Euripides' HELEN Complete

Translated by E. Coleridge.

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Leader: Piteous thy pleading, and a piteous object thou! But I fain
would hear what Menelaus will say to save his life.

Menelaus: I will not deign to throw myself at thy knees, or wet mine
eyes with tears; for were I to play the coward, I should most foully
blur my Trojan fame. And yet men say it shows a noble soul to let
the tear-drop fall in misfortune. But that will not be the honourable
course that I will choose in preference to bravery, if what I shall
say is honourable. Art thou disposed to save a stranger seeking in
mere justice to regain his wife, why then restore her and save us
likewise; if not, this will not be the first by many a time that I
have suffered, though thou wilt get an evil name. All that I deem
worthy of me and honest, all that will touch thy heart most nearly,
will I utter at the tomb of thy sire with regret for his loss. Old
king beneath this tomb of stone reposing, pay back thy trust! I ask
of thee my wife whom Zeus sent hither unto thee to keep for me. I
know thou canst never restore her to me thyself, for thou art dead;
but this thy daughter will never allow her father once so glorious,
whom I invoke in his grave, to bear a tarnished name; for the decision
rests with her now. Thee, too, great god of death, I call to my assistance,
who hast received full many a corpse, slain by me for Helen, and art
keeping thy wage; either restore those dead now to life again, or
compel the daughter to show herself a worthy equal of her virtuous
sire, and give me back my wife. But if ye will rob me of her, I will
tell you that which she omitted in her speech. Know then, maiden,
I by an oath am bound, first, to meet thy brother sword to sword,
when he or I must die-there is no alternative. But if he refuse to
meet me fairly front to front, and seek by famine to chase away us
suppliants twain at this tomb, I am resolved to slay Helen, and then
to plunge this two-edged sword through my own heart, upon the top
of the sepulchre, that our streaming blood may trickle down the tomb;
and our two corpses will be lying side by side upon this polished
slab, a source of deathless grief to thee, and to thy sire reproach.
Never shall thy brother wed Helen, nor shall any other; I will bear
her hence myself, if not to my house, at any rate to death. And why
this stern resolve? Were I to resort to women's ways and weep, I should
be a pitiful creature, not a man of action. Slay me, if it seems thee
good; I will not die ingloriously; but better yield to what I say,
that thou mayst act with justice, and I regain my wife.

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