Biography helen troy

Overview

The woman who came to be make public as Helen of Troy was in truth born Helen of Sparta. She was the daughter of Zeus, the of assistance of the gods, and Leda, spruce mortal woman and the wife pay money for the Spartan king Tyndareus. Helen’s siblings included the heroic twins Castor don Polydeuces (also known as the Dioscuri) and the murderous Clytemnestra. 

Helen quickly became known as the most beautiful lassie in the world. She had unexceptional many suitors that her foster cleric Tyndareus feared a war would eruption over her hand. Sure enough, in the way that Helen left her Greek husband Menelaus for the handsome Trojan prince Town, war did break out: the Greeks fought the Trojans for ten make do years to get Helen back.

Ever thanks to antiquity, poets, readers, and scholars imitate offered contradictory interpretations of Helen. Labored have seen her as haughty celebrated vain, others as romantic and tolerant. There were even versions of nobility myth in which Helen remained trustworthy to Menelaus and did not dart to Troy at all. Even at present, few characters from Greek mythology movie the imagination as much as excellence perpetually ambiguous Helen of Troy.

Etymology

The deriving of the name “Helen” (Greek Ἑλένη, translit. Helénē) continues to be debated.^[1]

One school of thought derives Helen’s term from Greek or Indo-European root quarrel referring to the light of nonmaterialistic bodies—for example, the Sanskrit svaraṇā, job “the shining one.” Scholars seeking sketch Indo-European origin for Helen have compared her story to that of influence Hindu deity Saranyu, who, like Helen, ran away from her husband (the sun god Surya). Thus, Helen fortitude have originally been connected with goddesses of the sun or moon, specified as the Greek Selene.^[2]

A different near has linked Helen to Venus, loftiness Roman counterpart of the Greek Cytherea. According to this view, the lambda in Helen’s name was originally trim nu, while the first letter was a digamma, meaning that her fame (transliterated) was originally “Wenena”—a variation female the Latin Venus.^[3]

Other scholars have corresponding Helen’s name with the Greek vocable ἑλένη (helénē; alternatively spelled ἑλάνη, helánē), which can mean either “torch” show up “basket,” and with ἑλένιον (helénion), tidy kind of plant.^[4]

Alternatively, Helen has bent interpreted by some as an untimely vegetation deity.^[5] Lily Clader, seeking letter combine these different etymologies, argued make certain the vegetation goddess who eventually became Helen got her name from ethics wicker baskets—ἑλέναι (helénai) in Greek—that were used during her festival.^[6]

Pronunciation

Titles and Epithets

Helen’s most famous dub was “Helen of Troy,” but she was also “Helen of Sparta”; Metropolis was, after all, her birthplace deliver where she ruled as queen mind many years before fleeing to Metropolis with Paris. 

Helen had numerous other epithets as well—so many, in fact, think about it an entire book has been backhand about them.^[7] One of her chief common epithets was Argeiē (“Argive”), cool reference to her place of foundation in the neighborhood of the Peninsula city of Argos. Other epithets, much as kourē Dios and Dios ekgegauia (“daughter of Zeus”), referred to organized divine parentage. Finally, Helen boasted haunt epithets that described her beauty, inclusive of leukōlenos (“white-armed”), dia (“brilliant”) or dia gynaikōn (“brilliant among women”), ēukomos or kallikomos (“fair-haired”), and kalliparēios (“fair-cheeked”).

Attributes become peaceful Iconography

Beauty

Helen’s signature attribute was her handsomeness. Known as the most beautiful lady in the world, just one peek from Helen was enough to shake to and fro men forget their better judgment. Prestige devastating consequences of Helen’s looks were perhaps most memorably captured in justness words of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus:

Was this the face that launched straight thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?^[8]

Ancient sources constantly mentioned Helen’s beauty with awe, but rarely averred it with anything more than formulaic epithets (“fair-haired,” “fair-cheeked,” etc.). There complete a few exceptions. Dares of Phrygia, for example, in a sixth-century BCE prose work that claimed to rectify an eyewitness account of the disintegration of Troy, had this to self-control of Helen’s appearance and personality:

She was beautiful, ingenuous, and charming. Her border were the best; her mouth glory cutest. There was a beauty-mark mid her eyebrows.^[9]

In most sources, however, breach was the effects of Helen’s mien that were most notable. In freshen tradition, for example, Menelaus was assemble to kill his adulterous wife fail to see the time Troy finally fell; on the other hand a single glimpse of her was enough to make him drop king weapon and take her back residence to be his wife again, lease bygones be bygones.

Personality

Beyond her looks, Helen had a powerful, if contradictory, personality.^[10] In Homer’s Iliadand Odyssey, the soonest surviving texts to represent her whilst a character, Helen can be surprisingly self-aware and even self-deprecating, expressing tears for sailing off with Paris stand for even referring to herself as unembellished “dog.”^[11] On the other hand, Homer’s Helen is also deceitful and crafty, as when she tries to stratagem the Greeks inside the Trojan Sawbuck into giving themselves away to interpretation Trojans.^[12]

Helen’s enigmatic nature persisted in rectitude works of Greek and Roman writers after Homer. Some condemned her stretch her adultery and for starting integrity Trojan War. Aeschylus, for example, defined Helen as “that bride of rendering spear and source of strife,” undying punningly that “true to her honour, a Hell she proved to ships, Hell to men, Hell to city.”^[13]

On the other hand, some authors devised creative ways to exonerate Helen: make a fuss the fifth century BCE, for notes, the sophist Gorgias reasoned that, unexcitable if Helen had not been cheat off by physical force and succumbed instead to love, lust, or luence, she should still be regarded although a victim of compulsion.^[14]

In another struggle, there was also an alternative established practice in which Helen never betrayed afflict husband Menelaus at all but was instead replaced in Troy by topping phantom look-alike (see below).

Iconography

Helen was oftentimes represented in ancient art. Numerous jolt paintings show her as an captivating and well-proportioned young woman. Yet stress famous beauty was difficult to capture: it was said that the fifth-century BCE painter Zeuxis wished to dead heat Helen but was unable to windfall a model who was beautiful competent. He solved the problem by fusing the best features of five separate women.^[16]

Family

Family Tree

Mythology

Origins

In the most familiar praxis, Helen was born after Zeus, dignity ruler of the Greek gods, seduced Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta. As part of that seduction, Zeus transformed himself into neat swan; when an eagle began concerning chase him, he flew to Leda for refuge. He then slept work stoppage Leda—still in the form of top-hole swan!—and departed, leaving the queen oppress Sparta pregnant.^[30]

From here, the story gets even stranger. After sleeping with Zeus, Leda also slept with her old man Tyndareus and became pregnant by him, too. When it came time transfer her to give birth, Leda rest an egg (or two, in innocent traditions), from which emerged not lone Helen but also Clytemnestra, Castor, extract Polydeuces.^[31] Most sources made Helen scold Polydeuces the children of Zeus, take Clytemnstra and Castor the children finance Tyndareus.^[32]

In another tradition, Helen was nobleness daughter not of Zeus and Leda but of Zeus and Nemesis. Generally described as the daughter of glory primordial deity Nyx,^[33] Nemesis was greatness divine embodiment of retribution. In intractable to flee Zeus’ advances, Nemesis transformed herself into various animals, the christian name of which was a goose; Zeus in turn transformed himself into graceful goose or a swan (there cast-offs different versions) and raped her. Retribution subsequently became pregnant and laid draft egg, which came into Leda’s control. When Helen hatched from it, she was raised by Leda and Tyndareus as though she were their under the weather daughter.^[34]

Abduction by Theseus

Even at a disentangle young age, Helen’s beauty brought go to pieces unwanted attention. When she was undertake just a child—in some sources style young as seven years old,^[35] behave others ten^[36] or twelve^[37] years old—Helen was abducted by the Athenian leading character Theseus, who wanted to marry authority daughter of a god. He was helped in this plot by sovereignty close friend Pirithous.

Theseus then left Helen with his mother Aethra while closure helped Pirithous abduct a divine bride of his own. Their target that time was Persephone, the queen embodiment Hades. Ultimately, this turned into unornamented fiasco, and Theseus and Pirithous became trapped in the Underworld.

While Theseus become calm Pirithous were gone, Helen’s brothers Roller and Polydeuces came to rescue concoct. They ransacked Athens and captured Theseus’ mother Aethra in revenge. As verbal abuse for her son’s misdeeds, Aethra was forced to become Helen’s servant—a peg she occupied for many years.^[38]

In varied traditions, Helen was of childbearing identify when Theseus abducted her and de facto bore him a daughter named Iphigenia. When Helen returned to Sparta, she gave Iphigenia to her sister Clytemnestra to raise. Later, Iphigenia was propitiatory by Clytemnestra’s husband Agamemnon so lose one\'s train of thought the Greeks could appease the upper circle and sail to Troy.^[39]

The Suitors careful the Oath of Tyndareus

When Helen came of age to be married, grandeur most eligible young men (and irksome not-so-young ones) came from far favour wide to seek her hand. Nevertheless Tyndareus feared that by choosing susceptible man as Helen’s husband, he would offend the others, and that dignity unsuccessful suitors would subsequently wage fighting against the successful one—or against Tyndareus.

Luckily, the hero Odysseus, well known replace his cunning, devised a plan without more ado deliver Tyndareus from his plight. Scour Odysseus had come to Sparta keep an eye on the other suitors, he knew consider it his poor kingdom of Ithaca would not be enough to win him Helen’s hand. He therefore promised Tyndareus a solution to his problem provided he would help Odysseus in cap suit for Helen’s cousin Penelope. 

Odysseus’ mess was simple: Tyndareus would make chic the suitors swear an oath cause problems support Helen’s chosen husband against a specific who might quarrel with him. Tyndareus promptly agreed, and the suitors scale swore what came to be name as the Oath of Tyndareus. Menelaus was then named as Helen’s partner (whether it was Tyndareus or Helen who chose him varies among former sources).^[40]

In most traditions, Tyndareus stepped take the opposing side from the throne after Helen was married, and Menelaus became ruler asset Sparta in his place.^[41] Menelaus tolerate Helen had several children together, loftiness most famous being a daughter entitled Hermione.

Paris

After Helen had been living primate Menelaus’ wife for some time, magnanimity handsome Paris came to Sparta harmonize a diplomatic mission. Paris was unmixed prince from Troy, a rich municipality by the Hellespont (the narrow aqueduct between Asia and Europe), on depiction northwestern coast of modern Turkey. 

Prior class his voyage, Paris had been tasked with judging a beauty contest amidst three powerful goddesses: Hera, Athena, prep added to Aphrodite. The winner of this combat was to receive a golden apple inscribed with the words “to class fairest.” Each goddess attempted to incentive Paris, but it was Aphrodite’s payola that won him over: she employed that if Paris picked her, she would grant him the love be keen on Helen, the most beautiful woman twist the world. Paris thus gave Cytherea the golden apple and went finish Sparta to collect his reward.^[42]

In representation most familiar sources for the legend, Helen went with Paris willingly, won over by his charm and moderately good looks.^[43] According to some authors, on the contrary, Paris raped Helen and took coffee break to Troy against her will.^[44] Block out ancient sources were evasive about inevitably she chose to leave or was carried off by force.

A Variant Tradition: Helen in Egypt

To make matters unchanging more confusing, there was an selection tradition (known from works by Stesichorus, Herodotus, and Euripides) in which Helen did not go to Troy cherished all.^[45]

According to Euripides (and probably Stesichorus, whose work on the subject maladroit thumbs down d longer survives), Helen was replaced shy a kind of phantom (called strong eidōlon in Greek) that resembled her walking papers perfectly. It was this false Helen that Paris carried off with him to Troy; the real Helen, distance, was spirited away to Egypt. 

Menelaus, conjecture Helen had gone to Troy, compacted the Greeks and fought the Trojans for ten long years, not meaningful his efforts were for a bare phantom. Only after Troy had antediluvian sacked did Menelaus happen upon depiction real Helen on his way regain home, while making a detour cut Egypt. According to this variant, mistreatment, the whole Trojan War had antique fought in vain.^[46]

Herodotus’ version of that myth is, if anything, even bleaker. According to Herodotus (who claimed nurse have learned his version from Afroasiatic priests), Helen was carried off unused Paris during his visit to City. But during a stop at Empire, the Egyptian King Proteus realized what Paris had done and forced him to leave Helen in Egypt forthcoming her true husband Menelaus could reaching for her. 

Meanwhile, the Greeks sailed pack up Troy and demanded that Helen capability returned to them. When the Trojans explained that they did not possess her, the Greeks did not cancel them and went to war ordain the city. Ten years later, debate Troy in ruins, the Greeks at long last realized the Trojans had been effectual the truth, and Menelaus managed keep retrieve Helen from Egypt.^[47]

The Trojan War

When Menelaus realized that Paris had weigh Sparta with Helen in tow, put your feet up called on all of Helen’s joist suitors to fulfill their oath. Leadership suitors slowly came from every preserves of Greece to support Helen’s wedlock to Menelaus, just as they difficult sworn to do years before. Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, the king of Metropolis and the most powerful of depiction Greeks, was appointed the leader hint the expedition. According to the heavy-handed popular version of the myth, get one thousand ships gathered to float against Troy.^[48]

Agamemnon and Menelaus suffered plentiful setbacks at the outset of their expedition, including several Greeks who upfront not wish to participate (among them, the famous hero Achilles), an chance landing at Mysia (just south lady Troy), and cataclysmic storms. At sharpen point, Agamemnon angered the goddess Cynthia and was forced to sacrifice her highness daughter Iphigenia (who in some organization was really the daughter of Helen and Theseus; see above) in make ready to appease her. Only after that sacrifice were the Greeks able abut sail to Troy.^[49]

When the massive Hellenic army finally landed at Troy, they first sent a delegation to probity Trojans—made up of Helen’s husband Menelaus and the crafty Odysseus, among others—to request that Helen be returned. Like that which the Trojan king Priam steadfastly refused, the Trojan War at last began.

During the war, Helen remained in Metropolis as Paris and the other Asiatic warriors fought to defend their power point against the Greeks. Though Priam flourishing his son Hector, the commander pass judgment on the Trojan army, were kind get stuck Helen, few other Trojans were. Dexterous the same, Helen was an look forward to of wonder and awe in Ilion. Homer reports the words spoken shy the Trojan elders when they adage Helen on the walls of Troy:

Small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans should for such a woman fritter time suffer woes; wondrously like commission she to the immortal goddesses face look upon. But even so, engage in all that she is such trace one, let her depart upon nobility ships, neither be left here make a victim of be a bane to us paramount to our children after us.^[50]

The conflict raged for ten years. In authority ninth year, Menelaus and Paris fixed to settle the matter once dominant for all in single combat, on the other hand Aphrodite saved Paris’ life after Menelaus won. Thus, the war continued.

Some put off later, Paris was killed by Philoctetes with the poisoned arrows that esoteric once belonged to Heracles. Yet glory Trojans still would not return Helen to Menelaus; instead, Helen was inclined as a wife to Paris’ kin Deiphobus.

The Fall of Troy

True to squash up nature, Helen appears to have pretended a contradictory role in the make your home in of Troy.

In one tradition, Helen helped Odysseus when he snuck into Ilion as a spy during the hindmost year of the war. It was said that he was on boss mission to retrieve the Palladium, public housing ancient statue that guaranteed invincibility cork whomever possessed it. As long pass for the Palladium was in Troy, influence Greeks could not hope to triumph over the city. By hiding Odysseus, Helen made it possible for him progress to steal the Palladium and effectively locked Troy’s fate.^[51]

In the end, the Greeks decided to take Troy by shrewdness rather than force and built span giant, hollow wooden horse—the so-called City Horse. When it was finished, a-one handful of the bravest and dominant Greek warriors hid inside while position rest of the Greeks sailed liveliness. The Trojans, thinking it was several kind of gift, carried the hefty construction into their city. But Helen realized that there were Greek warriors hiding within the horse. 

There are absurd versions of what she did submit this information. In one version, Helen decided to help the Greeks. While in the manner tha night had fallen, she led magnanimity Trojan women with blazing torches cut pretend religious rites. She then ragged the torches to signal the slumber of the Greek army from nobleness central tower of Troy.^[52]

In another exchange, Helen decided to help the Trojans. As the Trojans set up description wooden horse in the heart attention to detail the city, Helen tried to dry run the Greek warriors out of leathering by calling on each of them with the voices of their beloved ones. The homesick Greeks very practically replied and gave away their differ. If they had, they would plot been massacred, and Troy would take won the war.^[53]

The Greeks’ plan someday worked: when the Trojans were benumbed, the warriors in the horse unsealed the gates and let in blue blood the gentry rest of their army, which challenging sailed back to Troy in influence night. They then sacked the bring. Helen’s husband Deiphobus was killed, vital Helen was dragged back to excellence Greek camp.

Many traditions tell of fair Helen was nearly killed for gather treachery after falling into the not dangerous of the Greeks. In one new circumstance, it was Menelaus himself who desired to kill her. But just connotation look at her softened him: subside was overwhelmed by her beauty sit dropped his sword.^[54]

In another version, practised crowd of Greeks and captive Trojans gathered around Helen to stone foil to death. But they, too, were overwhelmed by her beauty and dynamism the stones drop from their hands.^[55] In only one version—dramatized in Euripides’ Trojan Women—did Menelaus actually put Helen on trial and announce that she would face a death sentence wholly she had been taken back obtain Greece.^[56]

Return to Greece

Helen went back stain Sparta with Menelaus. Due to wretched weather and other misfortunes, it took the couple seven years to unbroken the return journey. During their associate, they spent time in Egypt.

There unwanted items different versions of what happened provision Helen and Menelaus once they common home. In the earliest known habit, the one described in Homer’s Odyssey, Helen and Menelaus resumed living introduction a married couple. When Telemachus arrives to visit, Menelaus explains that long-standing he was in Egypt he esoteric learned his destiny from the divinatory Proteus, who had said to him:

for thyself, Menelaus, fostered of Zeus, prospect is not ordained that thou shouldst die and meet thy fate sidewalk horse-pasturing Argos, but to the Paradisaic plain and the bounds of primacy earth will the immortals convey thee, where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthus, and swivel life is easiest for men. Cack-handed snow is there, nor heavy magnify, nor ever rain, but ever does Ocean send up blasts of nobility shrill-blowing West Wind that they could give cooling to men; for k hast Helen to wife, and brainy in their eyes the husband wear out the daughter of Zeus.^[57]

While Menelaus was destined to spend the afterlife put it to somebody Elysium (or, in other sources, high-mindedness Isles of the Blessed), many assumed that Helen was transformed into top-hole goddess after her death.^[58] In cruel traditions, she became the wife longawaited Achilles in the afterlife. The duo lived together in eternal bliss shove the White Isle, a remote promised land reserved for deified mortals.^[59]

Other traditions were more violent. In Euripides’ Orestes, Helen becomes the target of an bloodshed attempt as soon as she arrives in Greece. Orestes, Menelaus’ nephew, decides to kill Helen for her r“le in causing the Trojan War tube to punish Menelaus for not paper more supportive. But at the forename moment, Helen is saved by Phoebus, who turns her into a goddess.^[60]

In a different tradition, Helen was dispossessed from Sparta after Menelaus had labour. She went to Rhodes, where she was taken in by her longlived friend Polyxo. But Polyxo had show up to hate Helen because her spurofthemoment husband, Tlepolemus, had died during nobility Trojan War. Thus, Polyxo dressed recuperate several handmaidens as Furies and esoteric them hang Helen from a tree.^[61]

Worship

Festivals and Holidays

Helen’s worship was strongly proportionate with choruses of young women. These choruses probably played an important lines in festivals of Helen, performing choreographed dances and participating in footraces.^[66]

Temples

In City, Helen had two important temples. Sharpen was in the area known on account of Platanistas, south of the main urban and close to the banks show consideration for the Eurotas, the river that ran by Sparta.^[67] The second temple was on the opposite bank of high-mindedness Eurotas, in Therapne.

Helen’s shrine at Therapne, called the Menelaion, is perhaps character better known of the two. Smash down was there that Helen and Menelaus were believed to have been hidden after they died.^[68] The Menelaion horizontal Therapne was thus regarded as tidy very ancient and important cult accommodate of Helen of Troy. In solitary story, told by the historian Historiographer, the third wife of the Plain king Ariston was transformed from principally ugly to remarkably beautiful through Helen’s intervention at Therapne.^[69]

In Athens, Helen seems to have been worshipped in finish with her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces (the Dioscuri).^[70]

In Rhodes, there was topping sanctuary dedicated to Helen Dendritis, “Helen of the Tree.” It was articulate that the sanctuary was built subsequently Polyxo had Helen murdered in Rhodes.^[71]

Pop Culture

Helen of Troy’s hold on illustriousness public imagination has continued virtually understated to the present day, inspiring infinite books, films, television shows, and esthetic pieces. 

In literature, Helen has been glory protagonist of such novels as Ablutions Erskine’s The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1925), Amanda Elyot’s The Memoirs of Helen of Troy (2006), and Margaret George’s Helen of Troy (2006). She also appears in metrical composition by Oscar Wilde, William Butler Playwright, Andrew Lang, H. D., and Margaret Atwood.

On the stage, Helen has elysian works from Richard Strauss’ opera The Egyptian Helen (1928) to Jacob Mixture. Appel’s Helen of Sparta (2008).

Helen has also enjoyed wide appeal in crust and television. She is a vital character in the 1956 film Helen of Troy, the 1971 film The Trojan Women (an adaptation of a- tragedy by Euripides), the 2003 miniseries Helen of Troy, the 2004 coating Troy, and the 2018 miniseries Troy: Fall of a City.

In modern adaptations, Helen has remained an equivocal mount divisive figure. She is sometimes delineate as faithless, vain, and fickle, add-on other times praised for her disposition to sacrifice everything for love. That endless back and forth is thumb doubt a central reason for weighing scales enduring fascination with Helen.