Helen

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 691 sections

560
O gods! For the recognizing of friends is a god.
561
Are you a woman from Hellas, or a native of this land?
562
From Hellas; but I want to learn your story too.
5563
You seem to me very much like Helen, lady.
564
And you seem to me like Menelaos; I don’t know what to say.
565
Well, you have correctly recognized a most unfortunate man.
566
Oh, at last you have come to the arms of your wife!
567
What do you mean by wife? Do not touch my robe.
568
The one whom Tyndareus, my father, gave to you.
569
O torch-bearing Hekate, send visions that are favorable!
570
You see in me no specter of the night, attendant on the queen of phantoms.
571
As one man, I am certainly not the husband of two women.
572
You are the master of what other wife?
573
The one hidden in the cave, whom I am bringing from Troy.
574
You have no other wife but me.
575
Can it be that I am in my right mind, but my sight is failing?
576
Don’t you think that when you look at me you see your wife?
577
Your body resembles hers, but the real truth robs me of this belief.
578
Look; what more do you need? Who knows better than you?
579
You are like her; I will not deny that at least.
580
Who then shall teach you, if not your own eyes?
581
It is there that I am ailing, because I have another wife.
582
I did not go to Troy; that was a phantom.
583
And who fashions living bodies?
584
The air, out of which you have a wife that the gods labored over.
585
What god’s handiwork? You are saying things beyond hope.
586
Hera’s, as a substitute, so that Paris would not have me.
587
How then could you be here and in Troy at the same time?
588
The name may be in many places, though not the body.
589
Let me go! I have come here with enough pain.
590
Will you leave me, and take that phantom bride away?
591
Yes, and fare well, for your likeness to Helen.
592
I am ruined! I found you, my husband, but I will not have you.
593
The greatness of my troubles over there convinces me; you do not.
594
Ah me! Who was ever more miserable than I am?
595
Those whom I love best are leaving me, and I shall never reach the Hellenes or my own country.
597
(entering hurriedly.) Menelaos, I find you, after taking great trouble to look for you, wandering over the whole of this foreign land; I am sent by the comrades whom you left behind.
600
What is it? Surely you are not being plundered by the foreigners?
601
It is a miracle; what I say is of less account than what happened.
602
Tell me; for, judging by this eagerness, you are certainly bringing something new.
603
I say that you have suffered countless labors in vain.
604
You are mourning over old sorrows; what is your message?
605
Your wife has disappeared, taken up into the folds of the unseen air; she is hidden in heaven, and as she left the hallowed cave where we were keeping her, she said this: Miserable Phrygians, and all the Achaeans! On my account you were dying by the banks of Skamandros,
610
through Hera’s contrivance, for you thought that Paris had Helen when he didn’t. But I, since I have stayed my appointed time, and kept the laws of fate, will now depart into the sky, my father; but the unhappy daughter of Tyndareus,
615
guilty in no way, has borne an evil name without reason.
616
Welcome, daughter of Leda, were you here after all? I was just announcing your departure up to the hidden starry realms, not knowing that you had a winged body. I will not let you mock us like this again,
620
for you gave your fill of trouble to your husband and his allies in Ilion.
622
This is the meaning of that; her words have turned out to be true. O longed-for day, that has given you to my arms!
625
O Menelaos, dearest of men, the time was long, but delight is just now ours.
627
With joy I have found my husband, friends, I have embraced my dear one, after long days of blazing light.
630
And I have found you; but I have many questions about t; now I do not know what to begin with first.
632
I am so happy, the hair rises on my head and my tears run down. I fling my arms around your neck,
635
dear husband, to have my delight.
636
O dearest sight! I have no fault to find: I have my wife, the daughter of Zeus and Leda; your brothers on their snow-white steeds
640
blessed you, blessed you at an earlier time, while torches blazed, but the god who took you from my home is driving us on to another fortune, better than this. An evil that was good brought you together with me, your husband
645
after a long time, but may I still benefit by my good luck.
646
May you benefit indeed, and I join in the same prayer; for when there are two, it is not possible for one to be unhappy and the other not.
648
My dear friends, I no longer sigh or grieve over what is past.
650
I have my husband, for whom I have been waiting to come from Troy for many years.
652
You have me, and I have you; although it was hard to live through so many days, I now understand the actions of the goddess. My joy is tearful; it has more
655
delight than sorrow.
656
What can I say? What mortal could ever have hoped for this? I hold you to my heart, little as I ever thought to.
658
And I hold you, whom we thought to have gone to Ida’s city and the unhappy towers of Ilion.
660
By the gods, how were you taken from my home?
661
Ah! ah! You are setting out on a bitter beginning. Ah! ah! You are asking about a bitter tale.
663
Speak; all gifts from the gods should be heard.
664
I detest the story I am now to introduce.
665
Tell it anyway. It is sweet to hear of troubles.
666
Not to the bed of the young barbarian, on the wings of oars, on the wings of desire for lawless marriage—
669
What god or fate tore you from your country?
670
Ah, my husband! The son of Zeus, of Zeus, brought me to the Nile.
672
Amazing! Who sent you there? O dreadful story!
673
I have wept bitterly, and my eyes are wet with tears; the wife of Zeus ruined me.
675
Hera? Why did she want to bring trouble to the two of us?
676
Alas for my terrible fate, the baths and springs, where the goddesses brightened the beauty from which the judgment came.
679
Regarding the judgment, Hera made it a cause of these troubles for you?
680
To take me away from Paris—
680b
How? Tell me.
681
To whom Kypris had promised me.
681b
O unhappy one!
682
Unhappy, unhappy; and so she brought me to Egypt.
683
Then she gave him a phantom instead, as I hear from you.
684
Sorrow, sorrow to your house,
685
mother, alas.
685b
What do you mean?
686
My mother is no more; through shame of my disgraceful marriage she tied a noose around her neck.
688
Alas! Is our daughter Hermione alive?
689
Ah, my husband! Unmarried, and without children, she mourns my
690
fatal marriage.
691
O Paris, who utterly destroyed my whole house, these things ruined you also, and countless bronze-clad Danaans.
694
The god cast me out, ill-fated and accursed, from my country,
695
from my city, and from you, when I left my home and bed—yet I did not leave them—for a shameful marriage.
698
If indeed you should find happiness in the future, it would be a match for the past.
700
Menelaos, give me as well a share of that joy which I understand, but not clearly.
702
Come and take part in our talk, old man, you too.
703
This woman is not the arbitrator of all the trouble in Troy?
704
She is not; I was tricked by the gods
705
and had in my arms the baneful image of a cloud.
706
What are you saying? We suffered in vain for the sake of a cloud?
708
It was the work of Hera, and the rivalry of the three goddesses.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0006.tlg014.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source.