Helen

Menelaos, like Helen, is one of the most famous characters in the mythic history of Greece. As the King of Sparta and the brother of Agamemnon, he stood at the center of the foundational epic of Greek literature, Homer’s Iliad. When his wife Helen disappeared from Sparta, presumed to have run off with Paris, Menelaos and Agamemnon launched the massive counterstrike that led to a decade-long conflict around the walls of Troy. According to the conventional history of that story, based in the Iliad and other legends that picked up where Homer left off, the Greeks managed to capture Troy with the ruse of the famous Trojan horse, after which they leveled the offending city to the ground. Menelaos seized Helen—or who he thought was Helen—and sailed back for Sparta, but his fleet was scattered by storms until, seven years later, his ship was wrecked along the coasts of Africa. Here Helen picks up the narrative, and Euripides tells the audience that the Helen whom Menelaos took from Troy was not the real Helen at all, but an eidolon, a lookalike phantom conjured out of the air by the goddess Hera.

Menelaos, in Euripides’s telling, is a likeable enough character, but the traditionally masculine qualities for which he is lauded in Greek tradition—strength, courage, and confidence—come across in Helen as limitations and liabilities. Euripides does not change the well-known character of Menelaos in any significant way, but he puts the Spartan king in circumstances that force the audience to view him differently than they have before. In Helen, even as Menelaos is Helen’s partner in planning the escape, he also serves as something of a foil to her character. His masculine bravado, which rushes too quickly into proposing half-cocked schemes, is contrasted with her sharp intelligence and practical sensibilities.

Menelaos, like Helen, must weather the wild changes in fortune that come with the play’s plot, swinging from a sense that he is a victim of misfortune to a startled realization that his shipwreck led to the achievement of his ultimate goal: a reunion with his wife Helen. Unlike Helen, however, he has a further emotional change to weather. Whereas she has long realized that the great tragedy of the Trojan War was all based on a mistaken misidentification, this shocking revelation is something that Menelaos must deal with within the short space of the play itself. All the trauma he experienced at Troy is suddenly void of its meaning. He, however, gains an extra consolation along the way: In place of his long-held belief that Helen was unfaithful to him, he discovers with joy that she has been true to their marriage all along. Menelaos, then, like Helen, does not experience a transformation of character, but he does proceed through a transfiguration of attitude and emotion throughout the course of the play.

Theoklymenos is the villain of the play, but he does not appear in person until the final scenes. He is the reigning King of Egypt and the son of the late King Proteus. He is also the brother of Theonöe, who has a gift of omniscient perception and who serves in the royal courts as a prophetess. His main function early in the play is as a source of dramatic tension. With his father King Proteus now gone, the late king’s vow of protection over Helen is also gone. As such, Theoklymenos has set his mind on forcing Helen to marry him. This is troubling for Helen at the beginning of the play because she would like to remain faithful to Menelaos and she does not yet know whether her husband is alive or dead. After Menelaos appears, Theoklymenos’s intentions are no longer merely troubling, but downright dangerous, because they would likely involve murdering Menelaos to get his way.

While Menelaos’s masculine bravado provides an initial contrast by which the audience can see Helen’s noble qualities, the contrast between Helen and Theoklymenos is even more pronounced. Whereas Menelaos learns to defer to Helen’s superior planning abilities, Theoklymenos is so gullible that he can’t even see that Helen has all the advantages in their conversation. She is quickly able to convince him not only of her story about Menelaos’s demise, but also to invent an entirely made-up funeral ritual that he accepts in its entirety. She even gets him to hand over full control of the enterprise to Menelaos. All in all, Helen comes across as far more intelligent than Theoklymenos. In his response of rage after learning he has been tricked, Euripides shows him to be a character ruled not by reason, but by his passions.

Euripides offers an opportunity for Theoklymenos’s character to change in the last scene of the play. First the Leader of the Chorus attempts to sway his murderous rage, but he is impervious to her protests. Then the demigods Kastor and Polydeukes appear in a deus ex machina and instruct Theoklymenos to stand down. To his credit, the king submits, even going so far as to praise Helen’s “noble mind” in the process. In the end, then, Theoklymenos shows some glimmers of moral development, but the overall portrayal of his character is negative.

Theonöe only appears in one scene of the play, but her influence is felt throughout. She is an Egyptian, the daughter of the late King Proteus and the sister of the reigning king, Theoklymenos. She is identified early in the play as being a prophetess with practically omniscient knowledge, and she functions within the Egyptian royal household as something of an oracle. Intriguingly, despite the play’s many warnings about the folly of seeking prophetic knowledge of the future, Theonöe is called upon for that very service, with apparently positive results. This ambiguity—between the play’s overall tone toward prophecy and the function of Theonöe as a character—remains unresolved, though it is an ambiguity that exists largely in the background and thus may be simply an example of oversight on Euripides’s part rather than an intentional element of the play’s design.

Theonöe is referenced early on, as Helen is agonizing over the rumored information from Teucer, which suggests that her husband Menelaos is likely dead. The Chorus advises her to go and consult Theonöe, since the all-knowing prophetess would be able to tell her the truth of the matter. That consultation between Helen and Theonöe takes place out of the play’s view, and we only hear about it after Helen re-emerges from the palace, having received word that Menelaos is alive and close at hand. Theonöe herself only appears later, at the end of the reunion scene between Helen and Menelaos. Whereas Theonöe’s influence was a happy one for Helen at first, now it is perceived as a threat. Since Theonöe knows everything, she also surely knows that Helen and Menelaos are reunited, and if Theonöe were to tell her brother that information, her doing so could lead swiftly to Menelaos’s death. When Theonöe enters the stage from the palace doors, she is immediately met by Helen’s and Menelaos’s pleas for mercy. This is Theonöe’s only appearance on stage, and she strikes a character who is dignified, sure of herself, and noble in her virtues. She decides to keep silent about Menelaos’s presence, as they have pleaded with her to do, but the reasons she gives are not centered on the moving nature of their appeal, but rather on her own love of virtue and piety. She decides on that course of action simply because it is the right thing to do.

She also provides a secondary reason for her decision, acknowledging that the goddesses Hera and Aphrodite are in contest with each other over this matter, and she opts for Hera’s preferred outcome. In short, Hera’s preference is that Menelaos and Helen be reunited for good and the phantom Helen revealed for what it truly was, so that Aphrodite’s original scheme with Paris, which led to the Trojan War, can be revealed as an even more meaningless scam than people realized. This brief excursus in Theonöe’s speech about her decision reveals some of Euripides’s craftsmanship. Even though the moment passes quickly, Euripides wants us to understand that he has designed this play to bring the whole story of the Trojan War to its close, by coming back around to the original contest between the goddesses. While the War began with Paris choosing Aphrodite’s side, here the effects of the war are ended by Theonöe choosing Hera’s side, and so everything has come full circle. Theonöe’s reason for choosing against Aphrodite is that Theonöe herself is a virgin, and thus the goddess of love has never held either interest for her or significant sway over her decisions (again, a contrast with Paris’s original decision, motivated by romantic and sexual lust, is evident). Theonöe’s virginity is not a major symbol in the play, but it likely refers to a lifelong vow of virginity, a ceremonial function of her office as an oracle. It was common practice throughout much of the ancient Mediterranean for consecrated female virgins to serve as priestesses.

Theonöe does not appear again in the play, though she is referenced one last time. After Helen and Menelaos successfully pull off their ruse against King Theoklymenos, the king realizes that his sister (being an omniscient oracle) must have known about the whole thing all along and has chosen not to tell him. He tries to stomp off in a murderous rage to kill her, but Kastor and Polydeukes prevent him from doing so. Theonöe herself does not play a major role in this scene, but she does provide Euripides with a useful device to wrap up the loose ends of Theoklymenos’s character arc.