Helen

Helen, the titular character of the play, dominates the narrative from beginning to end. She is a well-known character from the mythic history of Greece, the daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, although the story of her conception by Zeus, rather than by her father, Tyndareus, was commonly accepted. She was known as the most beautiful woman in the world, and she was married to Menelaos, the King of Sparta. The goddess Aphrodite then offered Helen as a prize to Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy, if he should decide in her favor in a bet between the goddesses as to who was the most beautiful. Paris, as the story goes, chose for Aphrodite and then went to collect his prize, the Spartan queen, who accompanied him back to Troy. Euripides, however, amends this backstory and claims that the Helen whom Paris stole to Troy was in fact a lookalike phantom created by the goddess Hera in an attempt to undermine Aphrodite’s plans.

Euripides introduces Helen as a tragic character, though a sympathetic one. Her reputation has been unjustly maligned by the actions of the phantom Helen, and so the whole weight of the