INTRODUCTION

1. EURIPIDES AND ATHENS

(A) Life and works

Euripides appears to us as one of the most vivid and recognizable poets of the fifth century BC. Compared to Aeschylus and Sophocles, more than twice as many of his plays have survived complete, while the greater quantity both of quotations in ancient authors and of sizeable papyrus fragments of the lost plays (reflecting his popularity throughout antiquity) gives us a more detailed picture of his dramatic oeuvre.¹ In addition, we possess a variety of sources purporting to chronicle the life of the poet,² who even appears as a character in three of the surviving comedies of Aristophanes (Acharnians, Women at the Thesmophoria, Frogs). Yet the very abundance of ancient ‘evidence’ for Eur.’s life and character has had a paradoxically confusing impact on the interpretation of his works (on which more below). For with the exception of a few details securely based on the Athenian didascalic records, all the surviving evidence is of highly dubious reliability,³ and the bulk of it is little more than anecdote based on naïve ‘inference’, whether from the plays themselves⁴ or from the absurd caricatures of Eur.’s art and life generated by Aristophanes and other comic poets.⁵

   In fact we have very little reliable evidence for Eur.’s dramatic career and know almost nothing about his life. He was evidently dead by the time of the first production of Aristophanes’ Frogs at the Lenaea (in early January) of 405, and the Marmor Parium (a marble stele from Paros inscribed c. 264/3 with various dates from Greek history) puts his death in 407/6 and his birth in 485/4, dates which are as reasonable as any preserved in the sources.⁶ Like his father Mnesarchides (or Mnesarchus), Eur. belonged to the Attic deme of Phlya (part of the Cecropid tribe and to the north of Mt Hymettus). The musical and poetic training necessary for Eur.’s career implies a wealthy background, and it is clear from the range of contemporary intellectual issues handled in his plays that Eur. was a man of great learning and curiosity. As usual the biographical tradition deduced from Eur.’s broad cultural interests that he must have been a pupil or friend of nearly every major philosopher, rhetorician, and sophist of his day (TrGF V T 35–48), and the image of Eur. the radical, controversial, and even alienated intellectual has had a major (and often misleading) influence on the subsequent interpretation of his works (and equally, via Aristophanes’ Frogs, those of the allegedly ‘unphilosophical’ Aeschylus).⁷

   Using the public records of the City Dionysia at Athens, ancient scholars calculated that Eur. had competed 22 times (= 88 plays).⁸ It is possible that Eur. staged new plays elsewhere,⁹ including the large deme theatres of Attica, and he is said to have ended his life in Macedonia writing plays for king Archelaus.¹⁰ Nevertheless, the bulk of his work was intended for Athenian audiences at the City Dionysia, and it is their world-view we must try to reconstruct as we interpret the plays. Eur. won first prize at the Dionysia four times during his lifetime and once posthumously (when his son, also called Eur., produced a tetralogy that included Iphigenia at Aulis and Bacchae). Given the stereotype of the alienated poet, Eur.’s four victories (compared to Aeschylus’ 13 and Sophocles’ 18) have often been taken to show that the Athenians were uneasy with, or even hostile to, his plays, yet this is hardly plausible, since Eur. was chosen 22 times by the eponymous archon to be one of the three tragic competitors at the city’s greatest dramatic festival, and a playwright under such a cloud would not be repeatedly selected to vie for first prize.¹¹

   Of Eur.’s 17 surviving tragedies (not including the probably spurious, fourth-century Rhesus or the satyr-play Cyclops) Helen is one of nine plays for which we have fairly secure production dates based on the information recorded in ancient hypotheses and scholia. The remaining plays can be dated relative to these on stylistic grounds, the most important criterion being the rate and type of resolution (i.e. substitution of two short syllables for a long) found in the iambic trimeters, since Eur.’s plays show a gradual increase over time in the rate and variety of resolved positions.¹² The cumulative evidence allows us to reconstruct Eur.’s theatrical career as follows (extant works are in bold):¹³

   Helen was produced in 412 along with Andromeda.¹⁴ The two plays resemble one another in both plot and theme, as the central couples (Helen and Menelaus, Andromeda and Perseus) escape to Greece from a foreign land (Egypt, Ethiopia) after overcoming the opposition of a barbarian king (Theoclymenus, Cepheus). Eur. rings the changes on the story-patterns of rescue and escape, and on the crisis faced by central characters who are in love but threatened with permanent separation. So, whereas Helen (hereafter H.) and Menelaus (M.) are already husband and wife, and must outwit Theoclymenus (Theoc.), H.’s aggressive suitor, to escape from Egypt, Andromeda must first be rescued from a sea monster by Perseus, who falls in love with her, and the young lovers must defy the Ethiopian king Cepheus, who is Andromeda’s father. Given the surviving evidence for Andromeda,¹⁵ we have no way of knowing which play was performed first,¹⁶ or what the other plays in the tetralogy were.¹⁷

(b) Helen in its Athenian context

As with any other work of art, Helen is deeply embedded in its own time and place. It is therefore essential that we see (and endeavour to interpret) every Athenian tragedy in its historical and social context. In later sections of this Introduction we shall take into account the various backgrounds (of law, social structure, ethnicity, religion, philosophy, etc.) against which Helen is to be read.¹⁸ But it is important that we first consider the political and military climate at the time of the play’s production, not because this is the most significant factor for the original audience’s response, but because Helen has often been (and continues to be) read as an ‘anti-war’ play.¹⁹

   The place and function of tragedy in Athens are subjects which in this context cannot receive the full attention that they deserve, but it is important to consider them, albeit briefly, since the various anachronisms at the heart of ‘anti-war’ interpretations of Helen have their roots in equally inappropriate models of what fifth-century Attic tragedy is doing and what it is for.²⁰ So let us start by considering what kind of views contemporary scholars take of tragedy’s relationship to the political life of fifth-century Athens. There is of course a wide range of opinion, but it will be helpful to focus on two of the most influential, which also happen to be at opposite ends of the spectrum in the view they take of tragedy’s social and political functions. At one end of the spectrum are those scholars who are reluctant to tie tragedy too closely to day-to-day political issues. They focus instead on tragedy’s aesthetic qualities as poetry and drama, on the pathetic suffering of its characters, and on the moral dilemmas that it poses.²¹ At the other end of the spectrum are critics who see tragedy as fundamentally political – indeed, as fundamentally questioning and interrogatory, even subversive. For them tragedy exposes the core values of fifth-century Athens to glaring scrutiny, and finds them wanting.²² Neither school appreciates the affirmatory impact of tragedy – the former because they take too narrow a view of the political, the latter because they regard the best art as that which challenges or subverts. But did Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides intend to undermine their audience’s sense of identity and core beliefs? Or did they want to appeal to as wide a swathe of the public as possible in the hope of winning first prize?²³

   It is against this background that we must view the claim that Helen represents a critique of Athenian war policy. For the theme of war is central to many readings of the play, including that of Kannicht, whose commentary is a monument of scholarship.²⁴ Thus studies of the play abound with such comments as ‘the Helen delivers an implicit evaluation of the Sicilian expedition’²⁵ or ‘Despite its ostensibly comic aspect, the Helen is a far more vehement anti-war statement than The Trojan Women.’²⁶ But does Helen reflect the disillusionment of a war-wearied generation? A variety of factors suggest that such an approach is misguided.

   Firstly, pity for the waste of war, especially the Trojan War, and sympathy for the defeated are traditional epic (and tragic) themes (cf. especially Od. 8.523–31, where Odysseus, weeping at Demodocus’ song of the Trojan Horse and the fall of Troy, is compared to a woman grieving over the corpse of her dead husband as she is dragged off to captivity). Moreover, the specific sentiment expressed by the Chorus of Helen – that conflicts should be resolved by diplomacy and reciprocal justice instead of warfare (1151–60) – is itself a traditional idea (e.g. Hes. WD 225–9, Aesch. Supp. 701–3). To read a chorus or character’s insistence on the foolishness of war (cf. 1151 ἄφρονες ὅσοι . . .) or their yearning for peace (e.g. Eur. Supp. 488–93, Or. 1682–3, Bacch. 419–20, fr. 369 Kannicht) as criticism of Athenian war policy would be exceptionally naïve and anachronistic (for reasons we will turn to in a moment). Those who desire to see Helen as a protest against war overlook the fact that M. still wins H. by violence and that the Trojan War is part of a divinely conceived plan for the end of the race of heroes. The notion of Eur. the proto-pacifist or anti-imperialist is no more plausible than the comic caricature of Eur. the immoralist, misogynist, or atheist.

   Secondly, the idea that Helen is in part a response to alleged Athenian disillusionment with the Peloponnesian War betrays a misconception that lies at the heart of many contemporary readings of tragedy, which is to assume a more or less simple equation between the play world and the world of the audience. No one would now endorse the most simple-minded form of historicism, where events on stage are taken to refer directly to the here and now of the audience.²⁷ Instead it is generally agreed that ‘in an important sense everything that happens on stage is metaphorical, and there is never a literal identification between the world of the drama and the world of the audience.’²⁸ Nevertheless, the full significance of the distance between the heroic world and the contemporary world is not always recognized, as critics map one onto another, thereby revealing (so they claim) the play’s purpose, which is usually to point up some terrible deficiency in Athenian culture. Let us consider, for example, the Messenger’s report of the Argive assembly in Orestes (866–956). The current scholarly consensus on this scene might be summed up as follows:²⁹ in depicting the warring voices and factions of the Argive assembly Euripides is covertly expressing his reservations about, and criticisms of, the deficiencies of the contemporary Athenian polis, where democratic debate is hijacked by unscrupulous demagogues and self-interested factions. In Orestes, and especially in the Assembly scene, it is often said, Euripides is questioning the ideals of debate and freedom of speech that formed the core of democratic ideology. In other words, by having the Argive assembly, which is simultaneously a kind of law-court, be swayed by vociferous speakers, Euripides is pointing to the negative features of the assembly and popular courts of his day.

   In arguing like this critics either explicitly or implicitly make use of what Pat Easterling has called ‘heroic vagueness’, that is, the peculiar idiom and setting of tragedy which ‘enabled audiences to project themselves collectively into a shared imaginative world which was firmly linked with both past and present but strictly represented neither and could be constantly redefined.’³⁰ However, it would be more accurate to speak of heroic inversion, since in Orestes, as elsewhere in tragedy (and not only in Eur.), we are shown repeatedly how fifth-century Athenian norms do not work in a heroic setting – yet the point is not that Athens is a failure, but that the excessive and dangerous figures of heroic myth are the problem.³¹ So whether we talk of ‘heroic vagueness’ or follow Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood and use the cinematic metaphor of ‘zooming’,³² the aspects of tragedy that have a contemporary ring (popular assemblies and law-courts, for example) are not there to provoke the audience into thinking, ‘They are acting just like we do; they get things wrong, so our system must be at fault’, but rather the heroic inversion points the difference between the malfunctioning world of the heroes and the way such institutions functioned in the world of the fifth-century Athenian audience. In short, it is not fifth-century Athens or democracy that is at fault in Orestes, but it is the inability of the heroic world to accommodate Athenian norms which marks that world as doomed to conflict and ruin.³³

   Thus when we interpret those aspects of tragedy which have a contemporary ring, we should consider not only the distance between the two worlds but also the pattern of inversion that marks their relationship.³⁴ In the case of Helen the principle of heroic distance applies as much to the issue of Sparta and Spartans as it does to war. There is no anti-Spartan polemic in the play and the references to Spartan cult and ritual (e.g. 228, 245, 1465–75) serve to underline H. and M.’s separation from their homeland and from one another.³⁵ The heroic distance is missed by critics who argue that ‘Euripides’ staging a story with a glamorized Spartan heroine who returns home to a gloriously portrayed Sparta must have had a shocking impact upon a late fifth-century Athenian audience.’³⁶ Such an approach is gravely misleading: Athens had been at war with Sparta for much of the fifth century, yet tragedy abounds with Spartan and Dorian figures throughout the century, and does so because these heroes stand at the core of the panhellenic tradition of divine and heroic myth. Part of the genius of Athenian tragedy is to draw these Dorian (and also non-Greek, e.g. Cretan and Egyptian) heroes into Attic myth, often showing (especially in those plays where Athens is strongly focalized: e.g. Aesch. Eum., Soph. OC, Eur. Hcld., Supp.) how non-Athenian communities lack the benefits of the Athenians. Yet this aspect of tragedy is not foregrounded in Helen (where Athens is never mentioned), and Eur. has chosen H. and M. not because they are Spartans (whom he can then use to make a topical point) but because they are central to the myth of the Trojan War which is the raw material of his work. The play itself displays the same patterns of heroic inversion and disaster that we find throughout tragedy, but it does so in a way that is not explicitly anti-Spartan.

   Thirdly, and most tellingly perhaps, the interpretation of Helen as an anti-war play is profoundly anachronistic. Many tragedies portray the horrors of the Trojan War (among other mythical conflicts), but this does not mean they are criticizing Athenian policy (Athens was at war almost constantly throughout the fifth century).³⁷ Athens was not a militaristic society as Sparta most famously was, but the Athenians were immensely proud of their military skill.³⁸ The centrality of warfare to the Athenian state and the Athenians’ lack of sentimentality about it are shown most clearly in the state’s practice of presenting suits of armour to the sons of men killed in war.³⁹ Moreover, this was carried out each year as part of the pre-play ceremonies at the City Dionysia itself, and the orphaned sons were paraded in full armour in the theatre and given front-row seats.⁴⁰ Just as no one doubted that war was horrific, so no one doubted that some wars were necessary and worthwhile, an idea embodied in Greek myth by the Trojan War itself, which was both part of a divine plan and beneficial to humans in some ways (cf. Hel. 36–41, 453n.). That the majority of Athenians felt the Peloponnesian War could be beneficial to them can only be doubted by critics who are sealed off from history in a literary bubble. For to portray Helen as Eur.’s reaction to a particularly bad patch in the war (the final failure of the Sicilian Expedition in the summer of 413),⁴¹ as is often done, overlooks the fact that the majority of Athenians continued to vote for the war,⁴² that they wanted to win it at all costs, and that they did so because each of them believed they had something to gain if they did win.⁴³

   Finally, a frequent alternative to the claim that Helen is about the futility of the Peloponnesian War is to present it as a ‘lighthearted’ or ‘romantic’ escape from the awful present.⁴⁴ Yet this is no more convincing, since quite apart from the dubious assumptions about the tragic genre which underlie interpretations of the play as a ‘romantic tragedy’, ‘tragicomedy’, ‘escapist melodrama’ vel sim. (see esp. § below), there is no contradiction in a tragedy with an ‘upward’ movement, or positive outcome for the protagonists, also having serious political, ethical, and religious resonances for the Athens of its day.

2. THE FIGURE OF HELEN IN EARLY GREEK CULTURE

(a) Myth

The story of H. is central to the myth of the Trojan War, one of the best known and most frequently handled in all Greek literature and art.⁴⁵ Since all myths are collective narratives, told by a variety of people for a variety of purposes, there can be no definitive version of any one myth, and the same principle (of purposive variation) applies to the central figures of myth like H. herself. Thus H. is presented in a variety of guises, ranging from the cosmic figure created by Zeus to destroy the race of heroes (cf. Cypria fr. 1 Bernabé/Davies, discussed below) to the goddess who confers beauty on girls at Sparta (Hdt. 6.61.2–5). Each manifestation purports to present an aspect of the ‘real’ H., yet each has been created to suit the mentality and objectives of a specific society. Nevertheless, even as the different versions of H. reflect the purposes of particular audiences, so they also share a basic story (H.’s role in the fall of Troy, the defining episode of her life) which it is the poet’s (or artist’s) task to recreate in as compelling a manner as s/he can.⁴⁶

   The central themes of the Helen myth in the Greek literary tradition are already present in (and are crucially influenced by) Homer’s presentation of H. and her past. Whether she is presented by later poets as regretful and ashamed or as a calculating and vain adulteress, such characterizations have their roots in Homeric poetry, which presents a variety of perspectives and judgements on H.’s conduct.⁴⁷ The Iliad foregrounds her elopement with Paris as a catalyst of the war (e.g. 2.160–2, 354–6, 3.441–6, 9.337–9, 19.324–5), and her great shame and remorse as a result (3.173–6, 242, 410–12, 6.344–8, 24.764).⁴⁸ The principle of ‘double motivation’ means that Aphrodite’s role does not exonerate H.; it is typically Greek to focus on the ramifications of an individual’s actions,⁴⁹ and there is no doubt that H.’s leaving Sparta had terrible consequences. The issue of how willing H.’s elopement was is closely linked to the extent to which she can be blamed, which in turn is open to rhetorical debate and negotiation by humans, since the precise extent of divine influence is always unknowable.⁵⁰ Thus when Priam tells H. οὔ τί μοι αἰτίη ἐσσί, θεοί νύ μοι αἴτιοί εἰσιν (‘you are not at all to blame in my eyes, it is the gods who are to blame’, 3.164), we have to take into account both the rhetorical function of his words (to comfort H.) and the fact that they do not annul the appropriateness of her own guilt and self-criticism (repeated by H. herself at 3.173–5). So, although H. is a sympathetic character in the Iliad (who feels regret and shame for her actions), this does not change the fact that she is to blame for the destruction of Troy (the same is true of Priam and Hector, who, although sympathetic figures, each make disastrous errors in the course of the poem).⁵¹ In addition to H.’s responsibility for what she has done, the Iliad also foregrounds H.’s remarkable self-awareness,⁵² both of her own part in the war and of her role within the wider plan of Zeus. Yet for all her good sense when compared to Paris, H.’s inability to deny her disastrous presence in Troy is decisive.