Helen (Greek mythology)

God or goddess information

• Country or culture: Ancient Greek
• Mother: Leda
• Father: Zeus
• Siblings: Castor; Pollux; Clytemnestra
• Children: Hermione; Pleisthenes; Aethiolas; Maraphius

In the mythology of ancient Greece, Helen was famed as the embodiment of ideal female beauty. Sometimes known as Helen of Sparta (her place of birth), or Helen of Troy (her place of exile), she was born a princess and a demigod. Her father was the god Zeus; her mother, Queen Leda of Sparta. Courted by numerous suitors, Helen married King Menelaus of Laconia. She was subsequently abducted by Paris, Prince of Troy, setting in motion the events culminating in the Trojan War. Helen spent over a decade in Troy while the Trojan War raged around her. Eventually Paris fell in battle, and Helen was reclaimed by Menelaus and returned to Sparta. The Iliad and Odyssey of the epic poet Homer (eighth–ninth centuries BCE) are the prime sources for Helen's life and deeds, but her myth was recounted by many later Greek authors and further embellished by Roman poets. As the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen was an archetype of aesthetic and physical perfection: inspiring, but potentially devastating. As such, her legend was not only integral to the development of Greek mythology but also widespread across the entire ancient world, even enduring into the twenty-first century.

In Mythology

The Homeric account of Helen is the first to mention her by name, although Homer may have been tapping into the legends of an ideally beautiful woman associated with the earlier Mycenaean Period of Greek History (ending around 1100 BCE). Helen's foster father in Sparta was Tyndareus, but she was actually the offspring of Zeus and Leda, the wife of Tyndareus. Helen and her siblings were hatched from eggs laid by Leda following this union. As a young girl, Helen was snatched by Theseus, King of Athens who was in search of a divine wife, and taken to his mother Aethra. In response, Helen's twin brothers Castor and Pollux invaded Athens and returned Helen to Sparta. When the time came for her marriage, the process was overseen by Tyndareus and her brothers. This involved the "Oath of Tyndareus" proposed by one of the suitors, Odysseus: the successful candidate must be defended by all the others in case of conflict. All the suitors gave their word. There are three separate accounts of her lists of suitors—numbering over forty candidates—but in all, she was claimed by Menelaus. Tyndareus and Leda stepped down, and Helen and Menelaus become rulers of Sparta. They had one daughter, Hermione, and three sons.

After ten years, came the defining event of Helen's legendary story: she was abducted by the Trojan prince, Paris, and carried to Troy. Paris's father, King Priam, refused to release Helen. Menelaus called on the promises of the other former suitors, and war was declared against Troy. According to Homer, Helen was filled with regret in the besieged city. A different version was told by Virgil in the first-century BCE epic poem, the Aeneid, and several fifth-century BCE Greek authors (including historian Herodotus and playwright Euripides) even had Helen stay in Egypt for the duration of the Trojan War. After Paris's death, Helen was married to his brother Deiphobus. When Troy was defeated, Deiphobus too was killed. At that point Helen was taken back to Sparta by Menelaus and Odysseus. Stories vary about her desire to return, and in some (as suggested in the tragedies of Euripides) she was condemned to death for her treacherous conduct during the Trojan exile, although ultimately she was allowed to survive and live out her days in Sparta. In the Odyssey this tension does not occur: according to Homer, Helen gladly returned to Sparta and was encountered there, living contentedly with Menelaus, by Telemachus—the son of Odysseus—who stayed as a guest of the royal couple.

Accounts differ in their details of Helen's life, and they do not always coincide on important points. Key differences concern such questions as whether Helen was seduced, rather than abducted, by Paris, and whether she had any further children during her time in Troy. Among these variants, the Homeric story was the one preeminent in early Greek culture and the account which most profoundly affected the way Helen continued to be understood as a mythic symbol, person, and image in art.

Origins & Cults

By the seventh century BCE, the line between Helen as legendary hero and Helen as goddess had already become blurred. Semireligious cults had developed at two sites in Laconia, the Peloponnesian district of her mythic birth: Sparta and Therapne. Veneration spread to other Greek locations—Corinth, Attica (where she was honored with her brothers), and Rhodes (where she was worshipped as a fertility goddess). In these places, banquets, festivals of choral dancing, and animal sacrifices were held in her honor. Many authors contributed to the evolution of the Helen myth: early poets Hesiod (seventh–eighth centuries BCE), Sappho (sixth century BCE), and Theocritus (third century BCE); playwrights Aristophanes (fourth–fifth centuries BCE), and Euripides (fifth century BCE), and later Roman poets Virgil and Ovid (first century BCE). Indicating that in the ancient world there was no clear boundary between historical and mythic narratives, Helen was also discussed by the historian Herodotus (fifth century BCE) and geographer Pausanias (second century CE). The earliest graphic representations—mainly sculptures and vase paintings—date from the seventh century BCE. Two centuries later, a famous anecdote tells how the artist Zeuxis, faced with the impossible task of depicting Helen's unearthly beauty, combined the best feature of each of five models. In art and literature, Helen was a popular subject in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: hers was the "face that launched a thousand ships" as wonderingly quoted by Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1604). Later generations revisiting Helen's story continue to be captivated by the fateful attraction of a beauty seeming to transcend time and space.

Bibliography

Blondell, Ruby. Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation. Oxford UP, 2015.

Edmunds, Lowell. Stealing Helen: The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective. Princeton UP, 2016.

Gumpert, Matthew. Grafting Helen: The Abduction of the Classical Past. New ed., The U of Wisconsin P, 2012.

Hughes, Bettany. Helen of Troy: The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. Knopf Doubleday, 2009.

Maguire, Laurie. Helen of Troy: From Homer to Hollywood. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Rose, H. J. A Handbook of Greek Mythology. 6th ed., Routledge, 2015.