Kaine Helene : on Euripides' Helen

Aristophanes called Euripides' Helen την καιην Ελενην(Thesm., 850). What did he mean by this? The new characterization of Helen is not the only innovation of the play. Euripides intended to create something more novel in this work. From the beginning of the play, Helen already knows much about the divine background and has a sense of her destiny because of prophecy by Hermes (εποζ Ερμου 56-7). The word τυχη appears in the play frequently and every character. Helen and Menelaus as well, feels his own conduct ordained by τυχη. When one knows one's own fate, or when one regards one's fate as τυχη, one can no longer enact the role of tragic hero. Helen's character differs from that of Medea and Phaedra in this respect. In this play, the old portress and the servant of Theoclymenus, the so-called small characters, do not speak less actively (ουδεν ηττου Aristophanes ; Frogs, 949) than the leading characters. This can be called democratic (δημοκρατικον ibid., 952), but "democracy" is the contrary concept of tragedy. The proportion of stichomythia in each play of Euripides grows higher with the lapse of time (Medea ; 5.7%, Helen ; 16.5%). This indicates that the number of dialogues, instead of monologues, are increasing in the scenes, and that the author's interest in the psychological analysis of the leading character is progressively declining. "The new Helen" does not refer only to the new characterization of Helen. We are struck by the frequent recurrence of the contrast between onoma and pragma. The belief in the significance of a name and its relationship with the person or the object that bears it was common and unshaken before the sophistic period, but the disjunction between onoma and pragma becomes clear with the lapse of time. We can see striking examples of it, not only in Helen, but also in Iphigeneia among the Taurians(504) and Orestes(390). Thucydides also felt a difference between the name and the reality of an object (III, 82, 4). It seems that the disjunction of onoma and pragma in this drama reflects a social phenomenon in the late fifth century of Greece. The name does not always signify the reality of the object and the human intellect can not recognize this fact. Teucer and Menelaus can not distinguish the true Helen from the false, because their eyes are diseased (ομμανοοει 575). This diseased eye symbolizes an intellectual decline in the late fifth century of Athens. Following the idea "Phantom Helen" that Stesichorus worked out, Euripides represents a new tendency of society to deviate from the traditional standard. This play must be seen in that social context. Helen is not only a romantic tragicomedy or melodrama, but a realistic drama that describes the phases of the age, and in this respect we can call this play the new Helen -την καινην 'Ελενην.