There is no doubt (i) that the _Helen_ is not serious either in intention or execution; (ii) that there is good evidence for supposing a connexion between the play and the festival of the Mother and the Maid, the Thesmophoria; (iii) that Aristophanes’ jokes about Proteus-Proteas and the rest do support the view that Euripides has in his mind the history of a family who have nothing to do with Menelaus and Helen; (iv) that in the play there are points, such as “Eido” (the baby-name of Theonoe), which are irrelevant to the story. Are we, then, to accept Verrall’s account? The sound view would appear to be that Euripides offered to the Archon a work which for once was a burlesque. So sincere a thinker as Euripides was certain sooner or later to attack himself, at any rate to examine his position and methods with humorous detachment. So far we may, we must, go with Verrall; the elaborate and delightfully detailed development we can hardly accept—the evidence is not sufficiently strong. But the poet is making fun not only of himself. The false Helen and her disappearance at a crisis in the action, are not merely miracles of a type in which he utterly disbelieves; they are features which even a believer would remove as far as possible into the background. In handling this fairy-tale with such _naïveté_, he is possibly laughing at some indiscreet fellow-dramatist;[672] certainly he is ridiculing the popular belief in such legends. Helen herself cannot credit the tale of Leda and the Swan.[673] When given the choice between two accounts of her brothers’ fate, she prefers the non-miraculous version.[674] Even the dramatist’s own dislike of soothsayers is elaborately expounded by the Greek messenger and sympathetically echoed by the chorus,[675] absurdly enough in a play which contains Theonoe, whom the chorus themselves have induced Helen to consult, and with success; although of course Theonoe knows only what could be learned by listening to the talk of Menelaus.