The Greek Plays

by The Greek Plays- Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles

  from getting to the tomb! He wants to give me

  in marriage to that tyrant! I don’t want it!

  MENELAUS: I’m not a kidnapper. Nor sent by bad guys.

  HELEN: And anyway, your clothes are very dirty.

  MENELAUS: Stop, don’t be scared, no need to dart away.

  HELEN: I’ll stand here, since I’m touching this safe tomb.

  MENELAUS: Who are you, woman? Who is this I see?

  HELEN: And who are you? Our questions are the same.

  MENELAUS: I never saw a woman more like her.

  560

  HELEN: Gods! It’s a god, to recognize one’s love!

  MENELAUS: Are you a Hellene? Or a native here?

  HELEN: I am Hellenic. And what about you?

  MENELAUS: I never saw a woman so like Helen!

  HELEN: And you’re like Menelaus! I can’t speak.

  MENELAUS: You’re right, I am that poor, unlucky man.

  HELEN: At last you’re here! Come here, to your wife’s arms!

  MENELAUS: What kind of “wife”? Get your hands off my cloak.

  HELEN: My father Tyndareus gave me to you.

  MENELAUS: Light-bearing Hecate, send gentle ghosts!

  570

  HELEN: I’m not a nightmare vision. You can see me!

  MENELAUS: But surely I’m not husband to two wives?

  HELEN: What other woman has you as her husband?

  MENELAUS: The one I brought from Troy. She’s in the cave.

  HELEN: You have no other wife. It’s only me.

  MENELAUS: I can’t be thinking straight. It’s mental illness.

  HELEN: Look at me. Don’t you see? I am your wife!

  MENELAUS: Your body’s similar, but nothing’s certain.

  HELEN: Just look! What could be clearer proof than this?

  MENELAUS: You do look like her. I won’t argue there.

  580

  HELEN: What better teacher for you than your eyes?

  MENELAUS: I don’t get this: I have another wife!

  HELEN: I didn’t go to Troy. That was a phantom.

  MENELAUS: Who manufactures living, seeing bodies?

  HELEN: The gods made you a woman out of air.

  MENELAUS: Which god? Your story is improbable.

  HELEN: Hera, so Paris wouldn’t take me, swapped me.

  MENELAUS: But how? So you were here, and in Troy, too?

  HELEN: Names can be everywhere. A body, not.

  MENELAUS: I’ve had enough of trouble. Let me go!

  590

  HELEN: You’re leaving me? For It? That emptiness?

  MENELAUS: Yes. Have a good one, since you look like Helen.

  HELEN: Disaster! I found you, but not as husband.

  MENELAUS: My pain at Troy persuades me. You do not.

  HELEN: Oh, who has ever suffered more than me?

  My loved ones leave me, and I’ll never come

  to my own country, where the Hellenes live.

  SERVANT: I’ve found you, Menelaus! I’ve been searching

  all over this here foreign land for you,

  sent by your men, the ones you left behind.

  600

  MENELAUS: What? Did barbarians rob you? No!

  SERVANT: It’s a mistake. That word’s too small for this.

  MENELAUS: Tell me. Your haste suggests you bring big news.

  SERVANT: I’ll tell you how your work was all for nothing.

  MENELAUS: Those are old tears. But what’s the news you bring?

  SERVANT: Your wife is gone, into the folds of sky.

  She’s taken. She’s invisible. She’s hidden,

  in heaven. She has left the holy cave

  where we were guarding her. She said: “Poor Trojans!

  and Greeks who died for me beside the banks

  610

  of the Scamander, all through Hera’s schemes.

  Paris, you thought, had Helen. He did not.

  I stayed as long as I was meant to stay,

  and now I’m going back, to Sky, my father.

  I’ve served my destiny.” Poor Helen got a

  bad reputation she did not deserve.

  (Seeing Helen)

  Oh, hello, Leda’s daughter. So you’re here?

  I was just telling how you’d gone away

  to nestle with the stars! I didn’t know

  that you could fly. But you won’t trick us twice!

  620

  I won’t allow it! You’ve caused trouble enough,

  at Troy, both for your husband and his allies.

  MENELAUS: Well, what do you know! Her words have turned out true!

  This is the day of happiness I longed for,

  when I can take my Helen in my arms.*24

  HELEN: (singing)*25 Oh, my darling! My dearest of men, Menelaus!

  It’s been such a long time! But now what a joy!

  Women, I’m so happy! I have my husband back.

  I get to wrap my loving arms around him,

  after so many suns have spent their light.

  630

  MENELAUS: Me, too! I have so many things to say!

  I don’t know where to start right now.

  HELEN: I am so glad, my eyes are wet with tears.

  My hair is prickling up on end like feathers!

  Husband, what joy it is

  to throw my arms around you.

  MENELAUS: It’s so good to see you! I can’t blame you!

  I have you, my own wife, the child of Zeus and Leda.*26

  HELEN: Beneath the marriage torches, my brothers, on white horses,

  640

  blessed me, yes, they blessed me.

  MENELAUS: The past is gone. The god once took you away from me,

  but leads you now to a different life,

  a better future.

  HELEN: A piece of good bad luck brought us together,

  husband. It took a while. But now, let me enjoy it!

  MENELAUS: Yes, be happy! I pray the same as you.

  We two are a team: if one is sad, so is the other.

  HELEN: (to the Chorus) Friends! Friends!

  No longer will I grieve or cry about the past.

  650

  I have him! I’ve got him! My husband! My husband!

  I waited and waited so many long years for him to come back from Troy.

  MENELAUS: You have me and I have you. I have lived through

  so many dawns of suffering, but now I see the light:

  it was the goddess. Now my tears

  are more for joy than sorrow.

  HELEN: What can I say? Whoever would have guessed it!

  So unexpectedly, I hold you close.

  MENELAUS: And I hold you: the wife I thought had gone

  to Ida’s city and to poor Troy’s towers.

  660

  But by the gods, how did you leave my house?

  HELEN: Don’t, no! You’re going back to the terrible beginning.

  No, don’t! You’re asking for a story that hurts too much.

  MENELAUS: Tell me! I have to hear. This all comes from the gods.

  HELEN: Curse that story

  which I’m about to tell.

  MENELAUS: But tell it anyway! It’s sweet to hear of sorrow.

  HELEN: The ship didn’t fly to the bed

  of that foreign young man.

  My desire didn’t fly to adultery.

  MENELAUS: What spirit or what fate took you from your homeland?

  670

  HELEN: Husband, it was the child of Zeus and Maia

  who brought me here to the Nile.

  MENELAUS: Amazing! Who sent him? An extraordinary story!

  HELEN: I cannot stop crying, my eyes are a flood of tears,

  since I was destroyed by the wife of Zeus.

  MENELAUS: Hera? But what was her motive in doing us harm?

  HELEN: A curse on the baths and the springs

  where the goddesses sparkled their beauty,

  then went to the
Judgment!

  MENELAUS: But why did that Judgment cause Hera to hurt you?*27

  HELEN: To take me from Paris—

  680

  MENELAUS: But why? Tell me that.

  HELEN: Because Aphrodite had promised me to him.

  MENELAUS: Oh, poor you!

  HELEN: Poor me indeed! So that’s why she brought me to Egypt.

  MENELAUS: I hear what you’re saying: she gave me a phantom in exchange.

  HELEN: And Mother! What you’ve suffered!

  O, my home!

  MENELAUS: What’s this?

  HELEN: My mother is dead. She hanged herself, twisting

  the rope round her neck, in shame at my ruined marriage.

  MENELAUS: I’m sorry. And is there news of our daughter, Hermione?

  HELEN: Husband, she is unmarried, she has no children.

  690

  She’s mourning for my marriage—my non-marriage.

  MENELAUS: Paris sacked my whole house, top to bottom.

  HELEN: The situation ruined you, and countless

  bronze-armored Greeks.

  God cast me out from my home, away from my city, away from you,

  accursed and doomed,

  when I left my house and my bed—though I didn’t leave!—

  for that wicked adultery.

  CHORUS:*28 If in the future all your luck is good,

  that would be recompense for this bad past.

  700

  SERVANT: You two! Menelaus! Give me, too,

  the joy I see but don’t yet understand.

  MENELAUS: Yes, old man! You can share the news with us.

  SERVANT: This woman didn’t cause the war in Troy?*29

  MENELAUS: No. The gods tricked us. In our arms we held

  an image made of cloud—the source of ruin.

  SERVANT: We suffered for no reason? For a cloud?

  MENELAUS: Yes. Hera did it, and that goddess contest.

  SERVANT: Then is this really her? Is this your wife?

  710

  MENELAUS: It’s her. Believe me when I tell you this.

  SERVANT: Daughter! How complicated, hard to read

  the gods are; how they turn things upside-down!

  They whirl things round I guess. One person suffers,

  another doesn’t, but then gets destroyed.

  There’s never constancy in present luck.

  You and your husband had your share of troubles:

  he suffered from the war, and you from words.

  His work was all for nothing. Now he’s got

  the greatest blessings, with no work at all.

  720

  You didn’t shame your father or your brothers,

  or do the things that you were said to do.

  I’m thinking of your wedding songs again,

  remembering the torches that I held,

  running beside the four-horsed chariot.

  As this man’s bride you left your happy home.

  A servant who won’t share his masters’ lives,

  joy in their joy and suffer in their pain,

  is bad! By birth I’m just a hired hand;

  but count me with the slave gentility.

  730

  My mind is free although my name is not.

  Better to have one evil thing than both:

  either be base and wicked in your heart,

  or be obedient to other people.

  MENELAUS: Old man, we’ve been through many things together:

  shields side by side we stood, we strove, we suffered.

  Now share my good luck, too: go tell my comrades,

  the ones who still survive, what I’ve discovered,

  and my good fortune. Tell them to wait there

  beside the shore, to see how things turn out

  740

  in all the challenges that I still face,

  trying to steal this woman out of Egypt.

  Watch for a way that we can get together

  and manage to escape these foreigners.

  SERVANT: I will, my master.—As for prophecy,

  it’s useless, full of lies! I see that now.

  There’s nothing solid in the flash of fire

  or in the cries of birds. In fact, it’s stupid

  even to think that birds would help us humans.

  Calchas said nothing, made no sign at all,

  750

  when he could see us dying for a cloud.

  Neither did Helenus. The town was sacked

  for nothing. You may say, it was Zeus’s will.

  Then why do we prophesy? We ought to pray

  only for blessings. Give up divination!

  It’s all a trick! No one gets rich from sitting

  beside the prophet’s fire and doing nothing.

  Forethought and brains can tell the future best.

  CHORUS: You’re right. If you can keep the gods as friends,

  760

  that’s the best kind of omen for the house.

  HELEN: All right then: things so far are going well.

  But my poor husband, how did you escape

  from Troy? It does no good to know. And yet,

  in love we crave to learn our loved one’s pain.

  MENELAUS: Your single question has so many answers.

  Why tell who drowned in the Aegean Sea,

  when Nauplius set the beacon-fires to wreck us?*30

  I trekked from Crete to Libya and on,

  to Perseus’ Tower.*31 Were I to fill you full

  770

  of words, I’d suffer as I told my troubles

  as when I felt them—they’d hurt me twice over.

  HELEN: You told me more already than I asked for.

  So leave the rest aside: just tell me this—

  how long you drifted on the salty sea.

  MENELAUS: I spent ten years in Troy, and in addition

  sailed round and round the sea for seven more.

  HELEN: Oh, what a long time! You poor thing! And now,

  escaping that, you’ve come here to your death.

  MENELAUS: What’s that? What did you say? You’re killing me!

  780

  HELEN: Hurry and leave this land, quick as you can!

  The master of the house is going to kill you.

  MENELAUS: What did I do to earn this punishment?

  HELEN: Your sudden coming here impedes my wedding.

  MENELAUS: Who planned to marry you? This bed is mine!

  HELEN: A rapist! I’d have had to suffer rape!

  MENELAUS: A private citizen? Or this land’s tyrant?

  HELEN: The master of the land, the son of Proteus.

  MENELAUS: That woman at the door—I get her riddle!

  HELEN: What door? Which foreign gate excluded you?

  790

  MENELAUS: This one, when I was wandering as a beggar.

  HELEN: Asking for food? Oh, no! Oh, this is awful!

  MENELAUS: That’s what I did, but let’s not call it that.

  HELEN: Now you know everything about my wedding.

  MENELAUS: I don’t know if you’ve stayed out of his bed.

  HELEN: I’ll tell you: I have kept my bed untouched.

  MENELAUS: What proof is there? Though if it’s true, I love it—

  HELEN: You see my squalid camp beside this tomb?

  MENELAUS: I see some nasty straw. What’s that to you?

  HELEN: It’s where I’m praying, to escape his bed.

  MENELAUS: Is there no altar? Is this a foreign custom?

  800

  HELEN: The tomb protected me just like a temple.

  MENELAUS: So I can’t take you home with me by ship?

  HELEN: Your future is a sword, not bed with me.

  MENELAUS: If so, I am the unhappiest of mortals!

  HELEN: Then run away! You need not be embarrassed.

  MENELAUS: And leave you? When I just sacked Troy for you?

  HELEN: Better than let my marriage kill us both!<
br />
  MENELAUS: It’s cowardly! Unworthy of great Troy!

  HELEN: Maybe you want to kill the king? You can’t!

  810

  MENELAUS: Then can his body not be pierced by iron?

  HELEN: Daring the impossible is stupid!

  MENELAUS: I should say nothing, let my hands be bound?

  HELEN: You’re in a tricky place. You need a plan.

  MENELAUS: Better to die in action than do nothing.

  HELEN: There’s just one possibility that might save us.

  MENELAUS: Does it take money, courage, or smart words?

  HELEN: If the king doesn’t know that you’ve arrived—

  MENELAUS: No one knows who I am! So who would tell him?

  HELEN: He has inside an ally like a god.

  820

  MENELAUS: A voice that’s nestled there inside the house?

  HELEN: No, it’s his sister. She’s called Theonoë.

  MENELAUS: A priestly name.*32 So tell me what she does.

  HELEN: Well, she’s omniscient. She’ll tell him you’re here.

  MENELAUS: I’m dead then! It’s impossible to hide!

  HELEN: Perhaps if we beseech her, we’ll persuade her!

  MENELAUS: To do what? What’s this hope you’re building up to?

  HELEN: Just not to tell her brother that you’re here.

  MENELAUS: If we persuade her, could we cross the border?

  HELEN: Yes, easily, with her. In secret, never.

  830

  MENELAUS: You talk to her! One woman to another.

  HELEN: Of course I’ll do it, and I’ll touch her knees.

  MENELAUS: But if she turns us down, rejects our pleas?

  HELEN: You’ll die. And I’ll be forced to marry him.

  MENELAUS: Traitor! Your talk of force is all excuses!

  HELEN: I swear a holy oath, on your own life!

  MENELAUS: To what? To die? And never to remarry?

  HELEN: I’ll die by that same sword and lie beside you.

  MENELAUS: On these conditions take my hand: let’s shake!

  HELEN: I promise, if you die, I’ll leave the light.

  840

  MENELAUS: And if I lose you, I will end my life.

  HELEN: How can we die an honorable death?

  MENELAUS: I’ll kill you on the tomb, then kill myself.

  But first we’ll struggle in a mighty contest.

  The prize is: bed with you. Come one and all!

  I will not shame the glory won from Troy,

  nor when I come to Greece will I be shamed

  —I who robbed Thetis of her son Achilles,

  and watched when Ajax killed himself, and Nestor

  850

  losing his son.*33 Then shall I flinch to die,

  for my own wife? I will not! If the gods

  are wise, they will embrace with gentle earth

  and burial, the man who dies with courage

  in battle. But the coward they’ll reject,