Characters
- Aethra — handmaid accompanying Helen
- Ares — messenger; disguised as Laodice
- Clymene — second handmaid
- Dardanus — waits at the gate (destination)
- Helicaon — Laodice’s husband (named in the disguise formula)
- Priam’s daughter — Priam’s daughter; form Iris takes
- Thyestes — weaving; seized by longing; goes to the wall
Places
- Helen’s chamber in Troy — weaving; start of the errand
- Plain before Troy — resting armies and duel ground (announced)
- Wall of Troy — destination of the summons
Themes
Narrative
While the armies prepare the duel of Paris and Menelaus, Iris goes as messenger to Helen—not in her own shape but in the likeness of Helen’s sister-in-law Laodice, loveliest of Priam’s daughters, wife of Helicaon. She finds Helen in the hall weaving a great purple web worked with the struggles of Trojans and Achaeans suffered for her sake. In Laodice’s voice Iris bids her come: the men no longer fight in the plain; they sit at rest, and Paris and Menelaus will fight with long spears for Helen; whichever wins will call her dear wife.
Sweet desire for her former husband, her city, and her parents falls upon Helen. Veiling herself in shining linen, she leaves the chamber weeping, not alone but with two handmaidens—Aethra daughter of Pittheus and Clymene—and comes to the Scaean Gates where Priam and the elders wait. The errand is Iris’s: divine plot management that moves Helen from the loom of war-images to the wall where she will name the living captains. This entry separates the summons and Helen’s surge of homesickness from the catalogue of heroes that follows.