Many other ancient Greek writers were fascinated with the figure of Helen. Sappho (fl. c. 610-c. 580 BCE), a female poet, wrote that the most beautiful thing is whatever one loves. She then used Helen as an example, not only of a desirable but also of a desiring woman, who followed “the thing she loves,” leaving behind her husband and baby.
Just as Euripides’ treatment of the phantom Helen (see box) was influenced by contemporary philosophical thought about the nature of reality, orations by Isocrates in praise of Helen focused on the power of both eros (erotic love) and rhetorical persuasion. In this way, Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, came to stand for any number of
Right: Helen on the Steps of Troy (c. 1870) by French artist Gustave Moreau (1826—1898). Moreau painted several versions of Helen, all of which depict her as the femme fatale who caused the destruction of Troy.
Homer and Helen
Although Homer reproaches Helen in his epic poem, he also associates her closely with epic poetry, which indicates his respect for her. When Helen appears for the first time in the Iliad, she is weaving a cloth showing the battles of the Greeks and Trojans—a type of textile counterpart to the poem itself, especially since ancient Greek poets are sometimes said to "weave" their poetry. In another scene, Helen stands on the wall of the city and identifies the Greek heroes for King Priam, providing the sort of heroic catalog that is typical of epic poetry. Only Achilles, of all the characters in the Iliad, is similarly associated with epic: when he has withdrawn from the battlefield, he sits alone and sings "the deeds of men." Helen, unique among Homer's characters, seems to understand the function of epic poetry and the meaning of mortal suffering.
She tells her brother-in-law. Hector, that their sufferings are given by Zeus so that they will be the subject of song for generations to come. This is a succinct description of the function of Greek epic poetry, which is to provide lasting fame for heroic deeds.
Right: This ancient Greek pottery painting (date unknown) depicts Helen, left, with Priam, king of Troy.
Philosophical issues with which ancient Greek thinkers grappled. Helen is also an important figure in Euripides’ dramas The Trojan Women and Orestes. In the former, she is reviled by all the captive women of Troy, while in the latter, Orestes and Pylades plot to kill her. Another classical writer who used Helen was the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE—17 CE). He included a fictional letter from Helen to Paris in his work Heroides.
Helen has continued to play an important role in later Western literature. Medieval romances about Troy helped to keep Helen alive in the imagination. Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590) features a reworked version of Helen called “Hellenore.” In the myth of Faust, as told first by the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe and later by the German poet and playwright J. W Goethe (1749—1832), the sight of Helen is one of the enticements with which Mephistopheles persuades Faust to sell his soul to the devil. Twentieth-century American poet H. D. (Hilda
Doolittle, 1886—1961), frustrated with the male perspective on Helen, wrote from the point of view of the ancient Spartan beauty herself in her long poem “Helen in Egypt.” The fate of the Trojan Women and the story of Faust feature in operas including, among others, Les Troyens (The Trojans) and The Damnation of Faust, both by French composer Hector Berlioz (1803—1869), and The Egyptian Helen, by German composer Richard Strauss (1864—1949).
Deborah Lyons
Bibliography
Homer, and Robert Fagles, trans. The Iliad and The Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 2009.
McLaren, Clemence. Inside the Walls of Troy. New York: Simon Pulse, 2004.
See also: Agamemnon; Castor and Pollux; Clytemnestra; Hecuba; Iphigeneia; Menelaus; Odysseus; Pari5;Theseus.
World History
