when we have buried my body in the empty tomb?HelenI will urge him to give me a vessel, from which I shall have the offerings from your tomb let down into the sea’s embrace.MenelaosYou have spoken well, except for one thing: if he commands you to set up a tomb on the dry land, your pretext comes to nothing.HelenBut I will say it is not the custom in Hellas to bury those who have died at sea on the dry land.MenelaosYou are setting this right, too; then I will sail with you, and help let down the funeral offerings, in the same ship.HelenYou must above all be at hand,with your sailors who escaped from the wreck.MenelaosBe sure that if I have a ship at anchor, they will be posted, man beside man, each with his sword.HelenYou must direct everything; only let there be winds in our sails to guide us, and a speedy ship.MenelaosIt will be so; for the deities will bring my troubles to an end. But from whom will you say that you heard I was dead?HelenFrom you; allege that you were the only one to escape death, when you were sailing with the son of Atreus, and that you saw him dead.MenelaosIt is true that these rags thrown around my bodywill bear witness with me as to the shipwreck.HelenThey have come at the right time, although then they seemed an ill-timed loss. Perhaps that misery may turn to good fortune.MenelaosShould I to enter the house with you, or am I to sit quietly here at this tomb?HelenStay here; for if he does something harsh to you, this tomb and your sword would protect you. But I will go into the house, cut off my hair, exchange my white robe for a dark one, and tear my cheek with nails that make the flesh bloody.For the contest is a great one, and I see two turns of the scale: either I must die if I am detected in my plot, or else come home and save you as well.Lady Hera, you who lie in the bed of Zeus, grant relief from their labors to two pitiable creatures;we beg you, casting our arms straight towards heaven, where you have your home in an embroidery of stars. And you, who won the prize of beauty at the price of my marriage, Kypris, daughter of Dione, do not destroy me utterly. You have maltreated me enough before now,handing over my name, though not my body, to barbarians. Let me die, if you want to kill me, in my native land. Why are you so insatiable for mischief, practising arts of love, deceits, and treacherous schemes, and magic spells that bring bloodshed on families?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,