Introduction

Cherchez la Femme

An Evil Destiny

Helen-Hunting

Goddess, Princess, Whore

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Cherchez la Femme (Look For The Woman)

Helen is faceless. There is no picture, painting, drawing, representation of any sort of Helen produced during her life. There are endless numbers of striking Bronze Age death masks, but only of men.

By the 7th century BC, 500 years after her death, artists do start to paint pictures of Helen, but they are stylised, copybook approximations.

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An Evil Destiny

Not just beauty, but also charismatic.

Iliad composed in the 8th century BC by Homer. Thirty years later, the Odyssey.

The epics were written down, probably within three generations (60 years?) of the Greeks learning to write, a Semitic adaptation to the Phoenician alphabet.

Bettany Hughes provides good background to the epics. This caught my eye: "created at a time before good and evl were regarded as distinct entities." That may be true, but it is interesting that for almost every god one one side of the issue there is an "opposite" god.

For example, Hughes suggests that the Greeks expected a "balance in the nature of things." If that balance was upset, retribution was necessary. And the goddess for retribution was "Nemesis."

More examples later.

The epoch came to be known as "the Age of Heroes."

Interestingly enough, Homer does not say much about Helen's history. He assumes contemporary readers already knew all about her. The writings that would have these "Helen stories" have been long lost. We are aware of them based on others (like Hesiod and Herodotus) referring to them.

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Helen-Hunting

Helen to Troy, back to Sparta, via Egypt? Throughout the eastern Mediterranean.