by Jack Lindsay
The argument to Isokrates’ encomium tells us that the theme was also treated by his contemporaries Polykrates and Anaximenes — the latter much younger than he was. Aristotle’s Rhetoric alludes to an Apology or Praise of Alexandros by an unknown. This work declared that Paris had elevated sentiments, disdained the company of the common shepherds, and lived alone on Ida. He was no more guilty of rape than Theseus or the Dioskouroi; and if he killed Hektor, what about Hektor killing Patroklos? He had the right to go off with Helen as the choice of husband had been left to her by her father. He was not a loose character, but at Troy stayed faithful to Helen. (The author may be Polykrates, whom Aristotle mentions several times in the same chapter.) Hyperides in his oration over the war dead of spring 322, when Leosthenes had led an alliance of Greek states in an attack on Macedonia after the death of Alexander the Great, made a use of the Helen motive on lines opposite to those of Isokrates. He compares Leosthenes to the Greeks before Troy: ‘They fought to avenge the injury done to a single woman; he has saved all the Greeks from the outrages that were meant to be inflicted on them.’ We see how deeply the theme had sunk into the politics of the time; both the defenders and the opponents of the Macedonian supremacy felt the need to use it.[216]
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In art we have noted how the large painting by Polygnotos announced the triumph of Helen, of Beauty, in the midst of the Trojan wreck. However, Aristophon, his brother (according to Plato), produced ‘a detailed picture,’ says Plinius, ‘in which Priam, Helen, Credulity, Odysseus, Deiphobos and Deceit were represented.’ (Some critics read for Dolos, Deceit, the name Dolon; but in view of the presence of Credulity, the personification seems far more likely.) As far as we can tell from the brief description, the work seems to point to the Euripidean exposure of Helen rather than her exaltation.[217] Clearly in the fifth century there was much criss-crossing of ideas and images between the painters proper, the vase painters, the poets, and the sophistic orators. The baring of Helen’s breasts at the confrontation with Menelaos probably came from a painting. Some such painting seems to have influenced big compositions like those of the Parthenon metopes, which are followed by the artist of an oinoche in the Vatican. The scene of the confrontation, with Helen’s flight, is clearly more suited for painters than for sculptors. There are very large numbers of vases, Attic, Boiotian, Etruscan, which attempt to represent it. On the other hand, the episode where Helen is seized is more plastic and goes well on temple pediments — though the meeting of Helen and Menelaos is rarely used by sculptors. The latter part of the fifth century proliferated in variations: we see the fugitive Helen in the sanctuaries of Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, or before Aphrodite herself. The deities tend to appear beside their cult-statues, so that their protection of Helen is doubly stressed. In general, however, the classical epoch held fast to a single pattern for the pursuit: Helen turns back while Menelaos rushes at her, dropping his sword. There is one exception, important for the future. On an amphora Menelaos is shown dragging her brutally by the hair from the foot of Apollo’s statue; there is a confusion here with the allied type of Aias dragging Kassandra away. Only the fact that the statue is of Apollo proves that the woman is Helen.
(We may recall Menelaos’ order in the Trojan Women for Helen to be dragged out by her hair.) On the whole, however, the tendency of the fifth century is to stress the motive of beauty and its power. For this reason, scenes of the abduction are rare. A few works of the mid-century show Helen carried off in a chariot; but these are exceptional and have moved far from the formal marriage motif (the held wrist). Also, in place of the old scheme, we find Paris standing before Helen, often in the presence of Aphrodite and Eros. We have already considered this type, probably born from a large painting. It rapidly degenerates into scenes of the gynaikion (the woman’s quarters), especially of the toilet; and it is hard at times to tell whether a mythological scene is being shown in everyday terms or whether we are looking at what is meant to be a work of genre. The use of the persuasion motif does not seem so widely popular as it became later.
The famous painter Zeuxis, around 410, produced a Helen for the people of Akragas in Sicily to be dedicated in the temple of Hera Kakinia — though Cicero and Dionysios of Halikarnassos say it was at Kroton in south Italy. We are told that he selected five virgins and used them for a composite picture of perfect beauty; the theme was perhaps Helen at the toilet.
The stress we have found on Helen’s magical beauty makes it likely that we see her rather than Aphrodite in the statuettes, supports for bronze mirrors, especially when the works have been turned out in the Peloponnese or at Corinth, where we can doubtless find at work the Spartan idea of her protective power over children and young girls, her ability to transmit beauty. Euripides, we noted, linked her strongly with mirrors. However, on the supports she is seen gradually less than Aphrodite is.[218]
The trivialization of the theme of Helen is part of a general art tendency. Whereas in such different poets as Euripides and Aristophanes, literature sought to grapple passionately with the crisis of Greek society, the artists retreated into styles mannered and decorative for all their superficial excitement. ‘Vase painting adapts itself to what seems a world of cosmetics and subdued conversations’ (Pollitt). On a hydria by the Meidias painter the rape of the Leukippides by the Twins is depicted with much verve and bravura, quite lacking the strict formality of the early carrying-off motif, but it all seems a well-acted charade. We are on the road that leads to attitudes such as that shown on a late cosmetics-container with the inscription: ‘To Helen Sister of Aphrodite’.
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Of the Hellenistic poets the two most important for us are Theokritos and Lykophron. One of the former’s idylls consists of a marriage-song sung by Spartan girls for Helen, another of a hymn to the Dioskouroi. He himself (c. 310-250) was a native of Dorian Sicily, though his parents seem to have been Koans, and he spent some years at Kos, perhaps as a medical student, and later at the great cultural centre, Alexandreia. In Idyll XV he declared that the daughter of Queen Berenike ‘is like Helen to see’. Idyll XVIII is the epithalamion. The girls tell Menelaos that he has taken the daughter of Zeus under one coverlet; alone of the demi-gods he will be Zeus’ son-in-law. They have run with Helen in the race (dromos), anointed like the lads, by the pools of Eurotas; but none of the 240 girls can compare with the bride. She is an expert spinner and weaver, and she plays the lyre better than Artemis and Athena. They twine a garland of lotus flowers and hang it on a plane tree, and they cut in the bark the words: ‘Worship me, I am the Tree of Helen’. They bid goodnight and say they will return with the first cockcrow.
There is no hint of Paris and Troy, no shadow of doom. The whole aim is to present the kindly fostering Spartan goddess, who is also a plane tree, and to stress her beauty. Homer had used little description of Helen; he merely mentioned her white arms and fine hair, with some comparisons to goddesses or Graces; what he relied on was the effect that her presence had on others. Aischylos too used bare effects, suggestions like that of the kolossoi (dead forms) compared with her vital presence. Theokritos, inheriting the aesthetic doctrine of Gorgias and Isokrates, could not use such dramatic methods; he had to try to evoke an essence of beauty while carefully avoiding all the implications of daimonic Helen. (Later on we find Byzantine poets such as Constantine Manasses or John Tzetzes heaping up epithets in a hopeless effort to express the seamless beauty of the Homeric heroine.)
The Hymn (XXII) stresses their role of the Twins as saviours of sailors in storms, but does not mention their appearances as St Elmo’s Fire. Its main part is made up of an account of a boxing-match between Polydeukes and Amykos during the voyage of the Argo, and of the carrying-off of the Leukippides with the resulting destruction of Lynkeus and Idas. ‘For all bards [aoidoi] are dear to the sons of Tyndareos and to Helen and to the other heroes who sacked Troy in aid of Menelaos.’[219]
In the dialogue of seduction attached to Theokritos we find in the exchanges between the gir
l and her lover: ‘Another neat-herd it was that ravished Helen away’; ‘Helen’s more ready now, she kisses her neat-herd in play.’ In Bion’s epithalamion for Achilles and Deidameia we find: ‘The herdsman ravished Helen away and off to Ida led her: a heavy blow to Oinone. And Lakedaimon was angry....’ Here is the first reference extant to the nymph Oinone who was Paris’ love on Ida. Kallimachos in his Hymn to Artemis speaks of the Achaian ships setting sail in wrath for Rhamnousian Helen. He is denoting Helen as the daughter of Nemesis, not of Leda. In a papyrus fragment obtained from a crocodile-mummy at Tebtynis we find a lyrical piece in which Helen in later life moans her lot: ‘A dear delight you seemed to me, in days when you loved me and with hostile spear you sacked the Phrygians’ city. Then all you wanted was to take me back as your wife to your native land. But now, O heartless one, will you go off and leave me a lonely wife, me for whom the host of the Danaids went out, for whose sake Artemis carried off a virgin, Agamemnon’s victim?’ Here is a theme we find nowhere else: Helen is in turn deserted by Menelaos.[220]
We have already noted the deliberate obscurity of Lykophron’s Alexandra, with its heaped-up tortuous allusions. Even the poet’s date and identity are unsure, but he was perhaps the poet from Chalkis, born 330-25. Here we need only concern ourselves with what he has to say of Oinone, the nymph mentioned by Bion. This is the last important addition to the story of Paris and Helen. The nymph was daughter of the River Kebres. Paris lived happily with her on Ida till the goddesses came. She had gained from Rhea the gifts of healing and second sight, and she warned Paris not to go after Helen. But he deserted her. He quite forgot her till wounded by the arrows of Philoktetes; then he sent to ask for her help and she bade him turn to Helen. Too late, she repented; hurrying down, she found him dead.
Here was just the sort of tale which the Hellenistic poets exploited or invented. There is no hint of Oinone in Euripides; we find her nowhere indeed in classical poetry save perhaps in Bacchylides — and only there through a restoration. If the poet did speak of her, it was in some comparison with Niobe: maybe she was brought in for having caused the death of a loved one through pride and for then losing herself in tears. Her tale may have arisen as a local legend in connection with a site said to be the grave of Paris and Oinone. Strabon tells us that Demetrios of Skepsis ‘suspects that the territory of Ilion subject to Hektor stretched inland from the naval station as far as Kebrenia; for he states that the tomb of Alexandros is pointed out there, as also that of Oinone, who, according to the historians, was Paris’ wife before he carried off Helen.’ The region seems to be linked both with the river-god Kebres and Paris; the Iliad mentions ‘Kebriones bastard son of glorious Priam’.[221]
Hellanikos in his Trōika seems to have taken the story up; and it has been adduced that it was in the Cypria. But the lack of references in the dramatists argues strongly against its antiquity; Hyginus, basing himself on Euripides’ Alexandros, does not mention it. There is no sign of the tale in early art. We may surmise that there was an old local legend of a nymph with whom Paris lived on Ida, and that the pathetic details were added in the fourth century. Lykophron with his mass of learned oddments, which included bits of folklore, picked the story up and gave it currency; and its fuller form was worked out by a later poet. If so, the version of Hegesianax, repeated in effect by Ovid and Quintos Smyrnaios, would be mainly the result of Hellenistic romanticizing. The tombs may have been brought in to cap the tale; but it is more likely that they begot at least its primitive elements, just as the spring where the three goddesses bathed before the Judgement may well have had its local legend.[222] A tale of the Daphnis type was thus attached to Paris and gradually developed many touches of pathos, eg Paris, wounded, climbs Ida to find his old love (Quintos). Paris, the unfaithful lover of a nymph is punished by death, though his fate comes in a roundabout way through the nymph refusing to heal him. Such unfaithful lovers in myth are lamed, blinded, or killed, as we see from the tales of Daphnis, Anchises, Orion, Aktaion. Oinone’s refusal to aid may also be an old motif, as Philostratos tells a similar tale of Philolaos.[223]
Lykophron tells us of the wounding of Paris:
all which things the jealous spouse [Oinone] shall bring to light, sending her son [Korythos] to indicate the land, angered by the taunts of her father [Kebres] for her bed’s sake and because of the alien bride [Helen]. And herself, skilled in drugs [pharmaka; also spells], seeing the baneful incurable wound of her husband wounded by the giant-slaying arrows of his adversary [Philoktetes], shall endure to share her doom, from the topmost tower to the new-slain corpse hurtling herself head foremost and pierced by sorrow, for the dead shall breathe forth her soul on the quivering dead.
She dies on his pyre. We learn here of the son Korythos whom she sent to act as scout in guiding the Greeks. Through Korythos she becomes the final agent in destroying Troy. The tale thus blames Paris’ infidelity as the cause of disaster. Parthenios gives us a different version. In Story IV he tells us of Oinone, stressing her prophetic powers and adding that Paris swore ‘he would never desert her, but would rather advance her to the greatest honour’. In XXXIV, however, he adds, ‘Of the union of Oinone and Alexandros was born a lad name Korythos. He came to Troy to help the Trojans and there fell in love with Helen. She indeed received him with the greatest warmth — he was of extreme beauty — but his father discovered his aims and killed him. Nikandros (of Kolophon, second century BC) however says that he was the son, not of Oinone, but of Helen and Alexandros, and declares: There was the Tomb of fallen Korythos, whom Helen bore, the fruit of marriage rape, in bitter grief, the Herdsman’s wicked brood.’ For Oinone he cites the Troika of Kephalon of Gergitha.[224] Konon adds that Korythos was sent by his mother with the instruction to seduce Helen.
Korythos, unlike Oinone, does not seem to derive from a folk-tale. The name occurs in Linear B; and is used in Greek for a bird, the crested trochilos. It is also a title of Apollo; Korythalia or Korythallia is a title of Artemis at Sparta and also occurs in Italy. Korythallistriai are girls who dance in honour of Korythallia; they may have worn a bird-dress like the Doves of Alkman. Athenaios tells us that the Spartans celebrate ‘the Nurse Festival, called Tithenidia, for the children. In this the nurses take the male children at the time of the Kopis’ or Cleaver — a festival which involved a meal beside the temple of the god (Apollo of Amyklai?) ‘into the country; and there, before the image of Artemis Korythalia, as she is called, whose fountain is by the spring of Tiassos, in the region named Kleta, they celebrate the Kopis in the same way. They also sacrifice sucking-pigs, and at the festival banquet they serve the oven bread...’ There is no mention of bird-dress here; but there seems a strong link of the korythos-bird with the ancient Mother-Goddess, with the Nymphs who in myth have the important function of nurses. (The pig-sacrifice is typical of the cult of the earthmother.)[225]
Some of the other details in the Alexandra deserve a brief notice. In much Lykophron follows the Cypria; but he tells of Helen’s birth in terms that could involve either Leda or Nemesis, or both. ‘I see the winged firebrand [Paris] rushing to seize the Dove [Helen], the bitch of Pephnos’, where the Twins were born, ‘whom the water-roaming Vulture brought to birth, husked in a rounded shell’. But Helen later is called the Thyiad (Mainad) of Pleuron (from whom Leda was descended); and the poet refers to the Twins, after mentioning Theseus and Aithra, as harrying Attika ‘in vengeance for the raped Thyiad, those Wolves whose heads a cloven Eggshell covers’. He describes Helen as carried off by force from the seashore as she was sacrificing to the Thysad Nymphs and the goddess Byne (the Thyiades and Ino Leukothea).[226]
He uses a version about the meeting of Paris and Menelaos which may be quite old and which makes the episode of the Judgement of the Goddesses unnecessary; it also has the effect of making Paris’ ingratitude to Menelaos far more criminal. A plague had broken out in Lakedaimon, and the people there were bidden by an oracle to ‘propitiate the Kronian daimones in Troy’ — to sacrifice on the graves
there of the sons of Prometheus. Menelaos went to carry out the propitiation, and while he was there Paris got into trouble by killing without intention a son of Antenor, whom in fact he dearly loved. Menelaos, to save him from punishment, took him home to Sparta. Paris’ treachery there, Lykophron adds, was ‘modelled on the ways of the she-bear that suckled him’. (A point that makes this story appear ancient is the way in which it treats Trojans and Achaians as of the same stock, the same culture. As Paris is living at Troy, the story seems to contain no knowledge of him as a herdsman on Ida. There is no hint of it in Homer or the Cipria; indeed the account of Phereklos building a fleet for Paris denies it.)[227]
Lykophron adds a new touch about Achilles. The reason why he wanted to see Helen at Troy was that in sleep he was tormented by her image. ‘She shall cause him to pine upon his bed, distracted by her phantom face [eidoloplastos] in his dreams.’[228]
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There is not much of interest for us in later Greek literature or in Latin. Though Homer continued to be read and to play his key part in Greek education, the cyclic poets fell out of favour. A work like the Cypria was known by Alexandrian poets like Kallimachos, Lykophron, Theokritos, and was perhaps even edited by the learned critics; it was also translated into Latin by Ninnius. But from the fourth century summaries in prose were made, and much interest in the old myths or legends was pedantic and trivializing. Between the second and fifth centuries AD the text of the original Cypria faded out. In general the Latin poets carried on the tradition of cheapening Helen as a woman of shameless coquetry. Even poets like Catullus and Propertius, with their tragic love affairs, could not grasp the concept of Helen’s fatal beauty as it had developed in complex ways from Homer to Isokrates. For Virgil she is merely a vile woman, the Erinys of her own land. He makes Deiphobos in the underworld describe her in all her perfidy. On the walls of Troy she brandished a torch to let the Greeks know the moment to attack, then she disarmed him (Deiphobos) and called in Menelaos with Odysseus to murder and mutilate him. Thus she hoped to earn her pardon. (Earlier versions made Sinon give the signal; Virgil however was unlikely to have invented the motif, which may have been developed as part of the idea that Helen was the Moon Selene.)[229]
