Stasimon 1
[Episode]
Dear friends, I welcome your advice. Come in, come into the house, to learn within about my struggles.
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Chorus
You are calling on one who is wholly willing.
Helen
Oh, what an unhappy day! What tearful word shall I hear, unhappy as I am?
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Chorus
Do not be a prophetess of sorrow, dear friend, anticipating lamentation.
Helen
What has my poor husband suffered? Does he see the light and the sun’s chariot and the paths of the stars? Or does he have a lasting fate
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among the dead beneath the earth?
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Chorus
Take a brighter view of the future, whatever will happen.
Helen
For I call on you, I swear to you, Eurotas green with watery reeds,
if this rumor of my husband’s death is true—and what was obscure in those words?—I will stretch a deadly noose about my neck, or drive inward a murderous thrust of slaughter that gushes from the throat,
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a contest of the blade through my flesh, as a sacrifice to the three goddesses and to the son of Priam, who once sat on the hollows of Ida, near the ox-stalls.
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Chorus
May sorrow be turned aside elsewhere, and may your lot be fortunate!
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Helen
Oh, unhappy Troy! Through deeds not done by yourself, you are ruined, and have suffered pitiably; for the gift that Kypris gave me has caused much blood
and many tears; it has added grief to grief and tear to tear, sorrows. . . . Mothers have lost their children and virgin sisters of the slain have cut off their hair by the swollen tide of Phrygian Skamandros.
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And Hellas has cried aloud, aloud, and broken forth in wailing, beating her head, and drenching her soft-skinned cheek with the bloody strokes of her nails.
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O maiden Kallisto, blessed once in Arcadia, who climbed into the bed of Zeus on four paws, how much happier was your lot than my mother’s, you who in the form of a shaggy-limbed beast—the bearing of a lioness with your fierce eye—changed your burden of sorrow;
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and also the one whom Artemis once drove from her chorus, as a deer with horns of gold, the Titan girl, daughter of Merops, because of her loveliness; but the beauty of my body has destroyed the Dardanian towers, it has destroyed them and
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Menelaos
O Pelops, who once held that chariot-race contest with Oinomaos over Pisa, if only, when you were persuaded to make a banquet for the gods, you had left your life then, inside the gods,
before you ever begot my father, Atreus, to whom were born, from his marriage with Airope, Agamemnon and myself, Menelaos, a famous pair; for I believe that I carried a mighty army—and I say this not in boast—in ships to Troy,
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no tyrant commanding any troops by force, but leading the young men of Hellas by voluntary consent. And some of these can be counted no longer alive, others as having a joyful escape from the sea, bringing home again names thought to be of the dead.
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But I wander miserably over the swelling waves of the gray ocean, ever since I sacked the towers of Ilion; and although I long to come home, I am not thought worthy by the gods to achieve this. I have sailed to Libya’s deserts and all its inhospitable landing-places;
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and whenever I draw near my native land, the blast drives me back again, and no favoring wind has ever entered my sails to let me come home.
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And now I am cast up on this shore, a miserable shipwrecked sailor who has lost his friends; and my ship is
broken into many pieces against the rocks. But out of its cleverly-wrought fastenings the keel was left, on which I made my difficult escape by an unexpected chance, and also Helen with me, whom I dragged away from Troy. But I do not know the name of this country
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and its people; for I was embarrassed to burst into a crowd and make inquiries, and so I concealed these shabby clothes, in shame over my misfortune. For whenever a man of high degree is badly off, he falls into an unaccustomed state which is worse than that of one who has long been unfortunate.
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But poverty is wearing me away; for I have neither food, nor clothes around my body; one can compare what I am wearing to rags cast out of the ship. The sea snatched away all the robes I once wore, splendid clothes and ornaments. Deep in a cave
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I hid the woman who caused all my troubles, and have come here, after compelling those of my friends who survived to guard my wife. I have come alone, seeking help for those friends there, if I may find it somehow after careful search.
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When I saw this home, surrounded by walls, and the majestic gateways of some prosperous man, I came near; sailors can hope to get something from wealthy homes; but from those who have no livelihood—they could not help us, even if they wanted to.
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Hello! Is there some gatekeeper who might come from the house and announce my troubles within?
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Old woman
Who’s at the door? Get away from the house and don’t annoy my master by standing at the court-yard gate! Or else you will die because you are
