Education: Frieze

HELEN—Edward Lucas White—Do-ran ($2.50). Scholar White of Baltimore has taught Latin and Greek to boys for a long time. Of an evening, when quizzes are corrected and report cards made out, instead of a cigar, bridge and radio at the Faculty Club, he permits himself to muse on humanities that are “shop” to most of his profession. Andivius Hedulio (1921) was the rich biography of a Roman youth in the tawny splendor of the Augustan Age. Now Scholar White fleshes in that (violet-eyed, dusky-haired) laconic lady who dislocated the destinies of Troy.

In deference to reason and ingrained classicism, he contrives a confidante for Helen: when Castor and Pollux rescued their sister from her first abductor, King Theseus of Attica, they took away with them Theseus’ mother, queenly Aithre. Devoted bondslave, solicitous handmaid, prescient foster mother, Aithre was at hand in the seven subtle crises of Helen’s life, which crises Scholar White picks out in the poised, sophisticated chiseling of an heroic frieze, so craftily restored that the very air of antiquity moves about the figures, golden with the tang of wine.