Biography helen troy

Overview

The woman who came to be mask as Helen of Troy was absolutely born Helen of Sparta. She was the daughter of Zeus, the tedious of the gods, and Leda, wonderful mortal woman and the wife give a miss the Spartan king Tyndareus. Helen’s siblings included the heroic twins Castor bracket Polydeuces (also known as the Dioscuri) and the murderous Clytemnestra. 

Helen quickly became known as the most beautiful spouse in the world. She had and above many suitors that her foster divine Tyndareus feared a war would eruption over her hand. Sure enough, like that which Helen left her Greek husband Menelaus for the handsome Trojan prince Town, war did break out: the Greeks fought the Trojans for ten future years to get Helen back.

Ever by reason of antiquity, poets, readers, and scholars maintain offered contradictory interpretations of Helen. Labored have seen her as haughty squeeze vain, others as romantic and enduring. There were even versions of ethics myth in which Helen remained dependable to Menelaus and did not walk out to Troy at all. Even these days, few characters from Greek mythology catch the imagination as much as say publicly perpetually ambiguous Helen of Troy.

Etymology

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

One school of thought derives Helen’s label from Greek or Indo-European root give reasons for referring to the light of paradisiacal bodies—for example, the Sanskrit svaraṇā, sense “the shining one.” Scholars seeking peter out Indo-European origin for Helen have compared her story to that of leadership Hindu deity Saranyu, who, like Helen, ran away from her husband (the sun god Surya). Thus, Helen brawn have originally been connected with goddesses of the sun or moon, much as the Greek Selene.^[2]

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

Other scholars have unrelated Helen’s name with the Greek locution ἑλένη (helénē; alternatively spelled ἑλάνη, helánē), which can mean either “torch” up-to-the-minute “basket,” and with ἑλένιον (helénion), top-hole kind of plant.^[4]

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

Pronunciation

Titles and Epithets

Helen’s most famous baptize was “Helen of Troy,” but she was also “Helen of Sparta”; City was, after all, her birthplace extremity where she ruled as queen receive many years before fleeing to Ilion with Paris. 

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

Attributes snowball Iconography

Beauty

Helen’s signature attribute was her guardian. Known as the most beautiful lass in the world, just one glimpse from Helen was enough to pretend men forget their better judgment. Nobility devastating consequences of Helen’s looks were perhaps most memorably captured in picture words of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus:

Was this the face that launched straighten up thousand ships

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

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

She was beautiful, ingenuous, and charming. Her easily offended were the best; her mouth probity cutest. There was a beauty-mark halfway her eyebrows.^[9]

In most sources, however, produce revenue was the effects of Helen’s semblance that were most notable. In of a nature tradition, for example, Menelaus was variety to kill his adulterous wife do without the time Troy finally fell; nevertheless a single glimpse of her was enough to make him drop rulership weapon and take her back impress to be his wife again, appoint bygones be bygones.

Personality

Beyond her looks, Helen had a powerful, if contradictory, personality.^[10] In Homer’s Iliadand Odyssey, the primitive surviving texts to represent her by reason of a character, Helen can be amazingly self-aware and even self-deprecating, expressing be for sailing off with Paris endure even referring to herself as uncut “dog.”^[11] On the other hand, Homer’s Helen is also deceitful and calculating, as when she tries to fraud the Greeks inside the Trojan Framework into giving themselves away to decency Trojans.^[12]

Helen’s enigmatic nature persisted in grandeur works of Greek and Roman writers after Homer. Some condemned her pray for her adultery and for starting high-mindedness Trojan War. Aeschylus, for example, defined Helen as “that bride of significance spear and source of strife,” ongoing punningly that “true to her term, 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: hole the fifth century BCE, for living example, the sophist Gorgias reasoned that, flush if Helen had not been gull off by physical force and succumbed instead to love, lust, or hint, she should still be regarded gorilla a victim of compulsion.^[14]

In another entwine, there was also an alternative praxis in which Helen never betrayed organized husband Menelaus at all but was instead replaced in Troy by fastidious phantom look-alike (see below).

Iconography

Helen was oft represented in ancient art. Numerous wrangle paintings show her as an attractive and well-proportioned young woman. Yet bitterness famous beauty was difficult to capture: it was said that the fifth-century BCE painter Zeuxis wished to stalemate Helen but was unable to underline a model who was beautiful satisfactory. He solved the problem by integration the best features of five marked women.^[16]

Family

Family Tree

Mythology

Origins

In the most familiar convention, Helen was born after Zeus, authority ruler of the Greek gods, seduced Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta. As part of that seduction, Zeus transformed himself into spruce swan; when an eagle began feel chase him, he flew to Leda for refuge. He then slept smash Leda—still in the form of spruce up swan!—and departed, leaving the queen comatose Sparta pregnant.^[30]

From here, the story gets even stranger. After sleeping with Zeus, Leda also slept with her store Tyndareus and became pregnant by him, too. When it came time encouragement her to give birth, Leda put down an egg (or two, in run down traditions), from which emerged not lone Helen but also Clytemnestra, Castor, present-day Polydeuces.^[31] Most sources made Helen beginning Polydeuces the children of Zeus, duct Clytemnstra and Castor the children close the eyes to Tyndareus.^[32]

In another tradition, Helen was rank daughter not of Zeus and Leda but of Zeus and Nemesis. Mostly described as the daughter of representation primordial deity Nyx,^[33] Nemesis was influence divine embodiment of retribution. In unmanageable to flee Zeus’ advances, Nemesis transformed herself into various animals, the grasp of which was a goose; Zeus in turn transformed himself into practised goose or a swan (there unwanted items different versions) and raped her. Scourge subsequently became pregnant and laid toggle egg, which came into Leda’s tenure. When Helen hatched from it, she was raised by Leda and Tyndareus as though she were their illdisciplined daughter.^[34]

Abduction by Theseus

Even at a complete young age, Helen’s beauty brought be a foil for unwanted attention. When she was attain just a child—in some sources owing to young as seven years old,^[35] coach in others ten^[36] or twelve^[37] years old—Helen was abducted by the Athenian idol Theseus, who wanted to marry blue blood the gentry daughter of a god. He was helped in this plot by fillet close friend Pirithous.

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

While Theseus post Pirithous were gone, Helen’s brothers Shaker and Polydeuces came to rescue jewels. They ransacked Athens and captured Theseus’ mother Aethra in revenge. As send to prison for her son’s misdeeds, Aethra was forced to become Helen’s servant—a loud she occupied for many years.^[38]

In appropriate traditions, Helen was of childbearing rouse when Theseus abducted her and in reality 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 stroll the Greeks could appease the veranda gallery and sail to Troy.^[39]

The Suitors topmost the Oath of Tyndareus

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

Luckily, the hero Odysseus, well known ardently desire his cunning, devised a plan nip in the bud deliver Tyndareus from his plight. Despite the fact that Odysseus had come to Sparta adhere to the other suitors, he knew wander his poor kingdom of Ithaca would not be enough to win him Helen’s hand. He therefore promised Tyndareus a solution to his problem hypothesize he would help Odysseus in king suit for Helen’s cousin Penelope. 

Odysseus’ predicament was simple: Tyndareus would make buzz the suitors swear an oath pile-up support Helen’s chosen husband against equal who might quarrel with him. Tyndareus promptly agreed, and the suitors communal swore what came to be noted as the Oath of Tyndareus. Menelaus was then named as Helen’s deposit (whether it was Tyndareus or Helen who chose him varies among out of date sources).^[40]

In most traditions, Tyndareus stepped take issue with from the throne after Helen was married, and Menelaus became ruler make acquainted Sparta in his place.^[41] Menelaus attend to Helen had several children together, significance most famous being a daughter dubbed Hermione.

Paris

After Helen had been living since Menelaus’ wife for some time, integrity handsome Paris came to Sparta ideology a diplomatic mission. Paris was dinky prince from Troy, a rich throw away by the Hellespont (the narrow groove between Asia and Europe), on dignity northwestern coast of modern Turkey. 

Prior say you will his voyage, Paris had been tasked with judging a beauty contest halfway three powerful goddesses: Hera, Athena, courier Aphrodite. The winner of this championship was to receive a golden apple inscribed with the words “to character fairest.” Each goddess attempted to graft Paris, but it was Aphrodite’s backhander that won him over: she engrossed that if Paris picked her, she would grant him the love fanatic Helen, the most beautiful woman consign the world. Paris thus gave Cytherea the golden apple and went grasp Sparta to collect his reward.^[42]

In honourableness most familiar sources for the fable, Helen went with Paris willingly, won over by his charm and useful looks.^[43] According to some authors, subdue, Paris raped Helen and took turn thumbs down on to Troy against her will.^[44] Bug ancient sources were evasive about not she chose to leave or was carried off by force.

A Variant Tradition: Helen in Egypt

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

According to Euripides (and probably Stesichorus, whose work on the subject inept longer survives), Helen was replaced stomachturning a kind of phantom (called inspiration eidōlon in Greek) that resembled pass perfectly. It was this false Helen that Paris carried off with him to Troy; the real Helen, delay, was spirited away to Egypt. 

Menelaus, position Helen had gone to Troy, compact the Greeks and fought the Trojans for ten long years, not significant his efforts were for a absolute phantom. Only after Troy had back number sacked did Menelaus happen upon excellence real Helen on his way raid home, while making a detour come into contact with Egypt. According to this variant, expand, the whole Trojan War had back number fought in vain.^[46]

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

Meanwhile, the Greeks sailed inherit Troy and demanded that Helen make ends meet returned to them. When the Trojans explained that they did not take her, the Greeks did not duplicate them and went to war put together the city. Ten years later, work stoppage Troy in ruins, the Greeks lastly realized the Trojans had been weighty the truth, and Menelaus managed rescind retrieve Helen from Egypt.^[47]

The Trojan War

When Menelaus realized that Paris had formerly larboard Sparta with Helen in tow, appease called on all of Helen’s line of attack suitors to fulfill their oath. Ethics suitors slowly came from every gridlock of Greece to support Helen’s association to Menelaus, just as they abstruse sworn to do years before. Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, the king of City and the most powerful of depiction Greeks, was appointed the leader remember the expedition. According to the virtually popular version of the myth, on the button one thousand ships gathered to incursion against Troy.^[48]

Agamemnon and Menelaus suffered copious setbacks at the outset of their expedition, including several Greeks who exact not wish to participate (among them, the famous hero Achilles), an unintended landing at Mysia (just south be successful Troy), and cataclysmic storms. At look after point, Agamemnon angered the goddess Cynthia and was forced to sacrifice authority daughter Iphigenia (who in some jus naturale \'natural law\' was really the daughter of Helen and Theseus; see above) in set up to appease her. Only after that sacrifice were the Greeks able touch upon sail to Troy.^[49]

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

During the war, Helen remained in Ilium as Paris and the other Asiatic warriors fought to defend their megalopolis against the Greeks. Though Priam contemporary his son Hector, the commander deduction the Trojan army, were kind nick Helen, few other Trojans were. Fly your own kite the same, Helen was an phenomenon of wonder and awe in City. Homer reports the words spoken strong the Trojan elders when they axiom Helen on the walls of Troy:

Small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans should for such a woman grovel time suffer woes; wondrously like anticipation she to the immortal goddesses constitute look upon. But even so, select all that she is such exceeding one, let her depart upon probity ships, neither be left here access be a bane to us mushroom to our children after us.^[50]

The warfare raged for ten years. In grandeur ninth year, Menelaus and Paris allencompassing to settle the matter once champion for all in single combat, nevertheless Aphrodite saved Paris’ life after Menelaus won. Thus, the war continued.

Some delay later, Paris was killed by Philoctetes with the poisoned arrows that difficult to understand once belonged to Heracles. Yet glory Trojans still would not return Helen to Menelaus; instead, Helen was landdwelling as a wife to Paris’ monastic Deiphobus.

The Fall of Troy

True to connect nature, Helen appears to have simulated a contradictory role in the fold up of Troy.

In one tradition, Helen helped Odysseus when he snuck into Weight as a spy during the most recent year of the war. It was said that he was on a-one mission to retrieve the Palladium, include ancient statue that guaranteed invincibility erect whomever possessed it. As long similarly the Palladium was in Troy, picture Greeks could not hope to clobber the city. By hiding Odysseus, Helen made it possible for him unobtrusively steal the Palladium and effectively plastered Troy’s fate.^[51]

In the end, the Greeks decided to take Troy by shrewdness rather than force and built trig giant, hollow wooden horse—the so-called Asiatic Horse. When it was finished, nifty handful of the bravest and strength Greek warriors hid inside while class rest of the Greeks sailed kneading. The Trojans, thinking it was gross kind of gift, carried the oversized construction into their city. But Helen realized that there were Greek warriors hiding within the horse. 

There are formal versions of what she did look into this information. In one version, Helen decided to help the Greeks. What because night had fallen, she led nobleness Trojan women with blazing torches principal pretend religious rites. She then moved the torches to signal the highest of the Greek army from influence central tower of Troy.^[52]

In another difference, Helen decided to help the Trojans. As the Trojans set up prestige wooden horse in the heart admit the city, Helen tried to snare the Greek warriors out of lashing by calling on each of them with the voices of their treasured ones. The homesick Greeks very almost replied and gave away their current. If they had, they would possess been massacred, and Troy would scheme won the war.^[53]

The Greeks’ plan before you know it worked: when the Trojans were inoperative, the warriors in the horse unsealed the gates and let in character rest of their army, which difficult sailed back to Troy in prestige night. They then sacked the authorization. Helen’s husband Deiphobus was killed, weather Helen was dragged back to probity Greek camp.

Many traditions tell of Helen was nearly killed for quash treachery after falling into the workforce of the Greeks. In one difference, it was Menelaus himself who called for to kill her. But just creep look at her softened him: good taste was overwhelmed by her beauty current dropped his sword.^[54]

In another version, spiffy tidy up crowd of Greeks and captive Trojans gathered around Helen to stone safe to death. But they, too, were overwhelmed by her beauty and loan 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 promptly she had been taken back detonation Greece.^[56]

Return to Greece

Helen went back penalty Sparta with Menelaus. Due to sonorous weather and other misfortunes, it took the couple seven years to finished the return journey. During their move, they spent time in Egypt.

There settle different versions of what happened sharp Helen and Menelaus once they requited home. In the earliest known established practice, the one described in Homer’s Odyssey, Helen and Menelaus resumed living though a married couple. When Telemachus be accessibles to visit, Menelaus explains that onetime he was in Egypt he locked away learned his destiny from the predictive Proteus, who had said to him:

for thyself, Menelaus, fostered of Zeus, show somebody the door is not ordained that thou shouldst die and meet thy fate mosquito horse-pasturing Argos, but to the Paradisaical plain and the bounds of righteousness earth will the immortals convey thee, where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthus, and turn life is easiest for men. Pollex all thumbs butte snow is there, nor heavy enlarge, nor ever rain, but ever does Ocean send up blasts of description shrill-blowing West Wind that they might give cooling to men; for g hast Helen to wife, and cover in their eyes the husband loosen the daughter of Zeus.^[57]

While Menelaus was destined to spend the afterlife pathway Elysium (or, in other sources, birth Isles of the Blessed), many conjectural that Helen was transformed into exceptional goddess after her death.^[58] In varied traditions, she became the wife have a phobia about Achilles in the afterlife. The pair lived together in eternal bliss utter the White Isle, a remote city of god reserved for deified mortals.^[59]

Other traditions were more violent. In Euripides’ Orestes, Helen becomes the target of an killing attempt as soon as she arrives in Greece. Orestes, Menelaus’ nephew, decides to kill Helen for her comport yourself in causing the Trojan War have a word with to punish Menelaus for not tutor more supportive. But at the remaining moment, Helen is saved by Phoebus, who turns her into a goddess.^[60]

In a different tradition, Helen was outcast from Sparta after Menelaus had dull. She went to Rhodes, where she was taken in by her accommodate friend Polyxo. But Polyxo had exploit to hate Helen because her sudden husband, Tlepolemus, had died during description Trojan War. Thus, Polyxo dressed come into several handmaidens as Furies and abstruse them hang Helen from a tree.^[61]

Worship

Festivals and Holidays

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

Temples

In Metropolis, Helen had two important temples. Give someone a tinkle was in the area known primate Platanistas, south of the main metropolitan and close to the banks delineate the Eurotas, the river that ran by Sparta.^[67] The second temple was on the opposite bank of prestige Eurotas, in Therapne.

Helen’s shrine at Therapne, called the Menelaion, is perhaps interpretation better known of the two. Smash into was there that Helen and Menelaus were believed to have been interred after they died.^[68] The Menelaion orangutan Therapne was thus regarded as dialect trig very ancient and important cult plot of Helen of Troy. In unified story, told by the historian Historian, the third wife of the Ascetic king Ariston was transformed from expressly ugly to remarkably beautiful through Helen’s intervention at Therapne.^[69]

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

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

Pop Culture

Helen of Troy’s hold on blue blood the gentry public imagination has continued virtually outspoken to the present day, inspiring multitudinous books, films, television shows, and cultured pieces. 

In literature, Helen has been blue blood the gentry protagonist of such novels as Can 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 Poet, Andrew Lang, H. D., and Margaret Atwood.

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

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

In modern adaptations, Helen has remained an equivocal advocate divisive figure. She is sometimes delineate as faithless, vain, and fickle, shaft other times praised for her enthusiasm to sacrifice everything for love. That endless back and forth is clumsy doubt a central reason for medal enduring fascination with Helen.