Theonoe herself, in an outrageous passage,[666] brings the mockery to a climax: “This very day among the gods there is to be strife and conference concerning thee before the throne of Zeus. Hera, who was thine enemy before, is kindly to thee now, and would bring thee safe to thy home-country with this thy wife, so that Greece may learn how Paris’ love, the gift of Cypris, was but a mockery. But Cypris would fain deny thee thy home-return, that it may never come to light how in Helen’s case she bought the prize of beauty with bridals that were naught. _And the decision lies with me_, whether, as Cypris wishes, I shall destroy thee by revealing thy presence to my brother, or whether I shall join Hera and save thy life.” We should be ill-advised to take this in all earnest as a ludicrous blasphemy. It is graceful trifling. But what is Theonoe—a dread goddess to whom the queen of Heaven sues for aid, or a kind-hearted woman whose strong common-sense might, perhaps, in a circle like that of the dolts and _poseurs_ who fill the stage, raise her to the repute of superhuman wisdom? She is not all playful. When the honour of her dead father is in question, she stirs the heart by her passionate solemnity:— Aye, all that lie in death must meet their bond, And they that live; yea, all. Beyond the grave The mind, though life be gone, is conscious yet Eternal, with th’ eternal Heav’n at one.[667] This stands, together with Hecuba’s outburst[668] in the _Trojan Women_, as the most explicit statement of personal religion in the extant plays of Euripides. In the midst of this farrago of fairy-tale and false sentiment, it is doubly startling. The drama is neither tragedy, nor melodrama, nor comedy, nor farce. What are we to think of it? Dr. Verrall[669] would regard it as a burlesque, that is, as a playful imitation of serious work, with exaggeration of weak features or tendencies. From the facts that one ode[670] has nothing whatever to do with the plot, but with the Mother and the Maid, and that Aristophanes parodies the play in his _Celebrants of the Thesmophoria_, wherein Euripides is accused of profaning that festival, it is inferred that _Helen_ was not written for public presentation, but for private performance at a house on the island of Helene belonging to an Athenian lady. The occasion was a gathering of women who had been celebrating the Thesmophoria, and forms Euripides’ playful answer to the charge that he had never depicted a good woman. To prove his zeal, he chooses Helen (the least reputable of her sex) and completely rehabilitates her character.[671] At the same time he amuses his audience with a parody of his own work. The sanctuary of Helen recalls that of Andromache, and the escape that of Iphigenia and her friends. The news of this _tour de force_ spread, and at last, owing to public curiosity, it was exhibited at the Dionysia.