About the work
Helen is a tragedy by Euripides, first staged in 412 BC at the Dionysia in Athens as part of a tetralogy that also included the now-lost Andromeda. Rather than following the familiar legend, Euripides has only a phantom Helen, conjured by Hera, sail to Troy with Paris, while the real Helen is carried off to Egypt by Hermes — a device the playwright drew from the poet Stesichorus and combined with the Egyptian setting used by the historian Herodotus.
Plot
For seventeen years Helen waits at the Egyptian court, first protected by the dead king Proteus, then pursued by his son Theoclymenus, who wants to force her into marriage. When the shipwrecked Menelaus washes ashore, the couple only recognise each other once the phantom dissolves into thin air. By staging a funeral rite for the supposedly drowned Menelaus, they obtain a ship and escape together to Sparta.
Cultural significance
Just a year later, Aristophanes referenced the play in his comedy Thesmophoriazusae as "the new Helen", poking fun at its tricks. Kindlers Literaturlexikon reads Helen, in which the goddess of chance Tyche governs events, as an early sign of Hellenistic sensibility, with the motif living on in later Hellenistic comedy and prose fiction.