107: Euripides: Helen

Background: "The play Helen tells a radical departure of the Troy/Paris story [building on plot ideas of Stesichorus and of Herodotus], beginning under the premise that rather than running off to Troy with Paris, Helen was actually whisked away to Egypt by the gods.

The Helen who escaped with Paris, betraying her husband and her country and initiating the ten-year conflict, was actually an eidolon, a phantom look-alike.

After Paris was promised the most beautiful woman in the world by Aphrodite and he judged her fairer than her fellow goddesses Athena and Hera, Hera ordered Hermes to replace Helen, Paris' assumed prize, with a fake. Thus, the real Helen has been languishing in Egypt for years, while the Greeks and Trojans alike curse her for her supposed infidelity.

In Egypt, king Proteus, who had protected Helen, has died. His son Theoclymenus, the new king with a penchant for killing Greeks, intends to marry Helen, who after all these years remains loyal to her husband Menelaus."

A collection we have used earlier has a translation of Euripides's Helen:

Mary Lefkowitz and James Romm, eds. The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Modern Library Classics)

Table of Contents of the whole collection:

• Persians ; The Oresteia: Agamemnon ; The Oresteia: Libation bearers ; The Oresteia: Eumenides ; Prometheus Bound / Aeschylus
• Oedipus the king ; Antigone ; Electra ; Oedipus at Colonus / Sophocles
• Alcestis ; Medea ; Hippolytus ; Electra ; Trojan women ; Helen ; Bacchae / Euripides.

The Greek text, edited by Gilbert Murray, is online on the Perseus Hopper at https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0099