The ambivalent concept of rescue, present in the title of Francisca Gómez Seijo’s monograph dedicated to Helen of Troy, aptly captures the purpose of this work. While it directly refers to Helen’s physical rescue while she is held captive in Egypt—the plot of Euripides’s tragedy analysed here—it also alludes to another kind of rescue. This second rescue is hermeneutic, being used by Gómez Seijo in an effort to liberate Euripides’s heroine and text from a series of common interpretations that she deems secondary or impertinent. This rescue is achieved by emphasising three aspects that the author believes have been neglected by modern scholarship: the historical, social, and cultural contexts of the work (with particular emphasis on the original target audience); the play’s religious character; and, lastly, the principle of Greek drama that prioritises praxis over ethos. Within this framework, the author proposes a “recharacterisation” of Helen.
In the first chapter, titled Helen’s tragedy revisited, Gómez Seijo critically reviews the interpretative tradition of Euripides’s work, namely the view that it is a comedic, anti-war, and philosophical play. To counter arguments questioning the tragic nature of the work, the author notes that the concept of tragedy in 5th-century BC Athens may have been far broader than what is proposed by the dogmatic Aristotelian definition. The supposedly comedic elements in certain scenes and characters, as well as the irony or parody often attributed to the play, might not be incompatible with its tragic nature. Alternatively, these elements may simply result from a subjective effect on the modern reader, one not shared by the original Athenian spectators.
Regarding the play’s alleged anti-war message, linked to its performance a year after the disastrous Athenian expedition into Sicily, the author finds no clear evidence to support this interpretation. She reminds us that both epics and tragedies are full of reflections that could be seen as pacifistic. However, Gómez Seijo argues that such a message would have been unlikely to resonate or be understood by the socially, ethnically, and culturally heterogenous Athenian public. This audience not only ardently supported the Peloponnesian War but also viewed theatre as a verbal, scenic, musical, and physical experience, rather than as a text meant for interpretive reflection. In light of insufficient evidence, the author concludes that, more than alluding to historic moments of the time it was written, this tragedy aims to reclaim Helen’s innocence and denounce the injustice she suffered (p. 41).
The same kind of argument is applied to the supposed philosophical dimension of the play. Rather than seeing Euripides as a Socratic, subversive rationalist, or his work as a sort of sophistic epideixis inspired by Gorgias or Pythagoras, Gómez Seijo proposes viewing the playwright and this work as a personal, creative, and intellectual response to the central issues plaguing Athenian society. Thus, we cannot dissociate this play from the historical and intellectual realities of its Athenian audience, the majority of whom would be unable to notice a philosophical message in a dramatic, oral spectacle designed primarily to elicit emotions rather than deep thoughts. Through the analysis of various passages, the author argues that the sophistic dichotomy between appearance and reality—between name (onoma) and body (soma)—“is a means to an end, not an end by itself” (p. 57). In other words, the dichotomy is at the service of the pathos of the play, and its identification would not be essential for the spectator to feel moved by the events on stage.
Gómez Seijo also highlights the religious aspect of the play, finding an element there that surpasses the philosophical in importance for interpreting Euripides’s Helen. According to this religious dimension, this play aligns with Homeric tradition and Attic drama in its exploration of conflict between human action and godly designs—a tension resolved through the recognition of divine superiority and the gods’ role as final arbiters of order and justice. Even if the gods’ designs often seem incomprehensible, capricious, or fortuitous to humans, it is through them that the latter may find meaning after a process of suffering and discovery. The main notion is that humans are not abandoned to their fate, but instead enjoy divine protection, even if it is often incomprehensible and arbitrary. In Euripides’s Helen, Gómez Seijo identifies the divine pair Hera and Zeus as the origin and cause of the events that set the dramatic plot in motion. The confusion the characters feel between appearance (onoma) and reality (pragma) would thus be justified by how unknowledgeable and incomprehensible the gods’ designs and actions are. However, by the play’s conclusion, this dichotomy is resolved by the same divine figures that created it; order and justice are restored, and the characters find a happy course for their lives. We may conclude that humans won’t obtain answers or explanations from the gods, that all they get is consolation, hope, and empathy. Thus, Seijo argues, this is an eminently theological text, its epilogue functioning as a sort of summary or creed that the playwright keeps repeating in his other works.
Chapters 2 (The character’s personality: Helen’s εἴδωλα) and 3 (Euripides’s character: a καινή Helen), focus on analysing Helen’s characterisation in Euripides’s play. For contrast, they not only examine the Athenian author’s other works, but also the Homeric epic and Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Gómez Seijo begins by recalling a principle, though not explicitly cited, that Aristotle defined as canon in Poetics: in tragedy, action (praxis) takes precedence over character (ethos). This principle is one of the essential premises for Seijo’s argument. In her words, tragic characters “speak and act according to the dynamic of the action and according to the demands of the dramatic situation they are in” (81). Consequently, both those who see psychological complexity and those who see a lack of coherence in Euripidean characters are wrong. It is futile and anachronistic to analyse Euripides’s Helen through post-Cartesian and post-Freudian criteria that we use to analyse modern literary characters, attempting to find double meanings, ambiguities, and contradictions there. Characters in Greek tragedy act according to the action of the story, as well as the demands of the dramatic situation, which means it is not inconsistent for them to change radically in response to a metabolê or peripateia. According to this logic, it is incorrect to believe Euripides intended for the Helen at the end of his play to be ethically identical to the eidolon associated with her Trojan counterpart. This earlier characterisation would have highlighted the falsehood of her characterisation as a faithful, chaste woman—the way she acts throughout this play. According to this logic, Helen would be the treasonous adulteress that caused the Trojan War under any circumstance. Instead, Gómez Seijo contends that this is truly a new Helen (kainê), whose behaviour is coherent with the dynamic of the plot. This Helen is new, but not because Euripides had cast a negative, opposing image of the Spartan heroine, as is often believed when the speech of the characters is confused with the author’s opinion. Rather, she is new because, while innocent, she still assumes involuntary responsibility for the Trojan War. Gómez Seijo demonstrates how, through doubts, paradoxes, and metaphors, Euripides constructs the image of a Helen that is chaste and innocent—a Helen that, for the first time in Greek literature, renounces her beauty and is willing to deform herself, shaving her beautiful golden hair.
This monograph that Gómez Seijo dedicates to the study of Helen’s character is the result of over ten years of research. This was already the focus of her doctoral thesis, published in 2015. While much of the content in this publication has been drawn from her thesis, it includes reformulations and new topics. Thus, we can deduce that this is a subject matter to which she has devoted long-lasting, sustained engagement. The work now published is a testament to this dedication, revealing not only detailed knowledge of classical texts but also a mastery over the essential bibliography that could be argued to be almost total. This confidence in handling both primary and secondary texts allows her to elevate her discussion to a solid, sophisticated level, marked by critical analysis and innovation.
On one hand, Gómez Seijo challenges the more common and conventional interpretative processes, accusing them of being inadequately adjusted to the historical context of Athenian theatre and contaminated by modern perspectives. On the other hand, her meticulous rereading of Euripides’s Helen unveils some less-considered aspects of her characterisation, as well as the playwright’s “poietic” technique. Both of these insights are most prominently featured in the third chapter of her work.
Regarding her objection to certain interpretations of Euripidean works, the author is right to denounce some anachronisms or highlight the social, economic, ethnic, and intellectual diversity of the Greek audience. Most of this audience would have been incapable of discerning certain philosophical ideas—accessible only to an exclusive group of people through reflective reading—from a spectacle made up of scenery, the spoken word, gestures, dance, and music. She posits that tragedy sought an emotional rather than intellectual effect. This assertion is partially true. In Poetics, Aristotle himself defends dianoia as a central element of tragedy, right alongside lexis. However, we do not need to resort to Aristotle, whose dogmatism concerning the tragic genre may often prove to be limiting and insufficient. Political, ethical, and philosophical reflections, embedded subtly between the lines, are common not only in Euripides but also in the works of other playwrights.
Recognising the significance of audience reception is indeed valid, but only if it does not devalue the creative instance, without which there would be no art. Writing for a stage and for an audience of limited comprehension does not annul the playwright’s own intelligence, culture, ideology, sensibility—in short, his intellectual genius. It is not uncommon for texts from Greek playwrights to be filled with ideas and images that would transcend the immediate comprehension of the majority of spectators during their enactment. An example of this would be the poetic and metaphoric symbolism of the lyrical passages of the chorus in Euripides’s Helen, to which Gómez Seijo devotes little attention. When the text thematically focuses and is steeped in philosophical and linguistic ambiguities, as is the case with this Euripidean tragedy, it becomes even more challenging to discern the nuance or latent messages.
The religious aspect, which Gómez Seijo identifies as central and superior to the philosophical dimension, is another debatable point. With equally strong arguments, it is possible to defend the opposite view: deeming religious conflict as something that serves the preponderant sophistic and parodic game (paignion) that seems to permeate the play. At the very least, this game seems to be intertextual (it is difficult not to see in the Helen-Menelaus pairing as a parodic replica of the Penelope-Odysseus pairing), though Gómez Seijo refutes this. Similarly, it is difficult to watch this tragedy without immediately recalling Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen. While the audience might not have recognised this parallel, Euripides, if not consciously intending it, still at least gave rise to an extraordinary coincidence.
With this in mind, we may conclude that this volume by Gómez Seijo represents a significant and undeniable contribution to Euripidean studies in general. Particularly, it enriches the study of Helen by challenging some interpretative excesses and, most importantly, by refocusing on the original purpose of the text and the context of classical tragedy. However, it is not immune to rebuttals, nor does it silence the interpretative polemic that is found in the best works of art.