Some Thoughts on the ‘Helena’ of Euripides

Abstract

The ‘Helena’ remains a strangely misunderstood play. Although it has attracted rather less than its fair share of editorial attention in recent years, it has come in for some incidental judgements of marked asperity; otherwise it generally escapes with nothing better than qualified praise, and indeed one may suspect that it is remembered by many more for the exegetical extravaganza which Verrall built round it than for its own content. In antiquity, however, the play does not seem to have given such offence; though in later times overshadowed by the notoriety of the Andromeda, produced in the same year, we know that the Helena made a sufficiently striking impression on its first appearance in 412 B.C., for in the following year Aristophanes drew freely on both these plays in his Thesmophoriazusae for material for as sustained and lively a passage of parody as any to be found in his extant works.There may be little hope at this interval of time of discovering what the ancients may have seen in the piece that apparently escapes us, but a sympathetic attempt to see what Euripides was trying to do may lead to some modification of the prevalent opinion, and a juster estimate of the play.