The drama was written just after the Sicilian Expedition in which Athens had suffered a huge defeat. At the same time sophism was beginning to question traditional values and religious beliefs. Within this framework Euripides, with his play, deems war to be the root of all evil.

Helen is a drama by Euripides about Helen, first produced in 412 BC for the Dionysia in a trilogy that also contained Euripides lost Andromeda. The play shares much in common with another of Euripides’ works, Iphigenia in Tauris.

Euripides (c.480–406 BC) was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander.