MÉNÉLAS VAINQUEUR. Sur les remparts fumants de la superbe Troie, Ménélas, fils des Dieux, comme une riche proie, Ravit sa blonde Hélène et l'emmène à sa cour Plus belle que jamais de pudeur et d'amour. ILLIADE (Traduction Bareste).

Trustman, Benjamin A., Trustman, Julia M. · 1841

This print shows Menelaos and Helen as a married bourgeois couple in all their beauty and happiness. In the background, Troy is in flames. Menelaos, after years of fighting in battle, got his beloved Helen back. He is proudly marching off towards his ships, while she thumbs her nose at him. When this first print of the "Histoire Ancienne" series was published, the Charivari showed Daumier and Ingres mockingly as Siamese twins. It was also suggested that Daumier had just returned from Greece with a sketch book full of new ideas for this series. Beautiful Helen is shown thumbing her nose at Menelaus, a gesture which, according to the editor, Daumier had seen at the Bavarian Court. During the 1840's, a quarrel between painters of the classic and romantic schools had fully flared up. Delacroix asked the "loaded" question: "Who is going to liberate us from the old Greeks?" Daumier succeeded to answer it his own way by showing historic personalities such as Hercules, Pygmalion or Agamemnon in absurd situations.