Helen

Most people are familiar with the story of Helen and how her running off with Paris to Troy started the Trojan War depicted in Homer’s Iliad. However, I was surprised to discover that there is an alternate tradition that exonerates Helen by placing her in Egypt while the war was supposed to have taken place. Even Herodotus writes in his history that Egyptian priests reported a tradition that Helen stayed in Egypt. Euripides picks up on this tradition in his play Helen, which was most likely influenced by a sixth century BC poet Stesichorus.

According to Euripides’ play, Helen was not guilty of running off with Paris because she had been whisked away to Egypt while a wraith was put in her place to mislead Paris and start the war. The play opens with Helen in Egypt living in a temple. The king, Theoclymenus is determined to marry Helen, but she repeatedly refuses because she believes her husband, Menelaus, will come rescue her. After the ten year long war ends in the fall of Troy, Menelaus is tossed about at sea for seven years until his ship is wrecked and he is washed ashore at Egypt.

Theoclymenus hears of the Greek shipwreck and searches for survivors in order to kill them. Menelaus escapes capture and discovers Helen, who has to work hard to convince him she is the real Helen. When word comes that the wraith Helen has vanished, Menelaus believes the real Helen and they plan their escape. Menelaus is no longer angry at Helen, since he now knows that it wasn’t her at all who left him for Paris.

Helen deceives Theoclymenus by telling him that her husband was killed in the shipwreck and she agrees to marry him after a proper Greek ceremony is performed at sea. Theoclymenus thinks that Menelaus is merely a lowly sailor from the shipwreck, so he agrees to let Helen and the stranger carry out the ceremony. Helen, Menelaus and a small band of Greek sailors who survived the wreck board the ship supplied by Theoclymenus. As they get far enough from shore the Greeks overpower the Egyptian sailors, capture the ship, and sail for Greece.

It shows the love that Helen has for her husband and how she has remained chaste for seventeen years while waiting for him to rescue her. This is in stark contrast to the view of Helen in the Iliad, who is complicit in seducing Paris and leaving her husband for him. About the only other interesting thing about this play is the vivid description of the Greek’s battle to capture the ship from the Egyptians.