Stasimon 1
[Episode]
Let me go! I have come here with enough pain.
Helen
Will you leave me, and take that phantom bride away?
590
Menelaos
Yes, and fare well, for your likeness to Helen.
Helen
I am ruined! I found you, my husband, but I will not have you.
Menelaos
The greatness of my troubles over there convinces me; you do not.
Helen
Ah me! Who was ever more miserable than I am?
Those whom I love best are leaving me, and I shall never reach the Hellenes or my own country.
595
Messenger
(entering hurriedly.) Menelaos, I find you, after taking great trouble to look for you, wandering over the whole of this foreign land; I am sent by the comrades whom you left behind.
Menelaos
What is it? Surely you are not being plundered by the foreigners?
600
Messenger
It is a miracle; what I say is of less account than what happened.
Menelaos
Tell me; for, judging by this eagerness, you are certainly bringing something new.
Messenger
I say that you have suffered countless labors in vain.
Menelaos
You are mourning over old sorrows; what is your message?
Messenger
Your wife has disappeared, taken up into the folds of the unseen air; she is hidden in heaven, and as she left the hallowed cave where we were keeping her, she said this: Miserable Phrygians, and all the Achaeans! On my account you were dying by the banks of Skamandros,
605
through Hera’s contrivance, for you thought that Paris had Helen when he didn’t. But I, since I have stayed my appointed time, and kept the laws of fate, will now depart into the sky, my father; but the unhappy daughter of Tyndareus,
610
guilty in no way, has borne an evil name without reason.
615
Welcome, daughter of Leda, were you here after all? I was just announcing your departure up to the hidden starry realms, not knowing that you had a winged body. I will not let you mock us like this again,
for you gave your fill of trouble to your husband and his allies in Ilion.
620
Menelaos
This is the meaning of that; her words have turned out to be true. O longed-for day, that has given you to my arms!
Helen
O Menelaos, dearest of men, the time was long, but delight is just now ours.
625
With joy I have found my husband, friends, I have embraced my dear one, after long days of blazing light.
Menelaos
And I have found you; but I have many questions about t; now I do not know what to begin with first.
630
Helen
I am so happy, the hair rises on my head and my tears run down. I fling my arms around your neck,
dear husband, to have my delight.
635
Menelaos
O dearest sight! I have no fault to find: I have my wife, the daughter of Zeus and Leda; your brothers on their snow-white steeds
blessed you, blessed you at an earlier time, while torches blazed, but the god who took you from my home is driving us on to another fortune, better than this. An evil that was good brought you together with me, your husband
640
after a long time, but may I still benefit by my good luck.
645
Chorus
May you benefit indeed, and I join in the same prayer; for when there are two, it is not possible for one to be unhappy and the other not.
Helen
My dear friends, I no longer sigh or grieve over what is past.
I have my husband, for whom I have been waiting to come from Troy for many years.
650
