Helen of Troy: One Hot Bitch

Helen is lauded as the most beautiful woman in all the world (at least in Greece after her death). She was half goddess, the daughter of Leda (aka Nemesis) and Zeus. Being the daughter of Zeus is pretty big news, but really Helen's claim to fame is that she started the Trojan War when she ran off to Troy with Paris. Well, some say she absconded with him, but others say he abducted her.

Her husband Menelaus wanted her back, so along with his brother Agamemnon, he waged war against Troy for ten years. The fight was long (obviously) and bloody, but eventually the Spartans won when they hid inside a giant wooden horse. The Trojans brought the horse into the city walls believing it to be an offering to the gods. But at night, the Spartans escaped the horse and sacked the city. Helen was recaptured and/or rescued and returned to Menelaus.

The Odyssey states that Helen was complicit in leaving Sparta. When we first meet her in the epic poem, Helen says: "...launching your headlong battles just for my sake, shameless whore that I was." I'm not sure if this is sarcastic, flirty, or sincere, but either way it definitely indicates she left of her own free will.  Sappho, a female Greek poet (circa 620 BCE), agrees that Helen was a naughty girl:

Some say a host of horsemen, others of infantry and others

of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the dark earth

but I say, it is what you love

Full easy it is to make this understood of one and all: for

she that far surpassed all mortals in beauty, Helen her

most noble husband

Deserted, and went sailing to Troy, with never a thought for

her daughter and dear parents.

In The Odyssey, Helen attempts to alleviate her own responsibility:

I yearned to said back home again! I grieved too late for the madness
Aphrodite sent me, luring me there, far from my dear land,
forsaking my own child, my bridal bed, my husband too,
a man who lacked for neither brains nor beauty.

That little vixen. In her defense, the gods are blamed for many personal failings and obstacles throughout the book. I have to admit I'm surprised Menelaus wanted her back and that she is re-elevated to her position as queen so easily. She must have been one serious hottie. Despite Menelaus's forgiveness and her radiant beauty, Helen becomes despised by many Trojans for the deaths of so many.

A poem called Helen by Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) captures this feeling:

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were liad,
white ash and funeral cypresses.

Helen's sister Clytemnestra features prominently in The Odyssey as well. Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra broke faith with her husband and had an affair with Aegisthus. The two of them murdered Agamemnon the very day he returned from his victory over Troy. This story is the focus of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the first in a dramatic trilogy. Clytemnestra is pretty pissed with her sister since her own daughter had to be sacrificed before the Spartans could sail to Troy. Clytemenestra said: "it is buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear" so even before her daughter's death, she clearly wasn't too fond of Helen.

Ah Helen, beautiful and deadly.
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Echoes of Man is my month-long sojourn into antiquity. I plan on entering the ancient world and basking in its glory for the entire month of November.

During this time, I will be reading and reviewing literature of the time and posting about related topics. If you have anything you would like to add - a review, an informative post, etc. - let me know. I would love to have you join in!
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Echoes of Man Image from ~darkmatter257 at deviant art
Helen of Troy from wikimedia commons
Helen of Troy by Howard David Johnson
Diane Kruger from Troy (2004)
Rossana Podesta from Helen of Troy (1956)