Tag Archives: Greek myths

Princess Helen

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Besides her reputation as a great beauty, Helen was a princess and a very wealthy one at that. Because property and wealth went down through the woman, Helen was the heir to Laconia and the surrounding area. So, as in common in myths and fairy tales, there was a great contest for Helen’s hand in marriage. After a full year of stick fighting and boxing and so on, there were still a number of contestants standing. After another contestant is chose and screws up his chance by getting drunk, Menelaus, the richest man in town, takes home the prize.

Helen would have been, at most, in her teens. Maybe even early teens. Menelaus was already a man. Remember that when you think of Paris. By all repute, he had the body of a God and a dewy beauty. The consensus back then that he was weak and effeminate – not a warrior. His own brother (Hector) says this: “Our prince of beauty – mad for women, you lure them all to ruin.” In my mind I picture him as a member of a boy band – catnip to an adolescent girl. So disaster was all but ensured.

And here’s a question that puzzled me until I began doing research. Helen spent more than ten years with Paris and by all accounts was not a reluctant participant. Why did Menelaus take her back? She fades from history when she returns to him.

Because this was a matrilineal society, the land, the position and the resources went from mother to daughter. Not father to son. So Menelaus had to take Helen back if he wanted to continue as king of Laconia.

Am I being too cynical to suspect the whole furor – the war and all – was not over Helen because of her great beauty but because without her Menelaus lost his kingship?

 

Helen of Troy

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Helen of Troy should really be called Helen of Sparta since she was born in Sparta and was a Spartan princess. She was also a Mycenaen – part of the culture that swept into Bronze Age Crete. This period is probably fifty years after the period I am writing about but I did research into it anyway. We know a bit more about the Spartans and they were supposed to have been influenced by the Minoan civilization.

With that said, most of the Mediterranean cultures were influenced by this great civilization – maybe not in accordance with the wishes of the leaders since in Sparta laws were passed forbidding perfume, cosmetics and jewelry. However, girls were also educated at state expense and encouraged to be physically active. They also married later than many of their peers in other countries so maternal and infant mortality was less. They were also the scandal of Classical Greece since the women had so much more freedom than the poor wives in Athens. Although named for a Goddess, Athena, the women were kept closeted in their homes weaving with no company but slaves and other women. Even in Sparta, though, patriarchy ruled and the women had much less influence than those in Crete.

But I digress.

I think everyone knows the basic story:  that Helen was the most beautiful woman of her age. She was married to Menelaus, brother to Agamemnon. She was either abducted or chose to run away with Paris. (It doesn’t much matter if she was innocent. For most of the intervening centuries she has been considered a harlot.)They fled to Troy and a great war was fought that lasted more than ten years.  The war is the basis of the Iliad. As everyone knows, Troy was considered a myth until Schliemann excavated it.

Here’s what I did not know about Helen.

Another familiar myth is Leda and the Swan. Zeus takes the form of a swan to rape Leda. The child created by this union was Helen. Her beauty was frequently ascribed to her divine paternity. Because Zeus took the form of a swan, Helen was born from an egg. I am not kidding. Besides the painting that shows her rising from an egg, an artifact reputed to be a piece of the eggshell was a sacred object.

Since everybody in these stories are related, Helen’s half-brothers were the twins Castor and Pollux and her half-sister was Clytemnestra, wife to Agamemnon.