Now Homer was not composing a history — it is clear this epic poem, spanning lines, was a rip-roaring tale of derring-do, it is myth. And the exciting truth is that every time there is an excavating season of Bronze and Iron Age sites in the Eastern Mediterranean or Near East, the details of the story of Helen and Paris edge just a little bit further from fairy-tale and a little closer to fact.
We now know for example that there were indeed high-ranking female aristocrats whose infidelity was enough to spark threats of war between states in what is now Lebanon and Syria. A ten-year siege seems to be, from the archaeology, total nonsense. And Helen herself seems to be a gorgeous confection, a combination of real flesh and blood women of the day, and salivating fantasies about female sexuality combined with a sharp fear of female power.
When women were generally written out of history, Helen of Troy was written in. As her story passed down the generations it held up a mirror to the prejudices of society and to some of its truths.
Of course, here we must note that, because Helen is a fictional character, every ancient writer imagined Helen differently. We therefore should not assume that the way Helen is described by, say, Sappho accurately reflects the way the authors of the Iliad imagined her. This same epithet recurs when Helen is described in surviving fragments from the Catalogue of Women, an early Greek hexameter poem that is traditionally attributed to Hesiodos, but probably was not actually composed by him.
We also have a number of surviving ancient Greek and Roman depictions of Helen that give us some idea of how the Greeks and Romans imagined her. Here are some depictions of Helen from ancient Greek vase paintings:. Helen is the woman in the middle. The woman on the left is the goddess Aphrodite.
Paris is shown standing, holding a spear. Helen is shown seated and holding a fan. The fresco is badly worn and most of the colors have faded, but you can still make out her face and most of her body from the waist up quite clearly.
This work was very popular during the Middle Ages. The History of the Fall of Troy claims to be a first-hand account of the Trojan War written by a certain Dares of Phrygia, who supposedly fought in the war himself. It gives detailed descriptions of the physical appearances of all the major characters in the Iliad. Here is the description it gives of Helen and her brothers Castor and Pollux, as translated by R. Helen resembled Castor and Pollux.
She was beautiful, ingenuous, and charming. Her legs were the best; her mouth the cutest. However, the most common origin story is that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, an Aetolian princess who became queen of Sparta. Leda, a great beauty, was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan. The stories vary as to whether Zeus raped or seduced Leda, but the product of their union was Helen and her brother Pollux, who were born from an egg.
Leda also gave birth at the same time to Clytemnestra and Castor, through natural means, as a result of her marriage to King Tyndareus of Sparta. In one mythological story, as a young girl, Helen is abducted by Theseus before being rescued by her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux. This episode perhaps acts as a precursor to her later journey to Troy. Paris, a Trojan prince chosen for his fairness, is brought before Hera, Athena and Aphrodite with the unenviable task of deciding which of them is the most beautiful.
But it is Aphrodite who wins him over with her gift of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Menelaus treats Paris with great hospitality.
But on the day of his departure, Paris brings Helen aboard his ship at the final moment and the two sail away towards Troy, on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. So begins the ten long years of the Trojan War. The line between myth and history was blurred in the ancient Greek world. Some argue that the epic poetry of Homer could represent a point at which myth becomes history. Historians are divided as to whether the Trojan War actually took place, but there is archaeological evidence that some destructive event happened at Troy around BC.
Homer focuses on the characters, both mortal and divine, who are woven into this tragic story of destruction and personal sacrifice. Interestingly, Helen, who played a key role in the outbreak of the war, only actually appears in three episodes of the poem.
When we first meet Helen she is weaving a tapestry depicting the scenes of the war. As she does so, the Trojan elders discuss her incredible, goddess-like beauty. As a woman who dutifully weaves at home and who is also beautiful to look at, she is presented as the embodiment of the feminine ideal in the Greek world. Throughout the poem, Helen emphasizes the great shame she feels for the fate she has brought upon Troy.
And as his ardour abates the purple bedlinen that was privy to their sins bears witness to his unseen dew. What evil! O wicked woman, were you able to put a check on such passionate desire?
Was lust waiting for a purchaser? What marvellous power in the gentle sex! Woman holds back her precipitate lust to obtain wealth and does not deign to give joy unless her smile has been paid for! Beauty in Greek men was thought to be a sign of inner goodness the Greeks had a word for it, kalokagathia , meaning joint nobility in appearance and mind or conduct. Helen was a thing essentially bad, cloaked in beauty.
Given that beauty was thought in the ancient world to be an active attribute with its own cogent power, the most beautiful woman in the world had, by definition, to be its most dangerous. As she walks along the walls of Troy, the old men of the benighted city start to chatter, muttering that now they understand why these two great peoples, the Trojans and the Greeks, have to fight. What beauty Helen has, they say, a terrible beauty like that of the goddess. When Actaeon saw Diana bathing she turned the peeping Tom into a stag — a stag who was then harried by his own hounds.
Those who stared at the Gorgon were petrified — turned to stone.
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