If you were only moderate, in other ways you are by nature the sweetest of gods for men; I don’t deny it. Exeunt Helen and Menelaos.
ChorusLet me call on you, beneath leafy haunts, sitting in your place of song, you, the most sweetly singing bird,tearful nightingale, oh, come, trilling through your tawny throat, to aid me in my lament, as I sing the piteous woes of Helen andthe tearful fate of Trojan women under the Achaeans’ spears; when he sped over the surging plains with foreign oar, when he came, came bringing to Priam’s race from Lacedaemonyou, Helen, his unhappy bride—Paris, fatally wedded, under the guidance of Aphrodite. ChorusMany of the Achaeans have breathed out their last amid the spears and hurling stones and have gone to unhappy Hades; their wives have cut off their hair in sorrow,and their homes are left without a bride; an Achaean man, who had only a single ship, lit a blazing beacon on sea-girt Euboia, and destroyed many of them, casting them onto the rocks of Kaphareusand the sea-shores of the Aegean, by the treacherous flame he kindled. The mountains of Malea provided no harbor, in the gusts of the storm, when Menelaos sped far away from his country, bearing on his ships a prize of the barbarian expedition, no prize but strifewith the Danaans, Hera’s holy phantom. ChorusWhat is god, or what is not god, or what is in between— what mortal says he has found it by searching the farthest limit,when he sees divine affairs leaping here and there again and back, in contradictory and unexpected chances? You, Helen, are the daughter of Zeus;for a winged father begot you in Leda’s womb; and then you were proclaimed throughout Hellas, betrayer, faithless, lawless, godless. I do not know whatever certainty is among mortals,but the word of the gods I have found true. ChorusYou are fools, who try to win a reputation for virtue through war and marshalled lines of spears, senselessly putting an end to mortal troubles;for if a bloody quarrel is to decide it, strife will never leave off in the towns of men; by it they won as their lot bed-chambers of Priam’s earth, when they could have set right by discussionthe strife over you, O Helen. And now they are below in Hades’ keeping, and fire has darted onto the walls like the bolt of Zeus, and you are bringing woe on woe . . . .
TheoklymenosGreetings, tomb of my father! For I buried you, Proteus, in the passageway so that I could address you; and always as I leave and enter the house, I, your son Theoklymenos, call on you, father. You servants, take the hounds and hunting netsinto the palace. I have rebuked myself many times; for do we not punish evil men with death? And now I have heard that some Hellene has come openly to the land, without the guards’ notice,either as a spy or thievishly hunting after Helen; he will die if only I can catch him. Ah! But it seems I have found everything in ruins; for the daughter of Tyndareus has deserted her seat at the tomb and has been carried away from the land.Ho there! undo the bars; loose the horses from their stalls, servants, and bring out my chariot, so that the wife whom I long for may not be carried away from this land without my notice, for want of effort.