by Jack Lindsay
In general Helen becomes a shallowly treated emblem of infidelity or of overpowering beauty. Thus Propertius writes: ‘If I remember, she’s given to blaming fickle girls and damns the whole Iliad on account of Helen.’ And then: ‘You’re the first Roman girl that Jove will take to bed. You’ll always be my mistress on earth; your form’s the loveliest that earth has seen, after Helen. Can I now wonder at the young chaps burning with love for you? It would be all the more glorious for you, Troy, to perish for her. Once I used to wonder at a girl bringing so many warriors from Europe and Asia to Troy. And now I find you were wise, Paris and Menelaos: you for sticking to her and you for demanding her back.’ A few extra touches of villainy are added. Seneca in his Trojan Women makes Helen so treacherous as to inveigle Polyxena by lies into the Greek camp to be sacrificed.[230]
In Greek, Loukian carries on the mocking tradition. Helen is ‘a woman with a white skin and a long neck, as one could guess of a swan’s daughter’. In the Blessed Isles Menelaos has to institute a judicial action against Theseus to get possession of her; then he wakes in an empty bed and has to chase after her with Agamemnon to a near isle, to which she has eloped with Kinyras. Ptolemaios Chennos tells how she bears Euphorion in the Blessed Isles to Achilles.[231] Flavios Philostratos a century later embroiders this theme. He blames Homer for putting her in Troy and making her watch the slaughter from the wall, when she was in Egypt. Achilles and Helen had been in love when alive without knowing one another; after death they go to Leuke (White), an isle in the Black Sea, which Poseidon makes rise up for them. Some sailors were forced by a storm to land there and wait till the winds died down. Under a tree, they heard mysterious noises. Helen and Achilles, living joyously together, are talking of their love and of the exploits of the heroes before Troy. (Thus, in a sentimentalized end, the great heroine and the great hero of the Homeric epic come together.) In the second century AD there were made prose compilations under the names of Diktys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, with various additions or changes. Dares says that Helen and Paris met on the isle of Kythera where Helen was preparing to sacrifice in the temple of Diana and Apollo. As Aphrodite was the Kytherean, he probably wants to put the meeting entirely under her controls. Diktys was supposed to be a Cretan who fought in the Trojan War and recorded the whole thing in nine books, written in Phoinikian characters on strips of bark; his tomb was broken open by an earthquake in the reign of Nero and the box with his strips was found by shepherds. The work makes Helen declare that she left Sparta for love of Paris. Dares, like Diktys, stresses the treacheries on both sides and the love of Achilles for the Trojan princess Polyxena, which leads to his murder in a temple. He tries to get a casually realistic effect, as of a genuine observer of the events. ‘Helen was as handsome as her fair-haired brothers, simple-minded, charming, with very fine legs, a mole between her eyebrows, and a tiny mouth.’ Epic is passing over into the novel.[232] Dracontius in the fifth century wrote a Latin poem on Helen’s Abduction.
More important by far was the Greek epic of Quintos of Smyrna in the fourth century, in fourteen books. Probably using summaries of the cyclic poets, it carries on from Homer. Quintos does his best to recapture the Homeric tone and outlook, laying all responsibility on the gods and exculpating both Helen and Paris. Helen is carried off by force. She laments her role in much the same way as in the Iliad, without being able to do anything about it. After the capture of Troy, Menelaos kills Deiphobos, who does not defend himself — a new touch. Then he angrily seeks Helen in the palace; Aphrodite halts his rush, forces him to drop his sword and realize Helen’s beauty; in the night the pair are reconciled in his tent. The degree of Quintos’ success may be gauged from the passage where the captive women are being led off to the ships. The Trojan women wail, but Helen stays silent, though afraid of being mishandled by the Achaians; she flushes like Aphrodite caught in the trap by Hephaistos as she lies mated with Ares. ‘The folk all around marvelled as they stared at the glory and fascinating beauty of the flawless woman. No man dared to cast any reproach on her, openly or covertly; they all watched her go by, enraptured, as if she were divine. Thus she appeared to all of them as they yearned towards her. As when men have wandered on a wild unslackening sea, after endless yearning the homeland comes in sight. Escaped from the waves, from death, they stretch their hands to the homeland with joy breaking in their hearts. So all the Danaoi felt joy rise up, and not a man of them there remembered the grievous pangs and the roar of battle — such thoughts Kythereia [Aphrodite] stirred in them all for the grace she brought Helen with her quick glances and Zeus her father.’[233]
So Helen makes her exit from Greek poetry in a way not unworthy of her Homeric origins. After Quintos come only the Egyptian imitators of the style of Nonnos. Triphiodoros wrote a Capture of Ilion, with no innovations; Kolouthos, under Anastasios, an Abduction of Helen, which was largely a caricature of the epic tradition. Thus, Helen, seeing a handsome stranger, runs to meet him, makes him come in and sit down, and cannot stop looking at him. He tells her of Aphrodite’s promise and asks her to marry him; she hurries to accept, since she cannot go against the goddess. They flee and Hermione laments. Later Byzantine writers, as we noted, merely dissipated the theme.[234]
Quintos had made a praiseworthy attempt; and his work at times has freshness, especially in the similes. But he could not possibly re-achieve the Homeric impact, its unity of conception, in such a different world, that of the Roman Empire in the crisis leading to the breakdown of its western half. To compensate for the inability to recreate Homer’s universe, he falls back on the idea of overruling fate. In his lengthy account of Oinone, he achieves his effect of pathos by the tension between the Hellenistic romanticism of the episode and the sense of harsh bars of fate against which the lovers beat. Paris pleads: ‘My true wife, don’t hate me in my anguish, because I left you a widow in your house, not of my own will, but the Fates [Kēres] that no man may escape led me to Helen, and I wish that before I knew her bed I’d died in your embrace.’ He begs her not to deny him aid through jealousy. ‘That would be a deed displeasing to the Prayers [Litai] who are daughters of thundering Zeus. In anger at those who won’t relent in their pride, they stir up against them the dread Erinys and Wrath. You, lady, ward off the Kēres, and quickly, even if I sinned in my folly.’
Quintos sees Fate in three forms: the Kēres, Aisa, and Moira or Moirai. The Kēres float about the doomed man, pitiless, depriving him of his senses, deceiving him and exulting in his doom. The gods cannot check them. Quintos at times uses a Homeric term, hyper kēras (beyond the Kēres) to express a narrow and lucky escape, but normally his Kēres are inevitable, aphyktoi. Aisa, the baleful and invincible, ‘hangs about all men on earth, caring not even for the gods, such strength has she alone. And she will sack Priam’s rich city, killing off those of the Trojans and Greeks she wishes, and there is no god who will halt her.’ The Moirai control the destinies of men and Zeus yields to them. So a divorce between gods and men arises. Thetis says, ‘It’s not right, when Zeus is angry, that the eternal ones should fight for men, mere men.’ And there is no force or conviction when Quintos talks of Justice working through the Erinyes. The split in his mind appears when Nestor, after laying down the principle of inescapable Fate, ends, ‘Hope always for the best. There’s a saying among men that the good go to heaven that never fades, but the bad man to hateful darkness.’ Here is an echo from the Christian creed, discordant with other passages where the poet somewhat confusedly tries to take over ancient views of the underworld and of the Blessed Isles. Fate rules the earth, but things may be different in another sphere. Thus Quintos reveals himself as a man of his authoritarian world with its sense of dire necessity ruling everything in human life and with a desperate hope of justice on the other side of death.[235]
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In art we do not find efforts to break into new dimensions as in Theokritos or Lykophron, or to get inside the ancient epic and to revive it, as with Quintos of Smyrna. Archaizing sculptors or
fresco painters look back to originals of the fifth or fourth century and merely adapt them to the taste of their period. New meanings are thus asserted, but not with any deep penetration or comprehension.
It is not by chance that we find brought together, in a bedroom, three paintings of tragic love, Medeia, Phaidra, Helen. If in his Troica Nero, the sovereign poet, sings of Hector and Paris as rivals in the tourney, we find them again in the Trojan chamber, afresh opposed, but in a different sense. To the lacerating farewell of Andromache and Hector corresponds the first meeting of Paris and Helen.[236]
The narrative element fades out; instead we find the illustration of situation. The psychological interest tends to dominate. We do not see Paris startled by the arrival of Hermes and the goddesses, or seated examining them; rather we see him calmly awaiting, in Hermes’ company, for them to come up. We do not get Helen’s abduction or her return with Menelaos, but the first arrival of Paris at Sparta: the moment of Persuasion. And there is nothing of the excitement or disarray of the actual arrival. The main actors give the impression of having faced one another for a long time: the moment is a timeless one of contemplation and choice. Their minds have been made up, with the aid of Aphrodite, Eros, Peitho; but they do not act. When the departure is the subject, we see Helen as she goes to join her lover on his ship. There is nothing of the bustle found in Etruscan reliefs that look back to other originals. In the confrontation at Troy the stress is laid on Helen’s beauty or on Menelaos’ awakening desire, symbolized by the winged Erotes that halt this avenging arm. A fine example of the arrested moment of choice is the Naples relief where Peitho sits, a small figure, on a high pillar behind Helen. Gradually the groups Aphrodite-Helen and Eros-Paris are dissociated; Eros becomes a simple emblem of union.
In the fourth century, for diverse reasons, had begun the movement to divinise Helen afresh; there was also an outburst of personifications, not with the concrete complexity that had made the Moirai or Nemesis such significant figures, but on the lines of direct allegorization. As we go on, we find more and more efforts, in art as in poetry or philosophy, to reappraise myth, to find allegories or symbolic meanings there; the living fullness of the poetic image splits up. In a painting in the Pythagorean basilica discovered in Rome (first century AD) the meeting of Paris and Helen is transformed with a mystic atmosphere of spiritual love; herdsman Paris takes her wrist and she comes confiding, looking into his eyes. No wonder the scene was taken to represent Orpheus and Eurydike, or Hermes and the Soul. But not only Pythagorean sects held this sort of view of Helen. Roman painting in general shows the same trend. In the romance attributed to Simon the Magus — an attempt to integrate Judeo-Christian positions with Alexandrian philosophy, creating a universal religion — Helen is a moon-goddess; from one angle she represents Ennoia (power of thought, conception); from another angle she appears degraded, a runaway wife ending in a brothel at Tyre. She becomes the heroine in the Seduction of the cosmic Archons, whose passions are so ruled by the female power that they are robbed of their seed.[237]
Thus in the late period we find both the earnest effort to return to origins by Quintos of Smyrna and the dissolution of Helen and her story in cosmic or other-world fantasies. Art under the Romans on the whole tries to merge the two tendencies: to keep to classical systems, however re-adapted, yet to carry on the fashion for psychologizing and for treating reality as a mere symbol. In the opposition of these tendencies we see the breakdown of ancient culture, of its original dynamic and vital synthesis. What is astonishing is that for well over a millennium people had struggled, one way or another, through a large number of changing social and political phases, to find in the Homeric world, with Helen at its centre, both the clues to understanding life and the forms for interpreting their culture.
Part Two – Myth and Ritual
Chapter Eight – The Judgement of Paris
We have seen how dubious is Homer’s one possible reference to the Judgement. The condemnation of the passage by Aristarchos carried much weight until in 1929 an ivory comb from the temple of Artemis Orthia at Sparta was published, which seemed to show the three goddesses before Paris. At first the date was given as the first half of the seventh century, or else about 650; but it has since been shown that the later seventh century is the most likely date. The man in the relief seems to hold an apple, but the object is in fact uncertain and the apple motif is not known till very late. The two birds with the women have been taken as Aphrodite’s dove and Hera’s peacock; but this again is only a guess. On another comb from the site we see a seated man with a second man kneeling, behind whom is a bird. Birds are common in archaic art to fill in spaces. Still, the Judgement seems to appear on an olpe, flask, of Chigi, dated perhaps to the third quarter of the seventh century.[238]
The motif appeared in the Cypria, so the comb and olpe prove nothing about the Iliad. We can however still argue that Homer knew the episode, even if the two lines in Book XXIV are indeed interpolations. He may have rejected it as alien to epic style and ethic. The Judgement story is in many ways a folktale, the sort of thing that Homer ignores or transforms. Thus, behind Hektor and Paris in the epic, there can perhaps be made out the folktale motif of ‘the Good and the Bad Brother’. In dealing with Bellerophon, Homer omits the monster Pegasos. He tones down barbarous aspects. Poison is cleaned off the arrowheads, though many phrases show it was once the normal thing. He seems to omit the firebrand, the object with which Meleagros’ life is bound up. So we may argue that he knew of the Judgement but deliberately left it out. But such a claim, without any substantiation, is very negative.[239]
What is the folktale core here? It is the choice of one out of three possible ways or gifts. What good thing is best? The grouping of such objects of choice in threes is very widespread and ancient. Someone has to answer three riddles or choose one of three wishes; a child is endowed with three gifts. Many deities, especially the ancient mothers of earth and vegetation, appear in triadic form, eg the Moirai or Fates. The plural occurs only once in the Iliad, in the doubtful last book, though the Moirai turn up once as Spinners in the Odyssey. We must not infer that three oldwomen fates did not exist in Homer’s time; he may well have preferred the single figure, which gave more an effect of the straightforward personification of Fate.[240]
He knew the gift theme, as is shown by his account of the gifts to daughters of Pandereos by Hera, Artemis, Athena. ‘The gods had killed their parents and they were left orphans in the halls, and dia Aphrodite tended them with cheese and sweet honey and pleasant wine. And Hera gave them beauty and wisdom above all women, and chaste Artemis gave them stature, and Athena taught them skill in famous handiwork. But while lovely Aphrodite was going to high Olympos to ask for the girls the completion of delightful marriage — going to Zeus the thunderbolt-flinger, who knows well all things, what is both the fate and not the fate of mortal men — the stormspirits [harpyiai] snatched the girls away and gave them to the loathsome Erinyes to deal with [or to be their servants].’ Here Aphrodite befriends the girls, but it is a triad of goddesses who provide the gifts, like birth-fairies; the motif of choice is however absent. The Three Graces in particular were gift-bestowers. ‘By your aid all things pleasant and sweet are achieved by mortals: if any man is skilled in songs or handsome or a winner of fame. Not even the gods order the dance or the banquet without the aid of the holy Graces.’ They give wisdom or skill, beauty, glory or prowess: a triad of gifts. The Nymphs too were gift-bestowers. In Sparta’s citadel (says Pausanias) was Athena’s sanctuary, begun by Tyndareos; then his sons, the Twins, wanted to finish it off with the spoils of Aphidna (won in their raid for Helen), but the work took a long time. ‘On the bronze were depicted exploits of Herakles, the rape of the Leukippides’ and other deeds of the Twins, ‘also Nymphs bestowing on Perseus, about to start on his enterprise against Medousa in Libya, a cap [of invisibility] and the shoes that were to bear him through the air.’ Here the Nymphs are like fairies or birth-fates giving a hero the magical devi
ces that enable him to triumph.[241]
Nymphs and the assembled gods made gifts at marriages. Such gifts create or enhance life, or make divine. Such a gift was the necklace of Harmonia, which (in an archaic version recorded by Pherekydes) came from her husband Kadmos, founder of Thebes. Harmonia’s gifts were an important early theme, depicted on the Throne of Amyklai by Bathykles (about 530); there Athena gives a peplos. Kadmos got the necklace from Europa; the Catalogues told how the gold collar, made by Hephaistos, was given to her by Zeus. Thetis at her marriage was handed gifts by the attending gods; Aphrodite gave Helen a necklace which was later shown in the Delphic sanctuary. Gifts again were made at the creation of Pandora: a peplos from Athena and a diadem made by Hephaistos. Pandora here appears as She-who-gets-all-gifts, though originally she was Earth the All-giver. Harmonia had a son Polydoros, Many-gifts. Round Pandora, as round Harmonia at her wedding, were Hermes, Aphrodite, the Hours, Peitho, and Graces, suggesting in turn Helen’s companions. The Graces offered Pandora golden necklaces, and Aphrodite was often said to have given Harmonia her necklace. Pandora, we noted, was Gē Pandoteira, bounteous, giver of all things: a term later used of Demeter and Nature. Harmonia was protectress or prosperity-daimōn of Thebes; and she like Pandora seems to have had an anodos, a spring rite of renewal or uprising from the earth. The necklace is a mythical form of the leaf garland belonging to the earth in her spring renewal: the garland closely linked with Helen in her archaic representations. In the tale of Thebes the necklace becomes a source of strife and disaster, just as Pandora became a curse to men in the Hesiodic fable. In the same way Helen the earth-bride becomes a centre of conflict. Probably at Thetis’ wedding the apple at first was a gift from the Graces or Aphrodite, which by a tragic twist became a curse. Such tragic twists, when applied to ritual myths derived from fertility festivals, reflect the conflicts and contradictions coming on the productive group as society multiplies its divisions and exploitations. What once expressed a group joyously united in festival becomes a symbol of the group’s inner conflicts.[242]
