In the Helen (412 b.c.), Euripides returns to the mythic subject matter of the Trojan War that he treated so movingly not only in the Hecuba (ca. 424 b.c.) but also in the Trojan Women (415 b.c.). Like the Hecuba, the Trojan Women concerns the fate suffered by Hecuba and other women taken as slaves by the Greeks after they sacked and burned Troy and killed its defenders; it was produced about the time of the Athenian reduction of Melos. Just two years after Melos, the Athenians themselves suffered a catastrophic defeat, as the expedition they launched against Sicily with great fanfare was mercilessly crushed in 413 b.c.

Produced only a year after the destruction of the Sicilian Expedition, the Helen treats the Trojan War not as the source of the grievous suffering depicted in Euripides' antiwar plays but as the background for a spectacular, escapist plot worthy of a Hollywood director. In Euripides' version of the Trojan War, Paris abducts not Helen but a clone of her made by Hera, so lifelike as to fool her own husband. Also reminiscent of Hollywood is the play's grand finale, when Helen, reportedly urging the Greek troops to rescue her from her Egyptian foes, shouts, “Where is the glory of Troy [to Trôikon kleos]? Show it to these barbarians” (1603–4). Helen's rallying cry, which results in her rescue from her Egyptian captors, apparently leads to the recovery both of her good name and of the glory of Troy.