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Helen

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 691 sections

1. 900

   but save us, I beseech you; do not forsake the piety that was once yours for your brother’s sake, buying favors that are wicked and unjust. For the god hates violence, and commands everyone to have their possessions without robbery.

2. 905

   Wealth that is unjust, though it may bring some power, ought to be avoided. Heaven is common to all mortals, and so is the earth, where people ought to fill up their homes without having another’s property, or taking it away by force.

3. 910

   At a critical time, but unhappily for me, Hermes gave me to your father to keep safe for my husband, this man who is here and wishes to have me back. But how could he recover me if he is dead? How could your father ever restore the living to the dead? Now examine the will of the god and of your father;

4. 915

   would the deity and your dead father be willing to give back again their neighbor’s goods, or would they not? I think they would. It is not, therefore, right that you should attach more importance to a thoughtless brother more than a good father. If you, who are a prophet and believe in divine affairs,

5. 920

   ruin the lawful intention of your father and gratify your lawless brother, it is disgraceful that you should have full knowledge of divine matters, both what is and what will be, and yet not know what is right. Save me, the unhappy one, enveloped in these troubles,

6. 925

   and give me this addition to my fate; for there is no mortal who does not hate Helen; I am famous throughout Hellas as the one who betrayed my husband and lived in Phrygia’s golden halls. If I come to Hellas and set foot once more in Sparta,

7. 930

   they will hear and see how they were ruined by the wiles of gods, while I was no traitor to my friends after all; and so they will lead me back to virtue again, and I shall betroth my daughter, whom no man now will marry; and, leaving this bitter beggar’s life here, shall enjoy the goods that are in my home.

8. 935

   And if this man were dead and slaughtered on a funeral pyre, I would be cherishing his memory with tears far away; but shall I be robbed of him when he is now alive and safe?

9. 939

   Ah! not that, maiden, I beseech you:

10. 940

    grant me this favor, and imitate the character of a just father; for this is the fairest glory for children, when the child of a good father resembles its parents in character.

11. 944

    The arguments here proposed are worthy of pity,

12. 945

    and so are you. But I am anxious to hear what Menelaos will say to save his life.

13. 947

    I could not endure to fall at your knees, or wet my eyes with tears; for if I were cowardly, I would greatly dishonor Troy.

14. 950

    And yet they say that it is fitting for a noble man to let tears fall from his eyes in misfortune. But I will not choose this honorable course, if it is honorable, in preference to bravery. But, if you think it right to save a stranger

15. 955

    seeking justly to recover his wife, then restore her and save us in addition; if not, I would be wretched, not now for the first time but as often before, and you will seem to be an evil woman. What I consider honest and worthy of me,

16. 960

    and what will touch your heart most closely, these things I will say at the tomb of your father, with regret for his loss.

17. 962

    Old man, dwelling in this tomb of stone, give her back, I demand of you my wife, whom Zeus sent here for you to keep for me.

18. 965

    I know you will never restore her to me yourself, for you are dead; but this woman here will not think it right that her father, invoked from below, once so glorious, should bear a tarnished name; for she is the one in authority now.

19. 969

    You, too, Hades of the world below, I call as an ally;

20. 970

    you who have received so many bodies slain by my sword for Helen’s sake, you have your payment; either restore them to life again now, or compel this woman to show herself better than her pious father, and give me back my wife.

21. 975

    But if you will rob me of her, I will tell you what she omitted in her speech. So that you may know, maiden, I am bound by an oath, first to go into battle with your brother; he or I must die; the matter is simple.

22. 980

    If he refuses to meet me face to face, but hunts us down, two suppliants at the tomb, by starvation, I am resolved to kill this woman, and then to plunge this two-edged sword through my heart, on the surface of the tomb, so that streams of blood may

23. 985

    run down the grave; we will lie, two corpses side by side upon this polished slab, a deathless grief to you, and a reproach to your father. Your brother will never marry this woman, nor will any other; but I will carry her off,

24. 990

    if not to my house, at any rate to death.

25. 991

    Why do I say this? If I turned to women’s ways with tears, rather than being active, I would be pitied more. Kill me, if it seems good to you; you will not kill those who are without fame; but it is better to yield to what I say,

26. 995

    so that you may act with justice, and I recover my wife.

27. 996

    You must judge these arguments, maiden. Decide in such a way as to please all.

28. 998

    My nature and my inclination lean towards piety; and I respect myself, and I would not defile

29. 1000

    my father’s fame, or gratify my brother at the cost of seeming infamous. There is a great temple of justice in my nature; and having this heritage from Nereus, I will try to keep it, Menelaos.

30. 1005

    Since Hera wishes to serve you, I will cast my vote on her side. May Kypris be gracious to me; but she has had nothing to do with me, and I will try to remain a virgin always. As for your reproaches against my father at this tomb,

31. 1010

    I have the same words to say. I would be doing wrong if I do not give her back; for that man, if he were alive, would have given her back for you to have, and you to her.

32. 1013

    For truly there is retribution for these things, both among the dead and among all men living. The mind

33. 1015

    of the dead does not live, yet it has eternal thought as it falls into eternal ether. So as not to give advice at length, I will be silent as to what you have entreated, and I will never aid my brother’s folly with my counsel.

34. 1020

    For I am doing him a service, though he does not think it, if I turn him from his godless life to holiness. You yourselves devise some course of action; I will stand out of your way by my silence. Begin with the gods, and beg

35. 1025

    Kypris to allow you to return to your country, and Hera that her intention to save you and your husband may remain the same. And you, my own dead father, never, as far as I have strength, shall you be called impious instead of pious. Exit Theonoe.

36. 1030

    No one born lawless ever prospered, but in a lawful cause there is hope of safety.

37. 1032

    Menelaos, as far as the maiden is concerned, we are safe. For the rest, you must contribute your advice and frame a device to save ourselves.

38. 1035

    Then listen; you have been in the house for a long time and are intimate with the king’s servants.

39. 1037

    What do you mean by that? You are offering hope, as if you were really about to do something useful for both of us.

40. 1039

    Could you persuade someone in charge of the wagons

41. 1040

    and horses to give us a chariot?

42. 1041

    I might; but how will we escape, in our ignorance of the country and the barbarian land?

43. 1043

    You are right; a dilemma. Well, what if I were to hide in the house and kill the king with this two-edged sword?

44. 1045

    His sister would never be silent or allow you to intend her own brother’s death.

45. 1047

    Nor indeed is there a ship in which we might safely escape; for the sea holds the one we had.

46. 1049

    Listen to me, if even a woman can say something wise.

47. 1050

    Are you willing to be called dead in word, though you are not dead?

48. 1051

    It is a bad omen; but if I profit by it, I am ready to be called dead in word, though I am not dead.

49. 1053

    And truly I would mourn you, as women do, with hair cut short and laments before this impious man.

50. 1055

    What saving remedy does this have for us two? There is a flavor of deception in your scheme.

51. 1057

    I will beg the tyrant of this country for permission to bury you in an empty tomb, as if you had really died at sea.

52. 1059

    Soppose he allows it; then how shall we escape with no ship,

53. 1060

    when we have buried my body in the empty tomb?

54. 1061

    I will urge him to give me a vessel, from which I shall have the offerings from your tomb let down into the sea’s embrace.

55. 1063

    You have spoken well, except for one thing: if he commands you to set up a tomb on the dry land, your pretext comes to nothing.

56. 1065

    But I will say it is not the custom in Hellas to bury those who have died at sea on the dry land.

57. 1067

    You are setting this right, too; then I will sail with you, and help let down the funeral offerings, in the same ship.

58. 1069

    You must above all be at hand,

59. 1070

    with your sailors who escaped from the wreck.

60. 1071

    Be sure that if I have a ship at anchor, they will be posted, man beside man, each with his sword.

61. 1073

    You must direct everything; only let there be winds in our sails to guide us, and a speedy ship.

62. 1075

    It will be so; for the deities will bring my troubles to an end. But from whom will you say that you heard I was dead?

63. 1077

    From you; allege that you were the only one to escape death, when you were sailing with the son of Atreus, and that you saw him dead.

64. 1079

    It is true that these rags thrown around my body

65. 1080

    will bear witness with me as to the shipwreck.

66. 1081

    They have come at the right time, although then they seemed an ill-timed loss. Perhaps that misery may turn to good fortune.

67. 1083

    Should I to enter the house with you, or am I to sit quietly here at this tomb?

68. 1085

    Stay here; for if he does something harsh to you, this tomb and your sword would protect you. But I will go into the house, cut off my hair, exchange my white robe for a dark one, and tear my cheek with nails that make the flesh bloody.

69. 1090

    For the contest is a great one, and I see two turns of the scale: either I must die if I am detected in my plot, or else come home and save you as well.

70. 1093

    Lady Hera, you who lie in the bed of Zeus, grant relief from their labors to two pitiable creatures;

71. 1095

    we beg you, casting our arms straight towards heaven, where you have your home in an embroidery of stars. And you, who won the prize of beauty at the price of my marriage, Kypris, daughter of Dione, do not destroy me utterly. You have maltreated me enough before now,

72. 1100

    handing over my name, though not my body, to barbarians. Let me die, if you want to kill me, in my native land. Why are you so insatiable for mischief, practising arts of love, deceits, and treacherous schemes, and magic spells that bring bloodshed on families?

73. 1105

    If you were only moderate, in other ways you are by nature the sweetest of gods for men; I don’t deny it. Exeunt Helen and Menelaos.

74. 1.1107

    Let me call on you, beneath leafy haunts, sitting in your place of song, you, the most sweetly singing bird,

75. 1.1110

    tearful nightingale, oh, come, trilling through your tawny throat, to aid me in my lament, as I sing the piteous woes of Helen and

76. 1.1115

    the tearful fate of Trojan women under the Achaeans’ spears; when he sped over the surging plains with foreign oar, when he came, came bringing to Priam’s race from Lacedaemon

77. 1.1120

    you, Helen, his unhappy bride—Paris, fatally wedded, under the guidance of Aphrodite.

78. 1.1122

    Many of the Achaeans have breathed out their last amid the spears and hurling stones and have gone to unhappy Hades; their wives have cut off their hair in sorrow,

79. 1.1125

    and their homes are left without a bride; an Achaean man, who had only a single ship, lit a blazing beacon on sea-girt Euboia, and destroyed many of them, casting them onto the rocks of Kaphareus

80. 1.1130

    and the sea-shores of the Aegean, by the treacherous flame he kindled. The mountains of Malea provided no harbor, in the gusts of the storm, when Menelaos sped far away from his country, bearing on his ships a prize of the barbarian expedition, no prize but strife

81. 1.1135

    with the Danaans, Hera’s holy phantom.

82. 2.1137

    What is god, or what is not god, or what is in between— what mortal says he has found it by searching the farthest limit,

83. 2.1140

    when he sees divine affairs leaping here and there again and back, in contradictory and unexpected chances? You, Helen, are the daughter of Zeus;

84. 2.1145

    for a winged father begot you in Leda’s womb; and then you were proclaimed throughout Hellas, betrayer, faithless, lawless, godless. I do not know whatever certainty is among mortals,

85. 2.1150

    but the word of the gods I have found true.

86. 2.1151

    You are fools, who try to win a reputation for virtue through war and marshalled lines of spears, senselessly putting an end to mortal troubles;

87. 2.1155

    for if a bloody quarrel is to decide it, strife will never leave off in the towns of men; by it they won as their lot bed-chambers of Priam’s earth, when they could have set right by discussion

88. 2.1160

    the strife over you, O Helen. And now they are below in Hades’ keeping, and fire has darted onto the walls like the bolt of Zeus, and you are bringing woe on woe . . . .

89. 1165

    Greetings, tomb of my father! For I buried you, Proteus, in the passageway so that I could address you; and always as I leave and enter the house, I, your son Theoklymenos, call on you, father. You servants, take the hounds and hunting nets

90. 1170

    into the palace. I have rebuked myself many times; for do we not punish evil men with death? And now I have heard that some Hellene has come openly to the land, without the guards’ notice,

91. 1175

    either as a spy or thievishly hunting after Helen; he will die if only I can catch him. Ah! But it seems I have found everything in ruins; for the daughter of Tyndareus has deserted her seat at the tomb and has been carried away from the land.

92. 1180

    Ho there! undo the bars; loose the horses from their stalls, servants, and bring out my chariot, so that the wife whom I long for may not be carried away from this land without my notice, for want of effort.

93. 1184

    Wait! for I see that the one I am pursuing

94. 1185

    is still in the house, and has not fled.

95. 1186

    You there, why have you put black robes instead of white on your body, and cut the hair from your noble head with a sword, and why do you drench your cheeks with pale tears,

96. 1190

    lamenting? Do you mourn, persuaded by dreams in the night, or have you broken your heart with grief because you heard some voice within?

97. 1193

    My lord—for now I give you that name—I am destroyed; everything of mine is gone and I am nothing.

98. 1195

    In what misfortune are you plunged? What has happened?

99. 1196

    Menelaos—alas, how shall I say it?—is dead, my husband.

100. 1197

     I do not rejoice at your words, but it is good fortune for me. How do you know? Did Theonoe tell you this?

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