Helen of Troy

by Jack Lindsay

  The dialogue between Helen and Aphrodite has been taken by some critics to represent Helen’s inner conflict. From one angle that viewpoint is true enough; but we must also realize that in the Homeric world the pressures and compulsions from the spirit world are felt to exist objectively. Aphrodite, we saw, is Helen’s daimōn, but she is also a great goddess engaged in actions of wide scope. We cannot say that the divine power is here simply confounded with the power of passion. Indeed in later Greek verse Aphrodite is used to mean sexual intercourse and enjoyment. Thus Mimnermos, priest of Kolophon in Ionia about 630 BC, laments: ‘What kind of life, what kind of life can there be without golden Aphrodite?’ Such a usage implies the goddess’ magical presence in and around the copulating lovers: a radiant explosion of the life force which transcends normal experience and thus needs a divine name. Later, in the fifth century, with the waning of direct belief in the Olympians, a poet could conceive of such a dialogue between Helen and Aphrodite as a purely psychological matter: for example, Euripides in The Trojan Women. But the situation is much more complex for Homer. Aphrodite embodies not only Helen’s beauty but also its social effects, its total meaning and action. Helen must play out her entangled role to the bitter end; she has no choice, herself as much swayed by her fatal beauty as the men who desire her. Or rather her choice involves much more than a personal decision; it emerges from the total situation, the significance of beauty and desire in Greek culture. If she disobeys Aphrodite, punishment will descend on her, probably the loss of her irresistible beauty. She will lose her role, her personality, her daimōn. For Homer a woman’s aretē, her characteristic virtue or power, is her beauty. (Virtue and power here are hardly distinguishable.) We are being anachronistic if we ask the woman to feel responsible for her aretē’s effects.[10]

  To return to the scene of Paris’ discomfiture. The gods were watching the event from aloft. Zeus mocked at Hera by pointing out that she and Athena sat drinking nectar while Aphrodite was busy saving her hero. Still, Menelaos had won; what then were the gods to do? Should they stir up more trouble or allow peace? ‘Then might King Priam’s city still be inhabited and Menelaos take back Argive Helen.’ (The terms used here suggest the poet knew that the site of Troy, at least that of the Bronze-Age town, was deserted.) Zeus goes on to say that ‘sacred Ilios’, a rich town, had never failed in sacrifices to him and had been most favoured of his heart. Hera retorts that in her sight there are three cities far dearer: Argos, Sparta and broad-streeted Mykenai. (Athena might have made the same sort of comment about Athens.) Hera calls on Zeus to let Athena in turn intervene, and he assents. Athena goes down in the guise of a spearman, Laodokos son of Antenor, and stirs up Pandaros to let fly an arrow at Menelaos. The latter’s skin is merely grazed, but the truce is broken and the war starts off again.

  *

  Later, in Book VI, Hektor, depressed at the endless slaughter, returns to the palace from the battlefield. He bids his mother Hekabe (Hecuba) go to Athena’s temple and offer up the finest and amplest robe in her hall, with a vow to sacrifice twelve sleek heifers, ‘if the goddess will take pity on Troy and the wives of the Trojans and their little children’. He bursts out again in words which show how the direct blame for the war is laid on Paris and not on Helen. ‘I will go after Paris and summon him, if maybe he’ll listen to my word. I wish the earth would straightway split open for him. The Olympians reared him as a crushing misery for the Trojans and great-hearted Priam and the sons of Priam. If only I could see him going down to the House of Hades, then I might say my heart had forgotten its griefs.’

  His mother, without comment on this estimation of his brother, calls her handmaids, who gather the old wives from throughout the town. She herself goes down to the vaulted room in which lay ‘her richly-embroidered robes, the handiwork of Sidonian women, whom godlike Alexandros had himself brought from Sidon as he sailed over the wide sea on that voyage when he brought back highborn Helen’. (We thus learn that Paris took a very roundabout way home.) Hekabe selects a robe as offering to Athena, ‘the one finest in its embroidering, the amplest, glittering like a star, which lay at the bottom of them all’.[11]

  Hektor went on to Alexandros’ palace, ‘which he himself had built with the men who were at that time the best builders in rich-soiled Troy’. It consisted of a chamber, thalamos, with hall, doma, and court, aulē, and stood close to the palaces of Hektor and Priam in the citadel. Hektor went in, holding his bronze spear with a ring of gold round its point. Paris was busy with his splendid weapons. ‘And Argive Helen sat among her handmaids and set out for each of them her glorious handiwork.’ Hektor rebuked Paris: ‘Daimoniē, it’s not good for you to nurse this anger in your heart. The people are dying round the town and the steep walls in battle, and it’s because of you the battle-cry and the war are blazing about this city. You’d be angry at anyone else you saw shrinking from this abominable war. So come on, rouse yourself, or soon the city will flare up and be consumed by fire.’ Alexandros replied that he did not stay in his chamber through resentment against the Trojans, but because he wanted to give up his mind to sorrow. A moment ago Helen had tried with gentle words to urge him to return to the fighting; and he himself agreed with her. ‘Victory shifts from man to man. So wait a moment and let me put on my battle-gear. Or get on your way and I’ll follow you — I think I’ll catch you up.’

  Hektor said nothing, but Helen spoke gently, ‘Brother, I know I’m a bitch, I can’t help causing troubles, and everyone abhors me. I wish that on the day my mother gave me birth a wicked stormwind had carried me off to some mountain or to the wave of the pouring roaring sea where the wave could have swept me away before all these things happened. But as the gods ordained these evils, I wish I’d been wife to some better man, who’d have responded to the indignation [nemesis] of his fellows and the abuse they heaped on him. But this man’s mind lacks steadfastness and will go on lacking it. So I think he’ll reap the fruits of the whole thing. But come now, enter and sit on this chair, my brother. Suffering has enclosed your heart above all others because of me the bitch and the folly [atē] of Alexandros on whom Zeus has brought an evil doom — so that in days to come we may be a song for men yet unborn.’

  Hektor answered, ‘Don’t ask me to sit down, Helen. Loving as you are, you won’t persuade me. My heart’s eager to bring help to the Trojans who sorely miss me when I’m away. But rouse up this man of yours. Let him of himself hurry along and catch me up while I’m still in the city. For I’m going to my own house, to see my household, my dear wife and my baby son. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back home to them again, or if the gods will now give me death under the hands of the Achaians.’ So he went off to bid his wife and family farewell.

  Ate here used of Paris means a bewilderment or infatuation sent in punishment by the gods, and thus also the reckless guilt or sin that results. It has the same root as aaein, to hurt or damage, always with reference to the mind, and so to mislead or infatuate. Atē may come from some divine judgement or from the effects of wine, sleep or any stupefying agent. Paris is thus seen as having acted through some blindness of passion inflicted from the spirit-world; he is sustained by Aphrodite, who also drives him on. He is under the same sort of compulsion as Helen, but is blamed for it. Helen, we may note, never expresses moral repentance. She is horrified by the effects of her action and feels that it would be better if she had never been born, yet she never asks herself if there is any point in striving against the fate that has given her a bitchface. She owns however a strange sort of innocence in her passive acceptance of her role and in her refusal to make excuses for herself. She is far from the woman of many lovers whom she became in later traditions. She compares Paris with Hektor and other warriors, and feels disillusioned; as her opinion of Paris worsens, her esteem and affection for Hektor grow. She contrasts the latter’s humanity, goodness and deep feeling, with Paris’ superficiality; but her attitude is open and honest, with no touches of coquetry.[12]

  After Hektor ha
s visited his wife in a moving scene of farewell, Paris soon catches him up. He is compared to a stalled horse that has fed his fill at the manger, then breaks his halter and runs stamping over the plain, making for his bathing-place in the river. ‘He tosses his head on high and his mane floats and streams along his shoulders, and, glorying in his beauty, away he goes, skimming the ground, to the haunts and pastures of mares.’ So is Paris as he strides down from high Pergamon (the upper part or citadel of Troy), ‘his armour lustrous as the burning sun, laughing out loud for high spirits.’ Reaching Hektor, he speaks first. ‘My brother, I’ve been too slow and kept you waiting when you were eager to be off. I didn’t turn up as promptly as you bade me.’

  ‘Daimoniē,’ says Hektor, ‘no reasonable man could jeer at your battle-behaviour. You’re a brave fighter. But you give up when the whim comes, and don’t want to go on. I take it hard when I hear you abused by the Trojans, who are in a bad way through you. But let’s hurry. Later I’ll make up for everything I said — if Zeus ever allows us to set a bowl of deliverance in our halls for the gods above, when we’ve driven the well-greaved Achaians from the land of Troy.’

  *

  The rest of the references to Helen are not important, apart from her final appearance, but they help to build up the picture. After the fight between Hektor and Aias, the Trojans hold a discussion in the citadel, ‘a fierce tumultuous gathering’. Antenor proposes the return of ‘Argive Helen and her property’. Alexandros, ‘husband of Helen with her lovely hair’, replies that he will not give up his wife, but ‘the property I brought from Argos to our home I’m willing to hand over, with additions from my own store’. Priam proposes that an embassy should take the offer to the Achaians at dawn. When the herald Idaios announces the terms, Diomedes answers, ‘Let nobody accept the property from Alexandros, no, not even Helen herself. Even the biggest fool can tell that now the cords of destruction tighten on the Trojans.’ Agamemnon sums up. The Trojans may only have their dead to burn, ‘and let Zeus the thundering husband of Hera be witness to our oaths’.[13]

  In Book VIII Alexandros hits Nestor’s horse with an arrow. Later, when Agamemnon vainly tries to placate Achilles, the latter flares out: ‘Why must the Argives wage war against the Trojans? Why has Agamemnon, this son of Atreus, gathered his host and led it here? Was it for the sake of Helen with her lovely hair? So the sons of Atreus then alone of mortals love their bed-mates? No, anyone who’s a true and sensible man loves his own and cherishes her, as I too did mine with all my heart, though she was only the captive of my spear.’[14]

  In Book XI the antagonism of Hektor to Paris comes out again. Hektor, sickened by the deaths and woundings of his kin and of other warriors, upbraids Paris with the phrases we have already met: ‘Dys-Paris, a fine fellow to look at, mad about women...’ He declares that the ruin of Ilios is sure. But Paris, who has been heartening his comrades, is now the one to talk in a rousing tone. ‘It’s your way to blame somebody on whom lies no blame. If I’ve ever drawn back from fighting, I haven’t done so here. My mother didn’t bear me an utter weakling. From the time you stirred up the battle of your comrades by the ships, we’ve held our ground and haven’t stopped engaging the Danaans. But the comrades you ask about are dead, except Deiphobos and the great lord Helenos, who’s gone back. Each of them was wounded in the arm by a long spear, but Zeus warded off death. Now lead us anywhere your heart and spirit bid you. We’ll follow with a will, and I don’t think we’ll show any lack of courage while our strength lasts. Beyond his strength no man can fight, however keen he is.’ Later, near the end of Book XXII, Hektor with dying breath prophesies that ‘Paris and Phoibos Apollo will kill Achilles at the Skaian Gate’.[15]

  In Book XIX, during the mourning for Patroklos, Achilles throws some outright abuse at Helen. He could not have suffered a worse blow, he says, not even if news of his father’s death had come, ‘while in fact I’m fighting Trojans in an alien land for that horrible Helen’ — rigidanē, a creature that chills and makes one shudder.[16]

  Finally, near the end of the last book, as Hektor is being lamented by Andromache his wife and then by his mother, the last word is given to Helen. She is the third to lead the wailing. ‘Hektor I loved by far the most of all my brothers-in-law. My husband indeed is godlike Alexandros, who brought me to the land of Troy — O, I wish I had died then. It’s now the twentieth year since I came away and left my homeland, but never once did I hear an ugly or spiteful word from you. No, if anyone else spoke of me with reproach in the halls, a brother of yours or sister, a brother’s finely dressed wife or your mother — your father was always as gentle with me as if he’d been my own — you protested and restrained them by the kindness of your words and your kindly heart. So I weep with stricken heart both for you and for my miserable self. Now I have no one in all the breadth of Troy to be gentle and friendly to me. They all shudder at me.’ These last words remind us of Achilles’ epithet for her.

  Her statement that she had been at Troy for twenty years is surprising. It may imply that Homer accepted the story of a first Achaian expedition which lost its way and abortively landed in Mysia, so that operations were delayed for ten years. There is no other suggestion of this mishap in the Iliad, though the long delay would make the age of Achilles’ grown son (mentioned in Book XIX) more plausible. But Helen’s remark may merely be the result of the poet’s liking for parallelism: nine years of preparation, with the fleet sailing in the tenth year; nine years of siege, with Troy falling in the tenth year; nine years of wandering for Odysseus, with his homecoming in the tenth year.

  *

  Paris, we have seen, is presented in somewhat contradictory ways. He is much abused and makes a poor showing against Menelaos; his beauty of body is stressed and he is called a womanizer; he excels at the lyre. His action in carrying Helen off is never accepted. He has offended Zeus Xenios, the guardian of hospitality, a dire offence in the Homeric world. Zeus Xenios avenged any breach of the laws of hospitality. In the Odyssey Eumaios the swineherd tells the disguised Odysseus not to try any lies or cajolement. ‘It’s not for that I’ll show you respect or kindness, but out of fear of Zeus Xenios and pity for you.’ He also says, ‘From Zeus are all strangers [xenoi] and beggars.’ Pausanias records that at Sparta, where the Fates (or Moirai) had their shrine by the grave of Orestes, ‘the Lakedaimons have also a sanctuary of Hestia’, the hearth-goddess, ‘and there are as well Zeus Xenios and Athena Xenia’.[17] But with all Paris’ changes of spirit, he is volatile and lively, erratic and buoyant; his characteristic epithet is ‘godlike’. Some critics have suggested that he was the hero of an earlier epic composed at a time when archers had higher prestige than later. Not that the Achaians lacked their archers. There was, for instance, Philoktētēs, who had been disabled by a snakebite and left on Lemnos; the Iliad mentions this event and the Odyssey adds that he got home safely. The cyclic and tragic poets added that he was the friend of Herakles, who taught him to shoot and bequeathed him his bow. An oracle declared that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Herakles. So Philoktētēs was fetched, and cured of his festering wound during a deep sleep sent to him by Apollo; soon afterwards he shot and killed Paris, and Troy fell. There may then have been a version of the Trojan War in which he and Paris, both great archers, were the protagonists.[18] We may also note that Herakles was a Mykenean archer who shot both Hades and Hera.[19]

  If this view is correct, Paris was gradually pushed from the centre of the picture by Hektor. The latter was built up into the character of the perfect warrior, brave, steadfast, but humane, while Paris developed the wayward aspects suitable for a man who thinks more of his loves than of his homeland. Certainly he is marked out as an archer, different from the other fighters. Though he once cuts down a man, and though he uses spears in his fight with Menelaos, his normal weapon is the bow. He shoots Diomedes, Machaon, Eurypolos, Euchenor, and later (not in the Iliad) Achilles. But the heroes despise a bowman who does not come to grips with the enemy. Leaning
against a pillar raised on the barrow erected of old for Ilos, an Elder of the People, he shoots Diomedes in the foot as he is stripping the armour from a fallen man. Diomedes, unafraid, denounces him: ‘Bowman, be-fouler, proud of your curling locks, ogler of girls. I only wish you’d face me man to man with proper weapons. You’d find your bow and arrow-flight a poor defence. Now you are puffed up for merely grazing the flat of my foot. I don’t mind it any more than a blow from a girl or a naughty boy. The dart of a weakling, a coward, is blunt. But a spear thrown by my hand, if it only touches, proves its edge and lays a man low.’[20]

  Other critics have considered that the contradictions in Paris come from various versions of the Trojan epic or saga being confused. It is no doubt true that a long evolution, with varying evaluations of his character and of his place in the story, lies behind the Homeric Paris. However, in the Iliad he emerges as a vivid person precisely because of the poet’s skill in fusing the different aspects. We see him as a man out of step with his fellows, going his own way, and yet ready to recognize the claims of his family and people as long as his right to Helen is not challenged. He is good-humoured as well as passionate, and responds to both Helen and Hektor. He has been called a folktale hero plunged into the heroic world; but his complexity comes rather from the way in which he combines various strands of that world in an unusual way.

  Helen too, with her varying moods and responses, has the same sort of complexity. The duel between Menelaos and Paris shocks and undermines her sense of security, but she cleaves to her role. She combines sorrow and contrition for having brought about the war, regret for the lost Menelaos, affectionate admiration for Hektor, submission to Aphrodite and to the fatality of her own beauty. The scene on the battlements when the old men look on her decisively conveys Homer’s own attitude and convinces us of her great role. Deeply as they long for the ending of the war, they cannot blame her or deny that the war is fitly waged for such a prize. This impact of her presence has an effect that no amount of description or explanation could attain. We feel her beauty as the visible emanation of the in-dwelling Aphrodite, merging woman and goddess, yet leaving Helen distinct as a proud, pathetic, indomitable figure. Her beauty, worn without the least coyness or coquetry, gives her, as we noted, a sort of immaculacy, a simplicity of innocence in the midst of her guilt. Even the disasters she provokes bear witness to her peculiar lack of implication. Through the walls of a crashing world she walks, suffering but uncrushed: in her own words, a bitchface, a shameless thing of destruction, and yet also the pledge of a happiness and a harmony which her world cannot compass. She has the momentary consolation of realizing her positive role in the comment she makes when she foresees the poems that will come out of the conflict and anguish. In that passage Homer himself intrudes to give his benediction and to express his faith in a deeper meaning that haunts the tale of betrayal and calamity.