[264] With these words, Helen is clever enough to flatter the personal vanity that every man has in his heart. Her husband is evidently pleased, as the tone of his next words shows, in which, as Eustathius remarks, he takes a very favourable view of her conduct, referring to the influence of some god her attempt to make the Greek heroes discover themselves to their own destruction. The act was in itself inconsistent with her expressed penitence, and her longing after her home, unless we explain it as a passionately heedless desire to anticipate the end, and to hear once more the familiar tone of her own people. But such a power of mimicry as she exhibits here (inf. 279) seems to point to some special inspiration, reminding us of the skill of the Delian maidens under the influence of Apollo,
“ πάντων δ̓ ἀνθρώπων φωνὰς καὶ κρεμβαλιαστὺν
μιμεῖσθ̓ ἴσασιν, φαίη δέ κεν αὐτὸς ἕκαστος
φθέγγεσθαι
”
