The Burial of the Missing Victims of Maritime Disasters: Fact and Fiction in Euripides’ Helen

Abstract

This paper explores the distinctive sea burial ceremony portrayed in Euripides' Helen for a shipwrecked individual, a nauagos, whose body was never recovered. The research aims to determine whether Euripides' fictional dramatic account accurately reflects the burial practices of the period and whether it corresponds to the rites performed for missing nauagoi in Athens during the late fifth century BCE.

Through a comprehensive analysis of written and archaeological evidence, this study concludes that the maritime burial ceremony portrayed in Helen lacks historical accuracy due to insufficient additional evidence both synchronically and diachronically. However, the paper argues that Euripides' portrayal of the ceremony serves a larger thematic purpose, highlighting the absurdity and irony of the human experience following Athenian defeat in Sicily in 413 BCE. In doing so, Euripides transforms the terrestrial burial rites into a maritime arena, which was not originally intended for funerary purposes but rather was an integral part of maritime ritualistic undertakings.