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EuripidesHelen
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Symbols & Motifs
The Phantom Helen
Euripides’s use of a phantom Helen draws on a feature of Greek legends called an eidolon (plural eidola). This idea goes back at least as far as the poet Homer, who usually depicted eidola as the spirit-shades of dead people, and it appears in numerous ancient Greek stories, most prominently with regard to the characters of Helen, Clytemnestra, and the suitors of Penelope. Stesichorus, a Sicilian poet who predated Euripides by more than a century, used the idea of the Trojan War having been sparked by an eidolon of Helen, not Helen herself. Euripides follows on this tradition (despite having placed the real Helen at Troy in some of his other plays) and shows the true Helen suffering from the infamy caused by her eidolon, which was created by Hera to subvert Aphrodite’s bribe to Paris in the events leading to the Trojan War.
In Helen, the phantom Helen never actually appears on stage, though it figures prominently throughout the first half of the play. It is the primary symbol in Euripides’s exploration of appearance versus reality, the root cause of the disjunction in how Helen is perceived versus how she really is. We learn from Menelaos’s opening monologue that the phantom Helen survived the shipwreck and is now with him in Egypt, sheltering in a cave along the coastline. It is the disappearance of the eidolon from that cave, at the very moment that Menelaos encounters the real Helen at the palace doors, that ultimately offers the proof that convinces Menelaos of his wife’s story. In this way, the phantom Helen both serves to underscore the appearance-versus-reality theme and provides a useful literary device for resolving the tension between the reunited husband and wife.
The Tomb of Proteus
The stage setting for Helen is relatively simple, dominated by the doors of King Theoklymenos’s palace. There is, however, one more element, and it figures prominently in the story: the tomb of the late King Proteus, standing off to one side. The tomb is mentioned in the opening scene, as Helen closes her monologue: “[This] is why I’ve come, loyal to my vows to Menelaos, to the tomb of Proteus as a suppliant to pray for their preservation” (70-73). Later, Menelaos also interacts with the tomb, going to hide in its shadows as Helen re-emerges from the palace. For both Helen and Menelaos, the tomb is a symbol of lost hopes: If King Proteus were still alive, then Helen would still be under his protection, and Menelaos would find an open welcome and a reunion with his wife uncomplicated by danger or threat. As it is, though, Proteus is dead, and his death opens the way for the challenge of Theoklymenos’s intentions to complicate matters for both Helen and Menelaos. Thus, in both of their opening scenes, they are shown going to the tomb in the hope of finding some shred of protection there.
The tomb of Proteus also represents another element of the story: the moral obligations that the living still owe to the dead. This idea is present in some of Helen’s anguished reflections on those who have fallen in the Trojan War, but it comes to the foreground in her interactions with Theonöe. There in the presence of the tomb, Helen pleads for Theonöe to be true to her father’s memory, and to do with Helen what Proteus would have done: to honor the vow to preserve her until she could be safely reunited with Menelaos. Menelaos, for his part, makes a similar plea but addresses it to the tomb itself, and Proteus’s spirit within it: “O ancient spirit, inmate of this marble, I claim my debt from you” (1033-34). The tomb, then, becomes a direct symbol for Theonöe’s obligations to the memory and character of her father. Euripides not only extends this theme to Theonöe, but also draws a moral application for everyone in his audience: “The child of a fine man can win no glory greater than matching the example of his life” (1011-13).
Finally, Helen draws on the theme of one’s continuing obligations to the dead in laying out her ruse to Theoklymenos. Still standing in the presence of Proteus’s tomb, she makes the case that she must carry out the customary obligations to her husband’s memory by performing the appropriate rites. The tomb of Theoklymenos’s father, there in front of him the whole time, would have added significant power to her argument.
Ships and Shipwrecks
Ships and shipwrecks were a very common set of symbols in ancient Greek literature. While many readers today think of Greece as a single landmass, a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea, the ancient Greek civilization, when considered as a whole, was a maritime civilization that stretched across multiple inland seas. It reached from outposts on the far shores of the Black Sea in the east to colonies in the western reaches of the Mediterranean, with major urban centers not only in Greece, but also in modern Turkey, Italy, and Sicily. Ships, then, were the means by which this vast civilization maintained its contacts. Athens, in particular—the urban polis for which most of the flowering of Greek literature was written—had become a maritime power in Euripides’s day, with its navy as its highest pride. Ships were a central hallmark of their civilization, a symbol of their society’s strength. By the same token, the tragedy of shipwrecks was one of the most common motifs in Greek literature, representing a truly existential threat to their society.
While no ships are on stage in Helen, their presence shapes the narrative. It is the wreck of Menelaos’s ship that brings him to Egypt in the first place. After his reunion with Helen, they quickly realize the necessity of a ship for their escape: “How can we save ourselves […] when we haven’t got a ship?” (line 1136). The goal of their ruse to trick Theoklymenos is essentially the acquisition of a ship. The ship represents their freedom to sail away and return to their home. However, the symbolic role of ships also includes an element of being left in the hands of fate. To set out on the sea in a ship was to leave oneself open to the capricious oversight of the gods, and so Helen and Menelaos’s voyage is lavished with prayers and blessings at the end of the play (1591-1608; 1759-61).
Related Titles
By Euripides
