Helen (; ), commonly known as Helen of Troy and sometimes as Helen of Sparta, is a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus by Leda or Nemesis, and the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was first married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also." Her subsequent marriage to Paris of Troy was the most immediate cause of the Trojan War.
Elements of her putative biography come from ancient Greek and Roman authors such as Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Virgil and Ovid. In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus. A competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage saw Menelaus emerge victorious. All of her suitors were required to swear an oath (known as the Oath of Tyndareus) promising to provide military assistance to the winning suitor, if Helen were ever stolen from him. The obligations of the oath precipitated the Trojan War. When she married Menelaus she was still very young. In most accounts, including Homer's, Helen ultimately fell in love with Paris and willingly went to Troy with him, though there are also stories in which she was abducted.Grimal, s.v. Helen.
The legends of Helen during her time in Troy are contradictory. Homer depicts her ambivalently, both regretful of her choice and sly in her attempts to redeem her public image. Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in the carnage she caused. In some versions, Helen does not arrive in Troy, but instead waits out the war in Egypt. Ultimately, Paris was killed in action, and in Homer's account, Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of the legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead. A cult associated with her developed in Hellenistic Laconia, both at Sparta and elsewhere; at Therapne she shared a shrine with Menelaus. She was also worshipped in Attica and on Rhodes.
Stories of her beauty have inspired artists and writers to represent her as the personification of ideal human beauty. Images of Helen started appearing in the 7th century BC. In Classical Greece, her elopement—or abduction—was a popular motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was frequently portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was usually depicted as a "rape" (i. e., a forced abduction) by Paris.Interchangeable usage of the terms rape and elope often lends ambiguity to the legend. Christopher Marlowe's lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus (1604) are frequently cited: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"The meeting with Helen in Marlowe's play and the ensuing temptation are not unambiguously positive, since they are closely followed by Faust's death and descent to Hell.
Etymology
The etymology of Helen's name continues to be a problem for scholars. In the 19th century, Georg Curtius related Helen () to the moon (Selene; ). But two early dedications to Helen in the Laconian dialect of ancient Greek spell her name with an initial digamma (Ϝ, probably pronounced like a w-), which rules out any etymology originally starting with simple *s-.
In the early 20th century, Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the well-known noun meaning "torch".. It has also been suggested that the λ of arose from an original ν, and thus the etymology of the name would be connected with the root of Venus. Linda Lee Clader, however, says that none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction.Clader, Helen, 63 f.; Skutsch, Helen, 191.
More recently, Otto Skutsch has advanced the theory that the name Helen might have two separate etymologies, which belong to different mythological figures respectively, namely *Sṷelenā (related to Sanskrit svaraṇā "the shining one") and *Selenā, the first a Spartan goddess, connected to one or the other natural light phenomenon (especially St. Elmo's fire) and sister of the Dioscuri, the other a vegetation goddess worshiped in Therapne as Ἑλένα Δενδρῖτις ("Helena of the Trees").Skutsch, Otto. "Helen, her Name and Nature." In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (1987), pp. 188–193.
Others have connected the name's etymology to a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European sun goddess, noting the name's connection to the word for "sun" in various Indo-European cultures including the Greek proper word and god for the sun, Helios.Mallory, J. P.; Adams, D. Q., Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997, , p. 164Euripides, Robert E. Meagher, Helen, Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1986O'Brien, Steven. "Dioscuric Elements in Celtic and Germanic Mythology". Journal of Indo-European Studies 10:1 & 2 (Spring–Summer, 1982), 117–136 In particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader Indo-European "marriage drama" of the sun goddess, and she is related to the divine twins, just as many of these goddesses are. Martin L. West has thus proposed that Helena ("mistress of sunlight") may be constructed on the PIE suffix -nā ("mistress of"), connoting a deity controlling a natural element.
Other researchers consider it impossible to determine the etymology of the name Helen.
Prehistoric and mythological context
Helen first appears in the poems of Homer, after which she became a popular figure in Greek literature. These works are set in the final years of the Age of Heroes, a mythological era which features prominently in the Greek mythological canon. Because the Homeric poems are known to have been transmitted orally before being written down, some scholars speculate that such stories were passed down from earlier Mycenaean Greek tradition, and that the Age of Heroes may itself reflect a mythologized memory of that era.Meagher, The Meaning of Helen, 11–18; Thompson, The Trojan War, 20
Recent archaeological excavations in Greece suggest that modern-day Laconia was a distinct territory in the Late Bronze Age, while the poets narrated that it was a rich kingdom. Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for a Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta.Hughes, Helen of Troy, 29 Modern findings suggest the area around Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia.
Family Helen and Menelaus had a daughter, Hermione. Hesiod says she was "a child unlooked for,"Hesiod. Catalogue of Women. and Homer writes she was Helen's first and only child.Homer. The Odyssey Bk 4. Different sources say she was also the mother of one or more sons, named Aethiolas, Nicostratus, Megapenthes and Pleisthenes. Still, according to others, these were instead illegitimate children of Menelaus and various lovers.Apollodorus. Library, 3.11.1.Pausanias. Description of Greece, 2.18.6.
According to other sources that also contradict Homer, Helen and Paris had four sons—Corythus, Bunomus, Aganus and Idaeus—and a daughter whom Helen named after herself after winning the game contest against Paris.Grimal, s.v. HelenPhotius, Bibliotheca Excerpts, 190.29Tzetzes, Ad lycophronem, 851 Dictys Cretensis claims that Corythus, Bunomus and Idaeus died during the Trojan War when an earthquake caused the roof of the room where they slept to collapse.Dictys Cretensis. Trojan War Chronicle, 5.5 Helen's daughter by Paris was reportedly killed by her own grandmother, Hecuba, during the fall of Troy.
Mythology Birth
In most sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey, Helen is the daughter of Zeus and of Leda, the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus.Homer, Iliad, III, 199, 418, 426; Odyssey, IV, 184, 219; XXIII, 218.* Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 318–9 Euripides' play Helen, written in the late 5th century BC, is the earliest source to report the most familiar account of Helen's birth: that, although her putative father was Tyndareus, she was actually Zeus' daughter. In the form of a swan, the king of gods was chased by an eagle, and sought refuge with Leda. The swan gained her affection, and the two mated. Leda then produced an egg, from which Helen emerged.Euripides, Helen 16–21 , 257–59 The First Vatican Mythographer introduces the notion that two eggs came from the union: one containing Castor and Pollux; one with Helen and Clytemnestra. Nevertheless, the same author earlier states that Helen, Castor and Pollux were produced from a single egg.First Vatican Mythographer, VM I 204.* Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 320–321; Hughes, Helen of Troy, 350; Moser, A Cosmos of Desire, 443–444 Fabius Planciades Fulgentius also states that Helen, Castor and Pollux are born from the same egg. Pseudo-Apollodorus states that Leda had intercourse with both Zeus and Tyndareus the night she conceived Helen.Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, III, 10.7 Although describing Helen and Clytemnestra as twins is common in modern interpretations, ancient sources do not support this as the Vatican Mythographers are the first to have Helen and Clytemnestra products of a single egg-birth.
On the other hand, in the Cypria, part of the Epic Cycle, Helen was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis.Cypria, fr. 9 PEG. The date of the Cypria is uncertain, but it is generally thought to preserve traditions that date back to at least the 7th century BC. In the Cypria, Nemesis did not wish to mate with Zeus. She therefore changed shape into various animals as she attempted to flee Zeus, finally becoming a goose. Zeus also transformed himself into a goose and raped Nemesis, who produced an egg from which Helen was born.Athenaeus 8.334b-d, quoting the Cypria; Cypria, fr. 10 PEG. Presumably, in the Cypria, this egg was somehow transferred to Leda.In the 5th century comedy "Nemesis" by Cratinus, Leda was told to sit on an egg so that it would hatch, and this is no doubt the egg that was produced by Nemesis (Cratinus fr. 115 PCG; Gantz, Early Greek Myth, ibid). Later sources state either that it was brought to Leda by a shepherd who discovered it in a grove in Attica, or that it was dropped into her lap by Hermes.Hard & Rose, The Roudledge Handbook, 438–439
Asclepiades of Tragilos and Pseudo-Eratosthenes related a similar story, except that Zeus and Nemesis became swans instead of geese.Asclepiades 12F11, Pseudo-Eratosthenes Catast. 25. Timothy Gantz has suggested that the tradition that Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan derives from the version in which Zeus and Nemesis transformed into birds.Gantz, Early Greek Myth, ibid
Pausanias states that in the middle of the 2nd century AD, the remains of an egg-shell, tied up in ribbons, were still suspended from the roof of a temple on the Spartan acropolis. People believed that this was "the famous egg that legend says Leda brought forth". Pausanias traveled to Sparta to visit the sanctuary, dedicated to Hilaeira and Phoebe, in order to see the relic for himself.Pausanias, 3.16.1* Hughes, Helen of Troy, 26–27
Pausanias also says that there was a local tradition that Helen's brothers, "the Dioscuri" (i.e. Castor and Pollux), were born on the island of Pefnos, adding that the Spartan poet Alcman also said this,Pausanias, 3.26.2 while the poet Lycophron's use of the adjective "Pephnaian" (Πεφναίας) in association with Helen, suggests that Lycophron may have known a tradition which held that Helen was also born on the island.Hornblower, p. 142; Lycophron, 87
Youthful abduction by Theseus