Helen of Troy

by Bettany Hughes

  Dressed to impress, to strut in front of each other, and perhaps Helen, the Mycenaean hopefuls would have worn short kilt skirts or tailored tunics made of linen, or goat or sheep wool. Frescoes from Pylos show men with black leather skirts, cut into points, the leather offering a second-skin protection. It appears that only the elite were allowed to wear pleated tunics – those of lower status have a simpler garment, on occasion decorated with braids. Workers wear loin-cloths.14

  Homer was eloquent when recounting the impact the elite would have made, massed on the battlefield: ‘Argives armed in bronze’.15 Then in 1960, in the Argolid at Dendra near the Mycenaean citadel of Midea, came a staggering discovery: a Late Bronze Age tomb harbouring a warrior’s fine armour dating from c. 1400 BC. The village that peters out just before the site has a scruffy old-world charm; small-holdings abutting the site are ramshackle; scrawny hens pick their way around rusting cars. Nothing prepares you for the stern glory of the panoply that was dug up a few yards away. The bronze plates are 1 mm thick; skilfully wrought, they would have been lined and laced with leather, and stitched together, a high collar covering mouth and chin. The overall impression is bold, inhuman – designed to intimidate.

  This fine panoply, three and a half thousand years old, now stands quietly on the first floor of the Nafplion Museum – a half-hour drive from its point of discovery. The Nafplion Museum looks directly out over the town’s central square, a place bright with activity, serving ice-cream and pungent coffee late into the night. Most of the diversions on offer are fresh and brassy. There are children’s boutiques, pool bars and an unfeasible number of shops selling rainbow-coloured komboloi – worry beads. In the museum, the armour, although one of the oldest inhabitants of the area, seems almost out of place: discoloured and dull from its many centuries in the earth, alien, sterile, awkwardly weighty. But imagine that bronze new and polished as Homer did and suddenly the armour sparks with life:

  As ravening fire rips through big stands of timber high on a mountain ridge and the blaze flares miles away, so from the marching troops the blaze of bronze armour, splendid and superhuman, flared across the earth, flashing into the air to hit the skies.16

  Also found at Dendra were the bronze cheek-pieces (chalkoparios in Homer meaning ‘of brazen cheeks’) that would have been attached to a boar’s-tusk helmet. Extant archaeological examples that pre-date Homer by five hundred years match his account perfectly.17 Here forty or so split tusks are wrapped around in concentric circles – up to ten adult animals would have been killed for each helmet. Hard boar’s tusks would have made a good barrier, cradling the warrior’s skull – but they were also symbolic. Of all the animals potentially fatal to Bronze Age populations, it was the grouchy, belligerent wild boar that would have been encountered most frequently. An animal behaviourist told me while we were analysing pre-historic hunting techniques that he would far rather be left in a cage of wolves than in the wild boar enclosure.18 A boar’s-tusk helmet signalled both a successful hunter and a warrior who carried the fighting spirit of a fearsome animal with him.

  A marriage contest in the Bronze Age for a woman such as Helen – a Spartan heiress – would have sponsored an excess of preening and posturing, since otiose display was at its heart. Showy panoplies such as that found at Dendra and boar’s tusk helmets would have been dusted down and paraded in front of the assembled company. In a society whose good relations were based firmly on gift exchange, a unique prize such as Helen would have attracted only those able to promise substantial material reciprocation.19 A sexually mature princess, a living, precious asset, was joining herself to the member of another clan and to merit such an honour, he and his family would have to deck themselves in their finest attire and dig deep into their pockets. Opening his doors to the glory of Greece, Tyndareus must have smiled as he thought ‘And may the richest man win.’

  In Mycenaean Greece money was yet to be coined. So a Bronze Age hero would hope to impress in other ways. Recent discoveries suggest that in addition to gift-giving one form of social display – a way of broadcasting superiority – may well have been an equitation. In the 13th century BC horse-manship was already well advanced east of the Bosphorus, but appears to have been in its infancy on the Greek mainland.20 There are a number of representations of Mycenaean chariots and charioteers on frescoes, seal-stones and grave-markers – but up until the middle of the 20th century, none had been found of a mounted rider. Then in 1953, a miniature figurine, a man dressed in armour and riding a horse, was found at Mycenae.21 Forty years later there was an extraordinary discovery: five clay figurines excavated in the destruction layer of a cultic shrine at Agios Konstantinos near Methana, each showing a man on horseback. The riders sit high up, their arms flung around the horses’ withers, their hands wound into the animals’ manes. One figure in particular looks as though he is half-standing, leaning against the horse’s neck in a streamlined position, the stance of a jockey winning a race.22

  The movement and poise of these figures is not tentative, it is confident. Riding might have been a novelty, a skill in its infancy, but these are men in charge of their mounts. With the Methana discovery it was evident that on the Greek mainland in the Late Bronze Age, a select band of men could ride – and could ride well. Mastering this new mode of transport-cum-fighting-machine would have been both the privilege of the elite and its distinguishing mark. Homer’s depiction of Agamemnon’s father, the King of Mycenae, as ‘that skilled breaker of horses’,23 of the ‘stallion land of Argos, 24 now seems appropriate. We can indeed imagine the Mycenaean heroes on horse-back, signalling their superiority as they rode through Peloponnesian territories.25

  When the eager suitors thundered through the Taygetan plain to Sparta, their horses spittle-flecked and colourful, a caravan of gifts behind in preparation for the marriage contest ahead, they would have cut quite a figure.26 All yearning to win glory and a peerless princess. To take possession of a thing of beauty. This moment of anticipation was brilliantly evoked in the 7th century BC by Hesiod as he coupled male sexual imagery (a spear) with a description of Helen’s god-given charisma:

  … Philoctetes sought her, a leader of spearmen … most famous of all men at shooting from afar and with the sharp spear. And he came to Tyndareus’ bright city for the sake of the Argive maid [Helen] who had the beauty of golden Aphrodite, and the sparkling eyes of the Graces.27

  But as they rode into the Spartan domain, the old King of Sparta, Tyndareus, made them promise one thing before they fought, raced, sang and bid for the princess. Since there could be only one winner and many losers, they had to swear eternal allegiance to he who was successful. Even if they were not lucky enough to claim Helen, they must remain loyal to each other, must help each other whenever asked, must not allow jealousy to divide them.28 As a sign of the enormous importance of the pact, Tyndareus sacrificed a horse.29 The heroes of Greece would keep their word.

  10

  THE KINGMAKER

  [Tyndareus] told his daughter To let sweet Aphrodite’s wind blow where it would, And from the suitors name the husband of her own choice. She chose – I curse the day he won his wish –Menelaus. So then this Paris, the man – you know the tale –who judged The three goddesses, left Troy for Sparta. His gown gleamed With flowers; gold sparkled in barbaric luxury. He loved Helen, and she him.

  EURIPIDES, Iphigeneia in Aulis 1 5th century BC

  SHOW-FIGHTING WAS A FIXTURE at grand social gatherings in the Bronze Age.2 Trying to identify more precisely what this would have entailed, a group of body-building experimental archaeologists helped me in my research by mounting a display of wrestling techniques.3 In a quiet gymnasium in the suburbs of Athens they demonstrated holds and moves which they had painstakingly derived from Bronze Age visual sources.4 Knowing that these were mock displays, I expected something rather camp and theatrical. But the men hurled each other around with terrifying force. Their backs crashed onto the ground each time they were thrown; their skin wrinkled, bulged and fl
ushed purple as they were squeezed and pinned down in a variety of holds. The bones of men from the Late Bronze Age typically show severe trauma; bony nodules in the cervical, lower thoracic and lumbar vertebrae point to over-exertion in training exercises such as these5 – some of their wounds would not have been sustained in battle but during similar ‘play-fights’.

  This is how the ancients believed that Helen was won – with loot and brawn. The heroic tournament for her hand became so iconic that a thousand years later in classical Greece, it was carefully re-enacted. A figure of speech bandied around the streets of 5th-century BC Greece was: ‘Hippokleides cares nought for that’ – an expression approximating to our notion of ‘not giving a toss’. The historian Herodotus gives us the origin of the phrase – a marriage-contest that took place in the early 6th century BC at Sicyon in the north-east Peloponnese organised by the tyrant of Sicyon, Cleisthenes, and closely resembling Tyndareus’ competition for Helen.6 Those of ‘manly worth’ from all over Greece were invited by the tyrant to compete in wrestling and running and shows of strength. In the evening, around the dinner table, their social and musical skills were scrutinised.

  Despite the rigour of the selection procedure, after a full year of wrestling, boxing and stick-fighting, there were a number of contestants still standing. It was time for Cleisthenes to choose the lucky bridegroom. The tyrant took the role of judge and following minute analysis of all the competitors, a contestant from Athens – none other than Hippokleides – emerged as the favourite. Cleisthenes slaughtered a hundred oxen, stoked up the fires to start the wedding feast and was on the verge of honouring his new son-in-law with a toast, when things started to come apart at the seams. Hippokleides – celebrating with an amphora of wine too many, one imagines – started larking around, dancing on the tables, striking ludicrous poses and then finally resting his head on the bench, wiggling his bottom and legs in the air. Cleisthenes was horrified, rejected Hippokleides and chose for his daughter another, more sober and decorous man. The buffoon was said to have retorted, ‘Hippokleides cares nought for that.’ One wonders whether, the following morning, with a sore head, a lonely bed, and empty pockets, this young wag would have been so phlegmatic.

  While there is plenty of lively, literary testimony describing marriage contests in both the classical and the pre-historic periods, marriage remains one of those ‘invisible’ Late Bronze Age activities where the lack of contemporary documents from the Mycenaean world is frustrating. Detailed accounts of aristocratic unions – politically expedient, sexual, even romantic – from Hittite and Egyptian courts exist, but nothing for the Mycenaeans. With the lack of contemporary written evidence, we have to turn to the one source available – to the Greek epic tradition – for guidance.7

  Time and again in literature and myth-stories we hear that women are the kingmakers, that the right to monarchy does not pass from husband to son, but from mother to daughter. Men have to win a crown by winning a wife. Helen’s half-sister Clytemnestra makes her lover, Aigisthos, king while her husband Agamemnon is overseas, fighting the Trojan War; Pelops (who gave his name to the Peloponnese) becomes King of Elis through his marriage to Hippodamia; Oedipus is crowned the King of Thebes when he marries Queen Jocasta. Even faithful Penelope, left at home by Odysseus, seems to have the prerogative to choose who will be her next king. And, of course, Menelaus becomes King of Sparta when he marries Helen.

  Tradition tells us that along with his daughters Helen and Clytemnestra, Tyndareus had two sons – Castor and Pollux. And yet there is no suggestion that either of them will inherit their father’s title when he dies. It is Helen who will become queen and it is only marriage to Helen that will bring regal status and sovereignty over the Spartan territory. We hear from Pausanias,8 amplifying Homer,9 that it is not one of Menelaus’ sons, not even his ‘favourite son’, who becomes king of Sparta.10 Instead it is the children of Helen’s daughter Hermione who succeed to the throne. And it is only once Orestes marries Hermione that he, in turn, becomes the new ruler of Spartan territories.

  To judge from the literary evidence, it seems that young men were mobile across the Greek diaspora and – although rooted into locales by marriage to a high-born heiress – they kept their familial connections up and running through agnatic ties. A king might have ruled at Mycenae or Sparta or Argos thanks to his wife’s position as local landowner – but his kudos and heritage also came from belonging to a particular dynasty. Ties of loyalty were not linear, but politically and geographically lateral, spread across the Aegean like a fine net.

  Homer describes Late Bronze Age politics as familial and dominated by the ‘House’ system. Menelaus from the House of Atreus at Sparta has a brother, Agamemnon, at Mycenae. Adrastus from the House of Sicyon keeps contact with his son-in-law Diomedes at Argos. If it was assumed that women were kingmakers, and that inheritance was matrilineal, by marrying princes off to wealthy aristocrats in citadels across the Greek mainland a web of power would be created. And given that men had no right of succession, then the acrid squabbles of sons over inheritance would be avoided.

  Travelling through the Peloponnese from the archaeological remains of one Mycenaean powerhouse to another, it becomes clear that there must have been some kind of system of loyalty to keep these communities from in-fighting over territories and resources. Each citadel was largely self-sufficient, but the cultivatable land between kingdoms was at a premium. A journey along the old National Road from Argos to Mycenae brings home what a vast and difficult terrain is contained within the region. The mountain ranges here are coherent barriers. For Late Bronze Age populations – without the viscous glue of blood-ties – those geological boundaries could have afforded a magnificent opportunity for retrenchment and political division.

  And yet the Mycenaeans clearly co-operated with one another. They had, by 1450 BC, taken over, lock, stock and barrel, in Crete. In the centuries that followed they entertained the same expansionist ideas when they looked east to Anatolia.11 The Anatolian towns of Miletus and Muskebi were certainly under Mycenaean control. In the Late Bronze Age, some kind of understanding allowed for the combined action of disparate communities from across the Greek mainland. Perhaps the weft and warp of loyalty through marriage ties and agnatic bonds explains how there could have been a unified act of aggression against a land as rich as Crete and even against a foreign city as tempting as Troy.

  If this is an accurate picture of dynastic politics in Mycenaean Greece, then in such a scenario women like Helen were more than just golden, sitting ducks, waiting to be hunted down. Helen is mentioned seventeen times in the Iliad – on eight occasions her name is coupled with the word ktema, ‘treasure’ or ‘possession’.12 This wealth – which Paris rustles away to Troy when he steals the Spartan queen – is ascribed not to Menelaus, but to Helen. We hear in Troy that Paris begins to ‘fight Menelaus for Helen’s treasure’. If wealth was the honey-pot which attracted suitors like Menelaus, women like Helen appear to have owned and enjoyed the honey.13

  On the Linear B tablets14 there is a surprising number of women who have responsibility for temporalities. In one series from Pylos that deals with landholding,15 two women, one called Kapatija (the ‘Keybearer’) and the other Erita (‘the Priestess’), have large lots of land. Half of those listed in the series who possess onata, ‘benefits’ of land allotments, have feminine names.16 The suggestion is that women could be landholders and had a right to exploit their estates.

  One might imagine that a woman in possession of such riches would have had some say in whom she married. In one version of the wedding story,17 Helen chooses her suitor by garlanding him with a crown of flowers.18 Euripides picks up the theme: in his play Iphigeneia in Aulis, 19 with the lines that open this chapter, Helen, he says, chose the younger son of the House of Atreus, the prince of Mycenae. Whoever did the choosing, hero or heroine, Helen ends up with the richest man in town. We hear that Agamemnon’s coffers – the booty from Mycenae – outweighed those of all his rival
s, and so, on behalf of his younger brother, ‘war-like’ Menelaus,20 he provoked the release of the greatest counter-gift of all.21 The wealth of the monumental House of Atreus had won the world’s desire, beautiful Helen. The wedding preparations could begin in earnest.

  11

  A ROYAL WEDDING

  Now, in Sparta once, in the palace of golden-haired Menelaus, There were girls who wound fresh hyacinths into their hair, and Stepped into the dance outside his freshly-painted bridal room –Twelve girls, from the city’s foremost families, the great glory of Sparta’s youthful womanhood …

  THEOCRITUS, Epithalamium for Helen1 (THIRD CENTURY BC)

  IN THE 3RD CENTURY BC the Greek-Macedonian Ptolemies, who controlled the ebullient court at Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, patronised numerous poets. One, Theocritus, a man from Syracuse in Sicily, wrote tenderly of the Spartan queen. In his Epithalamium for Helen2 he describes – in luxurious language – Spartan girls, on the cusp of sexual maturity, re-enacting the moment when the young Helen became a bride. These bridal songs were, in turn, then sung by Spartan girls on the eve of their own weddings.

  The protagonists of Theocritus’ poem are twelve young virgins and the verses are rapturous. Theocritus was obviously inspired by the 7th-century BC poet Alcman,3 delighting as the Archaic poet had done in the wistful potential of his setting and his characters.4 There are idolising, pastoral descriptions of Helen: her beauty is like the dawn, it is like a cypress tree in a garden, it is the arrival of spring after winter. The girls’ thoughts of Helen are as tender as a lamb’s longing for the teats of its mother.5