CLS 49 3 Jansen Forgiveness

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comparative literature studies, vol. 49, no. 3, 2012.Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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exchange and the eidolon: analyzing forgiveness in euripides’s helen

Michelle C. Jansen

In Alice Doesn’t, Teresa de Lauretis writes,

The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinc-tion, the creator of differences. Female is what is not susceptible to transformation, to life or death; she (it) is an element of plot-space, a topos, a resistance, matrix and matter.1

Though Euripides’s eidolon of Helen “dies,” she is preserved through the “real” Helen’s skillful deception as a means of creating a topos in which Menelaus may be reborn a hero. Helen succeeds at securing her own reputation as well as the survival of her husband in Penelopic fashion. Reconciled with Menelaus through the cognitive process of sungnome, the Persephonic figure of Helen restores the fertility of civilization and brings about “a mitigation of past suffering and destruction,” as she returns to her rightful place in Sparta.2

Scholars have long puzzled over Euripides’s Helen, questioning every-thing from its imaginative reconception of Helen’s fate to its very genre. As many scholars have noted, Euripides’s Helen incorporates and plays off of a dialectic of appearance and reality.3 This thematic of appearance is rooted in the presence of the eidolon, the astral double of Helen. Like numerous other tragicomic heroines, Helen appears to be actively positioning herself in an

a. owen aldridge prize winner 2010–2011

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328 C O M P A R A T I V E L I T E R A T U R E S T U D I E S

economy by giving herself to another. Only through the medium of death may Menelaus understand the reality of the situation, thus allowing the couple to recommunicate and reconcile. Death of the woman, in some form, is the only way to differentiate between appearance and reality; it is the only way for the new economy of forgiveness to take place. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Helen, as the “dying words” of the eidolon Helen exonerate the real Helen, allowing her to reconcile with Menelaus and renew their union. Helen and Menelaus must actively work toward their reconciliation, which cannot be constituted by a mere performative utterance (e.g. “I am sorry” or “I forgive you”). As the ancient Greek concept of forgiveness, or sungignosko, is rooted in cognition and perceived as a process of “thinking together,” the estranged couple must labor together as a couple, rebuilding their trust and their connubial unity through recognition and compassion. Yet, even as Helen and Menelaus reconcile as seemingly equal partners, Helen’s subjectivity is sublated when she returns to the familiar role as Menelaus’s prized posses-sion. As his agalma of Ilium, his “object of inestimable value and prestige” that would characteristically denote ancient gift exchanges, Helen ultimately marks Menelaus’s return to the Greek homosocial.4

Spectrality and Helen: Name and Body

Though presented at the Dionysia in 412 BC as a tragedy, the Helen does not deal with very tragic material. Some scholars have sustained its identifica-tion as tragic, focusing on Theonoe’s discussion of dike (justice) and the role of the gods. Others have looked at the apparent bumbling of the pathetic Menelaus and considered the play to be a form of tragi-comedy as akin to the ancient burlesque satyr play. Charles Segal and Anne Pippin Burnett cannot help but label this play a romance given the restorative nature of the final scene, even if it is a scene of bloodshed of innocent Egyptians and ques-tionable heroics by Menelaus. Burnett perhaps best combines the romantic and tragic elements when she suggests that the Helen is “an experiment in a new sort of comedy in which a romantic plot is used as an excuse for the poetic expression of philosophical ideas.”5

More frequently explored by scholars, however, is Euripides’s surprising use of the revised account of Helen in which a phantom image went to Troy in the Spartan queen’s place, while she was taken to Egypt for safekeeping. This alternate tale of Helen was vastly lesser known than the standard story in which Helen is either captured or captivated by Paris, who brings her back to Troy to marry her.6 Indeed, ancient accounts contradict one another, and even themselves, concerning the degree to which Helen willingly acted.


329E X C H A N G E A N D E I D O L O N

In Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, for example, we see two very different Helens: in the Iliad, she is a lonely, mournful creature overwhelmed by the suffering her existence has caused others; in the Odyssey, she is treacherous and taunt-ing, rejoicing over the impending bloodshed of Trojans. Similarly, while Sappho implies in fragment 16 that Helen voluntarily abandoned her Spartan home to be with Paris, in his Enconium of Helen, Gorgias defends Helen, restoring her blemished reputation on the premise that she, being human and subject to the powers of persuasion, was coerced by external forces. While these variations seem to debate Helen’s respectability and her responsibility for the Trojan War, the revised account dismisses Helen’s role in the war entirely by simply denying her physical presence in Troy. Thought to be originally written by Hesiod, this version of Helen’s legend was best known in antiquity through the palinode, or apology, by the lyricist Stesichorus, who reportedly slandered Helen and was mysteriously blinded as a result.7 Only after crafting an apology to Helen, thereby reestablishing her good name, did the poet regain his sight. It is perhaps appropriate, then, that Euripides wrote a drama of reconciliation so entrenched in the theme of appearance and reality, the dubiousness of sight itself, and incorporated the account of Helen’s eidolon found in Stesichorus’s sight-restoring apology. Still, some scholars have suggested that the presence of the eidolon is not uncommon in Greek mythology. Otto Skutsch reminds readers that “when Ixion tries to violate Hera, an eidolon is substituted for her.”8 Euripides thus perhaps embraces both of these unique accounts of substitution and disappearances, melding them into his drama’s background in which Hera, upset by Paris’s decision at the divine beauty contest, fashions an eidolon out of ether in the shape of Helen to be taken to Troy while the real Helen is carried off to Egypt.

Helen thereby lives a double existence, occupying both the worlds of appearance and reality.9 So too then does she exist in both life and death, continuously teetering between the two in her dualistic state like a Persephonic figure. Indeed, the image of Persephone seems to haunt the text more so than the Helenic phantom herself. Like Persephone, Helen too was “snatched away from a flowery field to a desolate unknown land.”10 Despite the appar-ent innocence of Hermes carrying Helen off to Egypt, the language here is associated with abduction. Indeed, Hermes’s presence too suggests the anodos myth, for in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter it is Hermes who returns Persephone to her mother. Euripides even seems to describe the saved (and thereby revirginalized) Helen (l. 1570) in the same manner as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter describes the maiden (l. 2), emphasizing her lovely ankles.11 While Peter Burian believes this line to be an extreme ornamentation designed to vividly illustrate Helen’s beauty, which has previously plagued her but which she now may use to aid the couple in their escape, it should also be



considered with regard to the continuous references to and parallels with the Persephone myth. Egypt itself is depicted as a kind of underworld with its connections to the watery mouth of the Nile. Confinement in Egypt serves as a living death for Helen: “And for all purposes I am dead, yet live in fact” (Lattimore trans., 202). Moreover, Helen finds herself surrounded by images associated with death, such as Proteus’s tomb, at which she seeks refuge. When Teucer, a survivor of Troy, happens on Helen, he raves at her image, cursing her with death.12 He then goes on to inform Helen of more fatalities: the slaughter of Troy, the suicide of Leda, the possible death or deification of the Dioscuri and the apparent death of Menelaus (Burian, introduction, 13). Overwhelmed with this news, Helen laments her wretched existence and considers her own suicide, morbidly deciding which method of death would be best. In her lamentation, she even calls on the Sirens and Persephone herself, praying that she may take Helen’s paean and tears as an offer of thanks “with passion for passion, sorrow for sorrow” (Lattimore trans., 198).

In its similarities to the Persephone myth, accompanied by its constant references to it, and in its pervasive intermingling of eros and thanatos, the Helen then may be classified as an anodos drama, one that parallels the mythical story pattern of the “rape and descent (kathodo) of the goddess Kore/Persephone and her subsequent ascent (anodos) to the upper world.”13 Abducted and carried off to an unknown land, Helen, too, is thought dead, and she is sought after, only to be recovered after others have undergone great pain and suffering in her name. Christian Wolff goes so far as to suggest that the phantom Helen’s return to heaven, evocative of a kind of death or deification, parallels Persephone’s regular return to Hades, where she reigns as queen of the underworld.14 Indeed, the timai promised to Persephone in her divine position parallels not only the restored reputation Helen will gain in her private capacity as wife, but also the honor she will receive upon her death and deification as prophesied by the Dioscuri (ll. 1665–75). So too the myth of Persephone as told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter has less to do with the actual violation of the maiden herself than with the effects of her abduction on others. In truth, we do not learn the specifics of Persephone’s capture until the end, as the story focuses instead on Demeter and her anger at the gods. The myth of Persephone’s anodos, then, has nothing to do with her subjectivity or her experience but rather concerns the gesture of forgiveness, of reconciliation, that is enabled by her return. Troubled by the destruction done in Persephone’s name through Demeter’s famine, Zeus relents, taking back his gift to Hades and returning her to Demeter so that she may “let go of her anger.”15 The restoration of the girl provides a space for reconciliation symbolized by a bountiful harvest, the celebration of the Eleusian Mysteries, and the return of Demeter to her rightful place at Olympus.



Like the famine caused by Demeter’s grief, the destruction of Troy is as a travesty performed against innocent mortals in the name of a single abducted woman, a caprice of the gods. In the choral ode to Demeter in Helen it is Kypris who initiates a performance for the goddess mother that allows her to laugh, to “forget her sorrow and anger, and, we infer, to allow life and growth to resume.”16 Here too, then, we see an emphasis on a form of forgiveness, aphiemi, a letting go of anger and resentment. As Helene Foley notes, it is after this ode that Helen concocts the escape plan, providing her a way to return to Sparta from her cadaverous existence in Egypt.17 However, considering that Helen is a married woman, in contrast to Persephone, who is a virgin, she cannot return to her natal home but rather only to a reunion and a “symbolic re-marriage” with Menelaus.18 Moreover, the restoration of Helen also ushers in the eventual reunion of Helen and her daughter, Hermione. While the focal point of the Helen is surely the reestablished connection between Helen and Menelaus, there is considerable discussion of Helen’s desire to return home to Sparta so that she can allow her daughter to be wed (ll. 689–90, l. 933). Helen here thus also plays the role of Demeter, attempting to reach her daughter and save her from a “wasted” life.

With the knowledge of the destruction of Troy, Helen sinks further into despair, bemoaning her monstrous birth. Helen is of course referencing her “fowl” conception, but she has also assumed responsibility for the eidolon’s deeds. Interestingly, in his study on forgiveness, Charles Griswold discusses those who are unable to exercise agency as moral monsters.19 These are individuals in whom we may no longer recognize anything human. Helen’s guilt does not convince her to act; instead, she merely wallows in self-pity, bemoaning her tardy husband and wretched life. She lacks subjectivity, a state of affairs reflected in the “ambiguity surrounding her responsibility for her past actions” and her “powerlessness to contrast a definitive version of herself.”20 Restrained in Egypt for seventeen years waiting for rescue, Helen has not exhibited any sense of agency and will not until Menelaus, a dubious rescuer indeed, appears. As Helen herself illustrates, the “dialectic of appear-ance and reality is closely related to themes of guilt and purity” (Burian, introduction, 25). Despite her innocence, Helen feels deeply ashamed for what has been done in her name. Though to Menelaus she will desperately insist on her innocence and the concrete division between the chaste Helen and the adulterous eidolon, in her speeches to herself and the chorus of captive Greek women, Helen and her name are synonymous for her: “I am the cause of all that killing, my name the cause of so much grief!” (Burian trans., 71). The scene with Teucer serves not only to enlighten Helen as to the travesties performed in her name, but also to demonstrate the overall



hatred the Greeks feel for Helen, thereby deepening her guilt. As Griswold suggests, one’s self-understanding is mediated by one’s society. Helen desires to return to Sparta, to her community and family, but realizes that she has been rejected by the Greeks because of her duskleia, her ill repute. Despite her own acknowledgment of her innocence, she realizes that others view her as guilty, and thus she harbors lingering shame for Troy. This internalized shame will be mirrored in Menelaus’s appearance in the recognition scene and reified in his expression.

Recognition Without Reconciliation

The recognition scene in Helen appears to be unique in extant Attic tragedy. Firstly, as scholars such as C.W. Willink and Robert Schmiel have noted, it is the only recognition scene to take place between an estranged husband and wife.21 In this manner, the Helen conjures up associations with the Odyssey and the long sought-for reunion between Odysseus and Penelope. A considerable difference between these scenes, however, is their position-ing within their respective literary works. The scene between Penelope and Odysseus functions as the telos of the Odyssey, whereas in Helen it does not.22 By positioning this scene in the middle of the play, Euripides thus changes the focus of the remainder of the play from the reunion of the couple to their rescue. Moreover, this format provides Helen with the time and space necessary to fully reconcile with Menelaus, reinstating him as the conqueror of Troy with her escape plan.

As with the Homeric anagnorisis, there is a delay in the recognition between this alienated couple. The scene begins with a sense of urgency; Helen fears she is being pursued by one of Theoclymenus’s ruffians assigned to chase her away from her refuge at Proteus’s tomb. Apparently frightened by the man’s presence, Helen gasps and rushes back to her safe haven, ques-tioning the man’s identity but seeming to avoid addressing or approaching him directly. In the Loeb edition, translated by David Kovacs, Helen does not address Menelaus, while in Richmond Lattimore’s translation, Helen obliquely addresses her husband but then regains her distance by describing him in the third person:

Oh, oh, who is this? Can itbe that I am being ambushed at the bidding of Proteus’godless son? Quick, to the tomb, run like a galloping colt or



one of the god’s bacchants! He’s a savage, by the look ofhim, the man who hunts me!23

Who is it, who are you? Does this mean I am waylaidby the machinations of Proteus’ godless son? What shallI do? Not run like a racing filly, like the god’sbacchanal, to the tomb with flying feet? This man is savage by his look and hunts me for his prey. (Lattimore trans., 212)

Traditionally, this frenzied maneuver back to the tomb by Helen has been viewed as a sincere expression of terror brought on by the thought of her imminent marriage with Theoclymenus. Schmiel, however, considers this scene in tandem with the Teucer scene. Upon seeing Helen, Teucer blusters curses at her murderous image, she who destroyed the Achaeans, and even threatens to kill her himself. At this violence, Helen calmly stands her ground and refutes his fierce claims by asking why she should be blamed for his troubles.24 Given the characteristics Helen exhibits on meeting a stranger who threatens her with violence, one must question Helen’s panic at the sight of the sea-worn and shabby Menelaus. Indeed, Burnett points out that Helen’s fear of being taken from her refuge is not compelling, since in the previous scene she willingly left the tomb at the encouragement of the chorus. This apparently casual movement within her Egyptian prison seems, then, to “demolish her own tragic role.”25 Proffering a different reading of Helen’s flight, Schmiel suggests that Helen’s “exaggerated protest is an act for Menelaus’ benefit, a demonstration, a dramatization of her fidelity,” for, indeed, Helen has just learned of Menelaus’s presence and his shipwrecked status from Theonoe.26 Other scholars view this scene rather as a purposeful reminder by Euripides of the well-known scene in which Menelaus recovers Helen from the temple of Aphrodite, where she had been hiding. The lyric poet Ibycus wrote that Helen fled to the altar and spoke with Menelaus from that refuge, whereupon he dropped his sword from love.27

Slowly, then, this scene of pursuit morphs into a recognition scene, albeit one in which seemingly neither spouse recognizes the other initially. Menelaus is too confused by the apparent doubling of Helen to believe her to be real; his first thought is that she merely resembles his wife. The two are dumbstruck at the sight of one another; they incessantly question each other, Menelaus attempting to force Helen to define herself and Helen Menelaus by asking “who are you?” When Menelaus confirms his identity, Helen is overjoyed; she responds by stating that she is indeed



his real wife and attempts to persuade him of her identity with an all too intimate gesture, her touch. The scene would appear to be over, the rec-ognition completed. Yet upon Helen’s use of the word “wife,” Menelaus suddenly remembers “the thing that must make this recognition different from all others”: he already has a wife.28 Ordering Helen not to touch his peplos (robes), Menelaus rejects Helen’s embrace, refusing to recognize her true self. Indeed, he even calls to Hekate requesting that she send him kind visions instead of these heart-wrenching ones of Helen (l. 569). Menelaus is unable to reconcile the words of the portress with Helen’s presence here. In addition to preposterously suggesting that some other Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, Leda, and Zeus, must be living in Egypt, Menelaus also appeals to the idea that she must be a trick of his eyes, a sign of the further weakening of his mind and body. Helen insists that she is truly his wife, repeatedly pleading with him to trust his eyes. She appears reluctant to explain the situation, hoping that Menelaus will rec-ognize her without having to supply any overt explanation. Finally, almost twenty lines after she has recognized Menelaus (ll. 565–82), she announces the truth: she did not go to Troy, a phantom did. However, Euripides does not use “eidolon” here but instead a new word: “diallagm” (“changeling”). This word is etymologically associated with notions of reconciling and exchange. Similarly, the etymologically kin word “dialogizomai” denotes “considering, reflecting, and examining together.” By using diallagm instead of eidolon in the pivotal scene in which Helen is attempting to explain herself and convince Menelaus that she is the real Helen, Euripides sets up a linguistic link between the notion of reconciliation, and the exchange of forgiveness, and the eidolon itself. Indeed, it is the fact of the eidolon’s presence that provides a space for the couple to reconcile in, and it will be the very words uttered by the ghostly eidolon, the changeling that fosters exchange, that will help reunite the couple as they reexamine and reflect on their condition.

But this is all too much for the warrior; at the thought of a lady made of ether by the gods, Menelaus chokes. He cannot accept the proposition of two Helens or the implications of this concept: a phantom in Troy, over whom he needlessly fought and killed, and the real one waiting in this nether world of Egypt. Menelaus questions Helen, asking how she could have been both here and in Troy at the same time, reluctant to acquiesce to the presence of the eidolon. Helen answers that a name may be in many places without the body, a metaphysical argument of onoma-soma that is too much for Menelaus. He drowns in her ontological rhetoric, unable to conceive of two separate Helens, one innocently waiting in Egypt and one ruining Helen’s name with



adulterous and casus belli acts. Moreover, Menelaus is unable to reconcile his own past, his memories of Troy, with this new innocent Helen. As he states as he is about to leave, “The magnitude of what I suffered there [in Troy] persuades me; you [Helen] do not” (Burian trans., 101). He cannot dismiss Troy so quickly as a mere trick of the gods.29

Here Euripides seems to toy with the audience’s expectations of anag-norisis. Menelaus will do the unthinkable: having recognized his partner, he will turn his back and walk away from Helen and the entire scene. The hero of Troy refuses to act and instead slinks away, clinging to a view of the world that makes sense to him. However, just as the recognition scene looks like it will fail, a servant appears announcing the ascent of the eidolon into the heavens. The servant’s message includes the ethereal words of the phantom:

O talaiporoi Phrygespantes t’ Achaioi, di’ em’ epi Skamandrioisaktaisin Heras mechanais ethneskete,dokountes Helenen ouk echont echein Parin.ego d’, epeide chronon emein hoson me chren,to morsimon sosasa, pater’ es ouranonapeimi: phemas d’ he talaina Tyndarisallos kakas ekousen ouden aitia. (ll. 608–15, my transliteration)

O long-suffering Phrygians, and all you Achaeans, it was on my account you kept on dying on Scamander’s shore thinking that Paris had Helen, though he didn’t. But now that I have stayed as long as needed and secured what was fated, I am off into the air that fathered me. Tyndareus’ poor daughter heard much evil spoken of her wrongly, for she is innocent. (Lattimore trans., 216)

As Burnett eloquently puts it, “The phantom Helen thus speaks out, and her last words on earth are a kind of death-bed confession. She reveals the deception that went into her creation, and testifies to the identity and the innocence of the true Egyptian Helen.”30 The eidolon’s words cor-roborate the real Helen’s story and now ring true for Menelaus. Burnett’s word choice precisely reflects the situation: the eidolon, imbued with the adulterous and deceptive qualities stereotypical of woman, confesses. The language of Helen’s astral double, the confession essentially by “Helen,” initiates the reconciliation of the couple. The eidolon’s speech is both an admission of guilt and means of redemption for the real Helen. Despite this reclamation on Helen’s behalf, however, she will still feel a sense



of shame and a need to exonerate herself, her name. The corroboration from the eidolon alone is not sufficient for her own self-forgiveness or for reconciliation with Menelaus. Moreover, close examination of Menelaus’s words reveals that he too is not completely satisfied with merely the eidolon’s words. Indeed, reconciliation in the Helen is portrayed as a “complex task,” a multistep process rather than a one-time apology.31 The reconciliation of the estranged couple will truly illustrate sungnome as they collectively recognize themselves and their memories of the past in order to establish a new moral relationship with each other. As we shall see, the empty triumph of Troy and the separation of the couple constantly haunt them and their attempts at reconciliation.

On hearing the servant’s tale, Menelaus turns to Helen, saying, “O longed-for day that has given you to me to take in my arms!,” words that seemingly echo Helen’s own: “At long last you have come to your wife’s arms,” perhaps signifying the completion of their anagnorisis (Burian trans., 103, 99). Yet Menelaus’s words more significantly parallel those in Euripides’s Trojan Women: “O splendor of sunburst breaking forth this day, whereon / I lay my hands once more on Helen, my wife” (Lattimore trans., 158). In this reunion scene, Menelaus intends to kill Helen, or have her be killed, and orders that she be dragged out by her hair, references to which are present in the Helen as well (l. 116, l. 413). Since the Trojan Women was performed in 415 BC, three years before the Helen, it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest that Euripides may specifically and purposefully echo Menelaus’s language in these two parallel scenes, thereby forcing us to question the quality and integrity of the reunion. Do we, then, in fact see an acceptance of Helen’s story by Menelaus here at the supposed cusp of what most scholars call their recognition duo? Further examina-tion of Menelaus’s language would suggest not. Throughout their entire dialogue Menelaus rarely uses any kind of term of endearment, except a single exclamation of “o philtata prosopsis” (“o dearest sight”) (l. 636, my transliteration). As Schmiel notices, this is in direct contrast to other recognition scenes in which male characters (e.g., Ion, Orestes) use such language profusely when describing their philia. Moreover, while Helen romantically recalls their wedding (perhaps in an attempt to reiterate the validity of their union), Menelaus is unable to let go of the past, refer-ring to how Helen was stolen from his house. Helen in turn interrupts Menelaus again with a positive remark, but this time one that seems to convey her own self-centered perspective: “But still may I live to enjoy my fate” (Burian trans., 105).32 These words signify a lack of unity between the couple, underscoring the fact that they still consider their lives as separate



from one another. They have yet to reconcile and thereby, in the purely etymological definition of the word “atonement,” find “at-one-ment” with each other and thereby (re)gain their “original unity or harmony.”33

An abrupt change in tone by Menelaus, a segue into a passage designated the “interrogation” by scholars, further signals the emotional and connubial estrangement between the couple. In his translation, Burian emphasizes this shift in the conversation by describing Menelaus as extricating himself from Helen’s embrace, signaling the imminent emotional failure of their reunion (107). Menelaus begins to press Helen for details of her story, suggesting that the words of the eidolon are no longer enough for him. He questions how she came to Egypt, “using the word [apestales] which can mean ‘left’ as well as ‘were taken,’” further hinting at his unwillingness to believe that she did not actively and willingly flee Sparta.34 Helen, however, responds vaguely, avoiding his questions and refraining from telling her story in solid, concrete terms. Menelaus insists, using an imperative, commanding Helen to “speak.” “The gods gave this; we must,” he insists, “even hear it out” (Lattimore trans., 218). Schmiel suggests that Menelaus seems to take a “perverse pleasure in pressing Helen,” but sadistic charm doesn’t befit this abject portrayal of Menelaus.35 Rather, it would seem that Menelaus is searching for not only more reasonable answers than a woman made of ether by the gods can provide but for a common humanity with Helen, something in her that he may truly recognize and understand. Pressing her for the details of her divine abduc-tion, Menelaus attempts to identify imaginatively with Helen. He suggests that they will gain pleasure out of hearing about her hardship, that it will be a kind of cathartic experience for the couple. Through listening to her tale, Menelaus hopes that he may empathetically think with Helen, ultimately defusing his anger and mitigating his confusion.36

Despite Menelaus’s attempts at understanding Helen’s plight, he still functions as an individual rather than an equal partner of this reunion duo. Typical of his warrior nature, he completely dominates Helen, inter-rupting her, and commanding her five times during the interrogation to speak. Between Menelaus’s aggressive questioning and Helen’s vague answers, no true reconciliation is able to take place in this scene.37 This is reiterated by the servant’s interrupting to ask for further clarification and to share in their apparent good fortune. Repeatedly the servant questions Helen’s real identity, finally asking the question that Menelaus himself has been unable to fully acknowledge: was Troy fought in vain for a cloud, for nothing?38 The servant’s words hit on the crux of Menelaus’s dilemma: if he acknowledges the presence of the real Helen, then his grand triumph at Ilium was an empty victory, fought to satisfy the ethereal whim of the gods,



which has vanished out of his hands. Yet if Menelaus refuses to believe the eidolon and leaves the new Helen in Egypt, he will return to Sparta (if he returns) with absolutely nothing to show for his efforts. The problem is not, however, merely a need for a physical remnant of Troy but Menelaus’s need for a trophy to reclaim his victorious reputation and restore his loss of station. Despite his current abjectivity, Menelaus still perceives himself as a truly heroic figure. On reaching the Egyptian shores, he is confident that his name will be known even here: “Troy is renowned, and I, who lit the fire of Troy, / Menelaus, am not unknown anywhere in all / the world” (Lattimore trans., 211). Foolishly, he attempts to rely on the principles of Homeric xenia as he stands begging at the gates only to be rebuffed by the old Portress. His entire identity is bound with Helen, as she symbolizes the success of his great expedition.39 Menelaus needs to possess Helen, because she is of inestimable value to him, an algama that can reestablish his sovereign self. After all, previously, he has “dragged [the eidolon] Helen from Troy, and has compelled his men to keep her under guard in a cave,” keeping her defended like the costly war booty she is rather than treating her as a wife.40 As Donatella Galeotti Papi writes, in order for Menelaus

to be able to continue to identify himself in the role of the victori-ous conqueror, it is necessary that he be able to take back home a tangible sign of his victory (806). If the prize of the war has disap-peared from the cave (603: that is what the servant means, even if Menelaus misunderstands him at first, 604), it is necessary to replace it. Thus the previously incredulous Menelaus (683), faced with the messenger’s doubt as to who the newly-found Helen really is (709), does not hesitate to vouch for his wife’s identity (710) because he needs a trophy to take back home.41

From a Plutarchian point of view, one might suggest, then, that Menelaus reconciles with Helen simply because it is advantageous for him to do so. In his De capienda ex inimicis utilitate, Plutarch suggests that one may gain from his enemies rather than suffer from them.42 Yet Menelaus and Helen have not completely reconciled here, and it is unclear at the moment how the two feel about their situation. Menelaus may simply be affirming Helen’s identity to the servant to avoid confrontation with his wife (since she is still standing there) or to keep the servant from asking more questions.

Ultimately, even after reuniting with his true wife, Menelaus perceives her as an object to be claimed and taken back home. He refuses to act



as an equal partner in their reunion, for despite coercing Helen for the bitter details of her capture, Menelaus refuses to speak of his own strife in Troy when Helen questions him. He refuses to endure the pain of telling his tale, even though he forces Helen to experience this same pain only moments prior. Their anagnorisis complete, the estranged couple have yet to reconcile anything.

Escaping Egypt by Eidolonian Example

After Theonoe promises to provide them with the security she claims they deserve, Helen turns to Menelaus in hopes that he may guide their safe departure from Egypt. Yet she is greatly disappointed by his violent, reckless proposals that threaten the precious sanctuary they just worked so hard to obtain. Menelaus’s blatant ineptitude presents an aporia that “justifies the necessity of Helen’s intervention.”43 Inspired by the success of her “woman to woman” approach (l. 830), Helen concocts a plan that uses the “pitiful customs of women” to their advantage (Lattimore trans., 234). Taking control of the situation, Helen asks Menelaus if he would mind being reported dead, though in fact he is not dead. Here again we see the familiar play between appearance and reality, this time with respect to Menelaus. “Like a new Hera,” Burian writes, Helen “creates a phantom Menelaus” (introduction, 33). Cautiously and reluctantly Menelaus con-sents to the plan but suspects “some trick” in it (Lattimore trans., 234). Helen’s design is consistently associated with “the female ability for plot-ting and deception,” reintroducing the negative stereotypes exemplified by the eidolon.44 The real Helen seems to be able to adopt these qualities yet deemphasizes this fact with her own self-deprecating remarks: “Even a woman might have one clever thought” (Lattimore trans., 234). Her humil-ity helps alleviate Menelaus’s suspicion, allowing him to begin to trust her and her plan, despite the fact that he must feign his death and embrace his shabby appearance and station. They will announce his reported death to Theoclymenus and then propose that it is necessary to carry out funerary rites at sea. Menelaus’s confidence is further bolstered when Helen states that she will forswear her role in the escape once they are at sea. Then he “shall be in charge of all thenceforward,” his role as leader as well as patriarch reinstated (Lattimore trans., 235). With renewed purpose and Helen’s reassertion of his authority, Menelaus regains a sense of trust in Helen and their union. This rekindled trust is a vital basis for forgiveness,



a process in which one must change his judgments of the individual, allowing a space for trust in the future.45 Cast in a situation in which the two must labor together to escape death, Menelaus thus redevelops his faith in Helen, placing his life and his name in her hands signifying his willingness to reconcile with her.

Leaving Menelaus passively waiting at Proteus’s tomb in her previous seat of supplication, Helen again returns to the palace freely. She will feign mourning by cutting her hair and bloodying her face. In describing her plans to mutilate herself, Helen justifies her intention seemingly unnecessarily, as if speaking over any possible interjections by Menelaus: “Ego d’ es oikous basa bostruchous temo / peplon te leukon melanas antallazomai / paredi t’ onocha phonion embalo chroos” (ll. 1087–89, my transliteration ). Lattimore’s translation captures Helen’s determination both linguistically and gram-matically, suggesting Menelaus may decry Helen’s destroying her beauty by dragging her “ nails across [her] cheek leaving a red furrow there. / [She] must. / Great hazard” (236). Her willingness to devastate her most precious attribute, the beauty that launched the ruination of Troy, further testifies to her commitment to Menelaus and her Spartan home. Her extreme measures of deception are no longer imbued with the negative connotations of the adulterous eidolon but rather bespeak her connubial loyalty.

The long feared-for entrance of Theoclymenus seems lackluster at best. He is not the rapacious, Greek-killing monster we have anticipated but rather a reverent and devoted fool so excited by the thought of having his bride that he naively accepts Helen’s sudden change of heart. Upon entering the palace, Theoclymenus directly addresses Proteus’s tomb, piously greeting his father. Euripides presents us with a seemingly civi-lized, observant man, considerate of others’ pain.46 Spotting Helen and Menelaus, Theoclymenus does not barbarically kill them on the spot but takes time to notice Helen’s changed appearance. He sees Helen’s grief as symbolized in her shorn hair and black clothing and inquires about the source of her sorrow: a dream or news from home? Again the prominence of the appearance/reality dichotomy is reiterated as Theoclymenus essen-tially asks Helen outright if her mourning is genuine or artificial, perhaps caused by a reverie like the eidolon itself. And Helen, having learned to use the dialectic of appearance/reality to her own advantage, begins a series of double entendres that, from the audience’s perspective, utterly humiliate Theoclymenus. She leads her anxious suitor to believe that she is ready to transfer her affections from her supposedly departed husband to Theoclymenus, saying, “He [Menelaus] is dear to me. Whoever is with me now is dear” (Lattimore trans., 241). However, the audience is in on



the joke painfully made at Theoclymenus’s expense, as dear Menelaus is still with us and, more than ever, with Helen. More boldly, Helen later informs Theoclymenus that “today will show the quality of [her] love for [him],” a line that to a fiancé’s ear may sound like a marriage vow but in actuality is a kind of portentous threat (Lattimore trans., 250).

Her verbal prowess, her own instrument of violence, thereby entices and destroys Theoclymenus. As Burnett so succinctly writes:

As men are deceived by the gods with false appearances, so is Theoclymenos deceived, for her own fate has taught Helen her tricks. She uses the god-sent appearance of Teucer as a model for the role Menelaus is to play, and offers her body to Theoclymenos as a hollow bribe, like the phantom prize which Paris won, the god-made eidolon.47

Indeed, Helen’s plot is closely based on the juxtaposition of appearance and reality, as she uses Menelaus’s shabby appearance as authentic evidence of his abject state as a shipwrecked veteran. So too does she manipulate the appearance of her adultery by feigning interest in marrying Theoclymenus. It is here that Euripides posits an insincere, outright display of forgiveness, albeit in the form of a trans-action between Helen and Theoclymenus, to which is juxtaposed the belabored reconciliation that will occur between Helen and Menelaus while “in character,” so to speak. Both reconciliations, however, will end with the promise (if not the actuality) of marriage. The Burian and Lattimore translations of the explicit scene of forgiveness respectively highlight the transactional and the reconciliatory aspects:

Helen: Do you know what you must do? Let’s forget the past.Theo: On what terms? Let favour come in exchange for favour.Helen: Let us make a truce, and you be reconciled with me.Theo: I give up my quarrel with you; let it fly away! (Burian

trans., 151)

Helen: Do you know what we should do? Let us forget the past.Theo: What terms? Grace should be given in return for grace.Helen: Let us make peace between ourselves. Forgive me all.Theo: My quarrel with you is cancelled. Let it go with the wind.

(Lattimore trans., 242)

In this passage, Helen pretends to make up with Theoclymenus, emphasiz-ing her desire to forget all that has happened. Theoclymenus may naturally



assume she means her supplication at Proteus’s tomb to avoid his matrimo-nial pursuits, but surely she is referring to her abduction and the subsequent seventeen years of false allegations against her. Their rapprochement takes on the characteristics of a money transaction, charis for charis, or favor for favor. Yet Helen asks to be reconciled with Theoclymenus using the hollow phrase “diallachtheti moi” that is etymologically associated with the changeling itself. Helen does not use the cognitively charged word “sungnome” that bespeaks of true re-cognition and understanding with another but rather terminology laden with connotations of physical exchange. Thus verbally and mentally this scene of forgiveness smacks not only of eidolon-ian arti-fice but the self-trafficking of Helen. For indeed, Helen arranges her own marriage, commodifying herself as an object to be given to Theoclymenus, only to be re-abducted by Menelaus. Her social movement is restricted to the space of the homosocial, a topos she seemingly controls in her widowed state.48 She may use the appearance of a resolution with Theoclymenus in order to achieve that which she truly desires: reconciliation with Menelaus.

Having witnessed Helen’s convincing performance with Theoclymenus, feigned for the sake of their union, Menelaus is at last ready to reconcile. Helen has crossed standard gender boundaries, but she has done so “in the service of their marriage.”49 The couple’s reconciliation is subtle, expressed solely in relation to their ruse. Indeed, Menelaus up until this point seems to exemplify what David Novitz sees as a life that is encumbered by unre-solved issues, a life

that sees others through the distorted lens of its own anger and that sacrifices community with them at every turn. Sometimes, too, it is a life in which one can no longer relate freely and openly to those with whom one once had a great deal in common; a fragmented life, therefore, that is exiled from its own past and that loses touch with the person one once was, and that forces one, in the end, to become a stranger to much that was previously of value to oneself.50

As Menelaus stands beside his estranged wife, dressed in the tattered trappings of his sunken ship and smashed dreams of heroic glory, he hardly need play the part of a stranger. Despite the lack of key terminology (e.g., sungnome), this scene clearly depicts the long-awaited mental reunion of the estranged couple.51 Menelaus initiates their reunion, stating in front of Theoclymenus:

You see your task, young woman; it is to love and servethe husband you have, and let the other husband go.



In the circumstances, this is the best that you can do.But if I come through safe to Hellas, I shall putan end to former scandals that were said of you. Only be now the wife that you were meant to be. (Lattimore trans., 245)

His words, seemingly innocent to Theoclymenus, intimate his desire to return to Sparta with Helen, as long as she will uphold her monogamous connubial duties. Menelaus’s reference to the “other husband” may be to Theoclymenus, but it certainly alludes to Paris as well. Perhaps key evidence of Menelaus’s new moral attitude toward Helen is his emphasis on the situation itself, underscored by the phrase “in the circumstances.” This minor addendum to his statement suggests his own coming to terms with the reality of their situation and his acceptance of it. Moreover, he has considered this situation from Helen’s point of view and recommends the best course of action for her, a necessary cognitive process if sungnome is to take place. As Foley notes, Menelaus shares in Helen’s experience, as he too undergoes a symbolic death and loss of identity.52 Re-cognizing his wife, Menelaus puts aside his own scandals (e.g. loss at Troy for a cloud) in order to save their union, a union now based on trust and mutual understanding. To that end, he promises to help reestablish her prior reputation, officially recognizing her innocence.

Helen, realizing the import of Menelaus’s gesture, readily agrees to his proposal and renews their connubial union. Helen states:

It shall be so. My husband shall have no complaintof me. You will be there, and you will know the truth.Come in the house, poor wanderer, you shall have your bathand a change of clothing. Kindnesses I have for youshall not be put off. If I give all you should havefrom me, in all the better spirit you will do the things my dearest Menelaus has deserved. (Lattimore trans., 245–46)

Helen is less discreet in her oath to Menelaus, as she states that he, the ragged stranger, shall personally witness her marriage (with Theoclymenus). She seems to temporarily forget their subterfuge and so then must reinforce it by addressing Menelaus as “poor wanderer” (“o talas”), reasserting his status as a beleaguered stranger. However, her language exudes an intimacy and a sexually charged undertone, as she offers Menelaus a bath, recalling prematrimonial rites.53 Through her design, Helen has “killed” Menelaus so that he may be birthed anew, reestablishing his identity as the warrior



of Troy. Through this ruse of death, Helen will restore Menelaus’s dignity, which amounts to an act of compensation and reconciliation even if she herself is innocent and has done nothing that requires compensation. By naming Menelaus, claiming him as her husband, she will save him from his abject state, “making a rescue hero of him.”54 Cleansing and dressing him, she also will cleanse her name and her conscience. Arming Menelaus with weapons also exhibits a new level of trust on Helen’s part, a trust in his military accomplishments and their personal relationship. Indeed, arming Menelaus, who previously dragged the eidolon Helen out of Troy by the hair, indicates their new understanding and collaboration.

With Theoclymenus fooled, Helen and the stranger climb aboard the ship that will supposedly aid in the funerary rites for the lost Menelaus. Sailing out to sea, Menelaus waits for the right moment before attacking the confused and unarmed Egyptian men. The slaughter, as is typical of a tragedy, is not portrayed on stage but is rather depicted by the words of the overwhelmed messenger. The scene, a miniature Troy, restores Menelaus’s heroic glory, as he destroys the Egyptians, representative of Theoclymenus, a Paris figure who Menelaus may finally defeat with ease. This “public display of masculine virtue” negates Helen’s efforts to return to Sparta through nonviolent, diplomatic means.55 Menelaus’s slaughter reaffirms the role of negative reciprocity in the homosocial, as he feels forced to seize his own wife through violence. Indeed, this bloodshed serves as a form of revenge, which has thus far been missing from this drama of reconciliation. Though Helen fashions a new Menelaus, he must still perform this blood-soaked act in order to restore his dignity both militarily and matrimonially.56

While the re-creation of Menelaus appears to imbue Helen with a kind of power—indeed, the power to name Menelaus and proclaim him dead—her authority is sublimated by her self-commodification to both Theoclymenus and Menelaus. This “new Helen” reiterates and reconsti-tutes the semblance of the homosocial exchange. Though she seems to be merely playing the part of the object par excellence, once Menelaus regains his own kleos, his glory, Helen is locked into that position, forever in this life known as Menelaus’s Trojan trophy, a symbol of his wealth like his armor. Yet Helen seems to encourage this slaughter, abandoning her previous pacifistic ways as she cheers Menelaus on: “Where is the glory of Troy? Come on, / show it on these barbarians” (Lattimore trans., 256). Her words indicate that she has recognized her new role in life, a role inspired by the wife of epic tradition, Penelope. As Holmberg writes, “Euripides’s innovation lies in his attribution to Helen of success in the completion of



her plans, in the implication that women can plan and bring to fruition a plan of action which the Homeric Helen and Penelope never achieve.”57 Though the new Helen may surpass her prototype Penelope, she recognizes the role assigned to her. She “voluntarily becomes the full and genuinely virtuous possession of her spouse,” reiterating the traditional balance between the sexes: Helen is now a wife who is able to complement her husband without surpassing him.58 The utopian vision of complete equality within gender relations is inevitably quashed, thrown overboard like an unarmed Egyptian as Helen cheers.

Rochester Institute of Technology

Notes

1. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 119.

2. Helene P. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 305.

3. For considerable elaboration on this theme, see Anne Pippin Burnett, “Euripides’ Helen: A Comedy of Ideas,” Classical Philology 55.3 (1960): 151–63, Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, and Charles Segal, “The Two Worlds of Euripides’ Helen,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 102 (1971): 553–614.

4. Victoria Wohl, Intimate Commerce: Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity in Greek Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 25.

5. Burnett, “Euripides’ Helen,” 154.6. Indeed, Lattimore and Grene apparently find this variation so astounding in its content

that in their translated edition they print their introduction to the play after the text itself so as to allow the reader to savor the eidolonic surprise.

7. Richmond Lattimore, introduction to Helen, in Euripides, Euripides II, ed. Richard Lat-timore and David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 261. Hereafter cited by page number as “Lattimore trans.”

8. Otto Skutsch, “Helen, Her Name and Nature,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (1987): 189, my transliteration.

9. Segal, “The Two Worlds of Euripides’ Helen,” 559.10. Burnett, “Euripides’ Helen,” 156.11. Like the restored Alcestis, the “new Helen” is also imbued with an “aura of regained

virginity,” reinstating her chastity and thereby her good reputation; see Peter Burian, introduc-tion, Euripides, Helen, trans. Peter Burian (Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2007), 26. Hereafter cited by page number as “Burian trans.”

12. Peter Burian notes as well that upon seeing Theoclymenus’s palace, Teucer associates its wealth with Plutus, a figure often connected with Pluto, king of the underworld (introduc-tion, 13).

13. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 304. As Foley discusses extensively in her book, the Alcestis also functions as an anodos drama, as Alcestis is forcibly taken away by Death only to be returned to life once more.

14. Christian Wolff, “On Euripides’ Helen,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 77 (1973): 64.15. Homer, The Homeric Hymns, trans. Jules Cashford (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 19.

In the choral ode to Demeter in Helen, it is Kypris who initiates a performance for the goddess Mother that allows her to laugh, to “forget her sorrow and anger, and, we infer, to allow life and



growth to resume” (Wolff, “On Euripides’ Helen,” 62–63). Here too then we see an emphasis on a form of forgiveness, aphiemi, a letting go of anger and resentment. As Foley notes, it is after this ode that Helen concocts the escape plan, providing her a way to return to Sparta from her cadaverous existence in Egypt (Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 307).

16. Wolff, “On Euripides’ Helen,” 62–63.17. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 307.18. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 305.19. Charles L. Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007), 73.20. Ingrid E. Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen: Most Noble and Most Chaste,” American Journal

of Philology 116.1 (1995): 28.21. C. W. Willink, “The Reunion Duo in Euripides’ Helen,” Classical Quarterly 39.1 (1989):

45–69. Compare this recognition scene with those found in, among others, Ion between a mother and son or Iphigenia in Tauris and Elektra between brothers and sisters.

22. Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” 35.23. Euripides, Helen, in Euripides I, trans. David Kovacs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 2002), 69.24. It should be noted that Teucer immediately silences his curses after Helen confronts his

misplaced anger. He admits losing control of his emotions and asks Helen’s forgiveness for his aggressive words.

25. Anne Pippin Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides’ Plays of Mixed Reversal (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1971), 80.

26. Robert Schmiel, “The Recognition Duo in Euripides’ Helen,” Hermes 100.3 (1972): 286.27. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 307.28. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived, 83.29. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 318.30. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived, 84.31. David Novitz, “Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

58.2 (1998): 308. Perhaps the apology must be a multistage process, since technically, on the new Helen’s behalf, there is nothing necessarily for which she must apologize. The eidolon essentially takes care of that for her.

32. There is a question as to who actually performs this line. Burian and others, such as Schmiel, give it to Helen, but Lattimore has Menelaus speaking it. Either way, the line sug-gests a lack of unity between the couple.

33. Griswold, Forgiveness, 60n18.34. Schmiel, “The Recognition Duo in Euripides’ Helen,” 279, my transliteration.35. Schmiel, “The Recognition Duo in Euripides’ Helen,” 279.36. Novitz, “Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” 309.37. For a thorough, line-by-line discussion of this scene, see Schmiel, “The Recognition

Duo in Euripides’ Helen.”38. Scholars have noted that even in the Iliad Helen is treated as emblematic. In the epic she

is the great cause for the war, a symbol for the Greek soldiers rather than a reality. Essentially, whether divinely fashioned ether or symbolic woman, Helen is consistently portrayed as a kind of phantom.

39. Schmiel, “The Recognition Duo in Euripides’ Helen,” 284.40. Schmiel, “The Recognition Duo in Euripides’ Helen,” 284.41. Donatella Galeotti Papi, “Victors and Sufferers in Euripides’ Helen,” American Journal

of Philology 108.1 (1987): 31.42. Marius Reiser, “Love of Enemies in the Context of Antiquity,” New Testament Studies

47 (2001): 416.43. Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” 35. Indeed, Holmberg’s word choice accurately depicts the

situation, as Helen’s actions function as a mere intervention, a brief intrusion on the cultural status quo. Menelaus will eventually regain his authority, ending Helen’s active involvement in their rescue once they are on a ship, the soldier’s dominion.



44. Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” 36.45. Griswold, Forgiveness, 57.46. Learning of Menelaus’s death, Theoclymenus is honorable, stating, “I cannot take pleasure

in what you tell me, though it is/my fortune” (Lattimore trans., 239). Linguistically his words are linked to Helen and Theonoe’s avowals to deny Theoclymenus “wicked pleasures” (charitas) (Lattimore trans., 229), creating a disparity in Theoclymenus’s characterization.

47. Burnett, “Euripides’ Helen,” 154.48. Consider Helen’s ability to manipulate this situation in relation to Penelope’s management

of the suitors in the Odyssey.49. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 331.50. Novitz, “Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” 315.51. Indeed, forgiveness “cannot consist in any one act that a person can perform at will”

(Novitz, “Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” 299) but must develop over time, as depicted in the Helen.

52. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 312.53. Robert Flaceriere, Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles, trans. Peter Green (London:

Phoenix, 2002), 63.54. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived, 93.55. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 319.56. David Konstan, “Assuaging Rage: Remorse, Repentance, and Forgiveness in the Classical

World,” Phoenix 62.3/4 (2008): 248.57. Holmberg, “Euripides’ Helen,” 21.58. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 330, 303.


Documents

CLS 49 3 Jansen Forgiveness