended to shock the audience with the vast gap between reality and accepted values. But however that may be, the picture drawn of the actual Helen is one of ruthless devaluation. There is then no comparison with the presentation in the Helena, where we see Helen in action and find her unlike anything in previous poetry except in the palinodes of Stesichoros. Euripides indeed has taken the versions in that poet and in Herodotos, and merged them into his own picture of the virtuous Helen. The traditional Plan of Zeus (to lighten the world of its weight of men) is stated without irony; but Helen mentions the myths about herself without much conviction. ‘My father was Tyndareos. The story goes that Zeus had taken the form of swan and flew to my mother Leda. Fleeing from an eagle, he took his pleasure of her by guile — if the tale is true.’ Later she says that her mother bore a portent, for never before did Greek or barbarian ‘bring forth the white vase of a fledgling brood [the egg] in which men say that Leda bore me to Zeus.’ And she says of her Twin Brothers that they are ‘called the Sons of Zeus’. However, they appear at the end to announce that she will be carried with Menelaos to the Blessed Isles. They add that the island by the Attic coast from which Hermes wafted her to Egypt will be called Helena after her. (If Paris had taken her as far as that, it is hard to see how she had escaped violation by him; but Kranae is brought in to link the story with Attika. The island is certainly not Pharos, as has been suggested.).[205]
The play has been taken as a parody or as a completely serious attempt to whitewash Helen. It is certainly neither. From one angle it is a highly romantic play, full of excitement: a barbarian king is foiled and Greek exiles escape to their homeland. But Euripides fuses this romantic note with his unceasing antiwar propaganda. Now, instead of rebuking men for creating endless misery in their quest of unworthy ends (Helen the slut), he tells them that their wars and greeds have a mere illusion or mirage as their goal. The key statement is that of the chorus of captive Greek women: the fighters of wars are madmen. ‘If emulation in massacre is to decide disputes, discord [eris] will never end among the cities of men.’
By treating the Spartan heroine in such a sympathetic way, and by linking her with Attika through the island Helena, Euripides stresses his message of peace and amity. In a song Helen describes herself gathering fresh rose-petals and filling her robe with them when she is snatched up into the aither. This account contradicts what the Twins say of Kranae-Helena, but it provides a peace note; for Helen adds that she had meant to take the flowers to Athena of the Brazen House. The poet wants to remind his audience that Athena is worshipped by both Athenians and Spartans. Aristophanes does just the same at the end of his Lysistrata, where, in the joyous dance of peace and love that unites the women of both sides, the final word is with Helen, who leads the dance-song, and with Athena of the Brazen House. Helen with her flowers also suggests Persephone at Enna when Hades arrives to carry her off. At Megalopolis in Arkadia, in the sanctuary of the Great Goddesses, Demeter and Korē, with the cult-title of Soteira (Saviour), before the fifteen-foot images are ‘small maids in tunics down to the ankles, each bearing on her head a basket full of flowers. They are said to be Damophon’s daughters,’ says Pausanias, ‘but those who refer back to a more divine interpretation’, one drawn from the Mysteries, ‘hold they are Athena and Artemis gathering flowers with Persephone,’ a triad, we may note. Tertullian refers to Ceres’ priestess being carried off in the Mysteries in place of Ceres (Demeter, properly Persephone) herself; such drōmena would keep alive the sense of the great ritual importance of the carrying-off theme. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Diakiopolis, who concludes a private peace with Sparta, sets out a mock account of the Peloponnesian War. Some young men, getting drunk as they played at the kottabos, went to Megara and carried off a prostitute Simaitha (simos: with snub or flat nose); the Megarians in return stole two whores from Aspasia (as if she ran a brothel). ‘So the outset of the war arose for all Greeks from three tarts. Then Perikles, the Olympian, in his wrath lightened, thundered, utterly confounded Greece.’
There seem no artworks that show Helen in Egypt weeping for her husband. But Aristophanes, in his Thesmophoria Zousai, brings out how the theme of Helen Innocent surprised the public. He introduced a parody of the play. Euripides, trying to rescue Mnesilochos from the women, enacted a scene: he as Menelaos, Mnesilochos as Helen. The episode of recognition was ridiculed; the appearance of Menelaos in rags made people laugh. But the play itself was not taken as a joke; it had at least something of the impact intended by Euripides, startling his audience and perhaps making them think about the issues of war and peace. It had no lasting effect, however, on the tradition.[206]
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The theme of Helen and Paris was exploited by other tragic poets, but we know little of the works. We have noticed the Alexandros of Sophokles (c. 496-06); he also wrote Helenes Apaitesis (Demand for Helen’s Return) which no doubt dealt with the embassy of Menelaos and Odysseus. It seems that Helen, after an interview with Menelaos, wanted to return home, and, when the Trojans refused to let her go, she contemplated suicide. (This humanized Helen is far from the daimonic woman of Homer.) The Antenoridai may be the same play, since Antenor was the wise Trojan elder who gave hospitality to the envoys and advised his fellows to restore Helen. (In later accounts he saved the lives of the envoys and planned on an embassy to Agamemnon to betray Troy and deliver up the palladion. When Troy was sacked, a panther-skin was hung before his house to show that it must not be outraged — a motif used by Polygnotos in his Sack. There was also a story that before the war he was sent by Priam to claim Hesione, who had been carried off by the Greeks, but failed. This failure was reckoned among the causes of the war by Dares Phrygios.) There may have been also Helenes Harpage (Carrying-off of Helen), mentioned in the argument to Aias, but this may be an error for the Apaitesis; it has also been identified with a satyric drama by Sophokles, Helen’s Marriage.[207]