Helen of Troy

by Bettany Hughes

  7 Odyssey 4.234 [LCL 4.210].

  8 Odyssey 4.141 [LCL 4.127].

  9 Odyssey 4.90–5 [LCL 4.81–5].

  10 See also Euripides, Helen, passim.

  11 Herodotus 2.119.3.

  12 In 360 BC, Agesilaus, a famous Spartan king, died in Libya at a place called ‘the Harbour of Menelaus’. Menelaus’ harbour is mentioned in Strabo, Geography 17.3.22.

  13 Aristodemus, FrGrH 22 F (1a).

  14 See Hughes (1989) for a good general study. One Linear B tablet (Pylos tablet Tn 316) has been tentatively interpreted as listing the victims of a human sacrifice along with the gold that was also being offered to the gods. On the Greek mainland, tombs have been excavated that contain skeletons in atypical positions or configurations. At the modest site of Kazarma, where a tholos tomb was excavated in the 1960s; two kneeling skeletons were reported as being found just inside the entrance. These were clearly poor men; they had no grave goods with them, simply a necklace made out of olive and apricot stones. Could they have been slaves or favoured servants who had been killed on the pile of stones at the entrance of the tomb? Slaughtered so they could travel with their lord or lady to the afterlife? Drive for twenty minutes or so from Mycenae, and you will find the confident, hilltop site of Prosymna. Here, in Tomb VII, there is another curious figure from the Late Bronze Age, a skeleton stretched over a pile of stones with a large limestone slab pinning down the bones. In the lower city of Mycenae, in Tomb 15, six individuals who appear to have died or been killed at the same time have been laid one over the other. All data in this note from Hughes (1989).

  15 Site visit in 2001.

  16 See Sakellarakis and Sapouna-Sakellaraki (1997) for an introduction to the finds around Archanes.

  17 We have such exceptional evidence for this dreadful scene only because at the very moment the ritual was being carried out, Crete was rocked by an earthquake. The walls of the sanctuary toppled, crushing those still left alive inside. Perhaps the Minoans believed Poseidon, the earth-shaker, had already sent warning tremors through the land. Perhaps the sacrificial victim, a man in his prime, was being offered up as a desperate attempt to appease the fickle, awful gods? Poseidon appears on the Linear B tablets: see Ventris and Chadwick (1973), 126, for examples attested at Knossos and Pylos, e.g. Un 718.

  18 Odyssey 4.146–7 [LCL 4.130–2].

  19 Barber (1994).

  20 Paris was buried alongside his first wife Oenone according to Strabo, Geography 13.1.33, written some time under the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Estimated dating of the Geography ranges from c. 7bc to c. AD 18.

  21 An eagle flies by with a goose clutched in its talons as foretelling Odysseus’ triumphal reclaim of his wife Penelope and his palace in Ithaca.

  22 Euripides, Orestes 62–6. Trans. D. Kovacs.

  23 See Odyssey 4 for a description of Helen and Menelaus’ Spartan palace.

  24 See Bergen (1981) for a discussion of Helen’s use of drugs defining the duality of her character.

  25 Odyssey 4.220–6 [LCL 4.220–6]. Trans. E.V. Rieu.

  26 Thanks to Professor Bradley C. Lenz for information that, given Helen’s and the Mycenaeans’ Egyptian connections, this drug could also have been mandragora, which, when mixed with wine, produces a trance-like state.

  27 Hughes-Brock (1998), 251. There were also beads in the shape of figure-of-eight shields.

  28 A seal-stone from Ipsopata is inscribed with the image of a woman who seems to be rising up out of the earth, helped by a young man – an epiphany brought on by narcotic use? Thomas (1938–9).

  29 Opium is referred to in a Theban papyrus of 1552 BC.

  30 See Arnott (2005b).

  31 Even Papaver rhoeas L., the red poppy, which would have grown more commonly on the mainland (and Crete), acts as a mild sedative.

  32 Odyssey 4.341–342.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Death of a Queen

  1 Euripides, Orestes 1130–1310. Trans. P. Vellacott. The Mycenae story was relocated to Argos by Athenian playwrights following Athens’ alliance with Argos in the 5th century BC.

  2 Euripides, Orestes 1639–43. Trans. P. Vellacott.

  3 Euripides, Orestes 1683–90. Trans. P. Vellacott. The chorus has a three-line closing statement, but other than that, these are the last words of the play. Vellacott suggests in his introduction that perhaps Euripides, in ‘his last personal address to his fellow-citizens’ (1972: 68), before he leaves Athens for Macedon at the end of his career, is keen to set straight the ambiguity with which he has always imbued his representations of Helen, by depicting her here as a wholly sympathetic character – ultimately deified at the will of her father, Zeus.

  4 Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.232. Trans. F.J. Miller.

  5 Pausanias 3.19.9 on the story of Helen’s hanging by a vengeful Polyxo.

  6 For three hundred years or so before the Trojan Wars, the elite on the Greek mainland had been burying their dead with ever more ostentation. Many tholos tombs are first of all intricately furnished and then abandoned, while chamber tombs boast rich offerings. It was becoming de rigueur to give your kin or your rulers a fabulous send-off, to make that transition between this world and the afterlife as showy as possible. By the end of the 14th century it seems that belts were tightened a little; goods were kept for the living rather than the dead. Thanks to Sofia Voutsaki for her help with this section.

  7 Both so-called; we do not know the names of the kings and queens who were in fact buried here.

  8 For example, the Turkish governor Veli Pasha sacked the Tomb of Clytemnestra, an action which made him an extremely wealthy man overnight. Wace (1964) points out that the tomb had probably been plundered before Veli got to it, but that Veli Pasha almost certainly destroyed the dome.

  9 And although a wealth of skeletal material has been discovered, this has often been sexed incorrectly, or not sexed at all. It can be very difficult to tell which artefacts belong to whom.

  10 See Persson (1931), 16, on the discovery of a carnelian seal-stone found by the left wrist of a queen.

  11 Tholos D, Archanes, Crete, dated to LHIIIA2 (c. 1350 BC). See account by Sakellerakis and Sapouna-Sakellaraki (1997). For gold diadem reference: 186. There are tholoi at Phourni (see Appendix One).

  12 As previous note.

  13 Cavanagh and Mee (1998), 109.

  14 Terracotta larnakes that show these scenes are held by the Thebes Museum: see also Cavanagh and Mee (1995), 45–61; and Immerwahr (1995), 109–21.

  15 Children could be here for a number of reasons. Were these sons or daughters? Was the child apotropaic? Could the youngster somehow be gathering life-experience from the corpse before it was interred or burned? Were children symbols of continuity and renewal?

  16 The tomb of Clytemnestra was excavated by Sophia Schliemann.

  17 Wace (1921–3).

  18 Tholos D at Archanes.

  19 Sakellarakis and Sapouna-Sakellaraki (1997), 186.

  20 Visit in May 2004.

  21 Thanks to Dr Freisenbruch. Excavation report from Persson (1931), 13–14.

  22 See Demakopoulou (1990), 122. Tomb dates LHIIB-LHIIIA1.

  23 These were kylikes.

  24 See the lyre-player on one long side of the Agia Triada Sarcophagus (also known as Ayia Triadha and Hagia Triada). Illustrations available in Immerwahr (1990), Plates 50–3.

  25 In one tomb at Asine, a couple, both around forty years old, were curled around each other. The woman’s skull lies partially over the man’s: see Hughes (1989), 43. Could this be a ritual murder or suicide? A loyal wife (or even a loyal husband) following her or his partner to death?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THE AGE OF HEROES ENDS

  1 Barkan (2000), 106, translating Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women.

  2 See Forsdyke (1956) 62ff.: Herodotus estimated the date at c. 1250: omitting Douris’ ‘extravagant assumption’ of 1334 BC, the average of ancient calculations of the date for the Trojan War was 1203 BC.

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p; 3 Thanks to Dr Spyros B. Pavlides for assistance with instrumental seismological data for the Aegean; see also Ambraseys (1996) on the seismicity of Greece between the 5th century BC and 18th century AD.

  4 See Nur (1998), 144, on the effect of construction methods on fatalities in an earthquake: compare the earthquake in Armenia in 1993, with a magnitude of 6.8, which killed 10,000 people, with the Californian earthquake in 1989, measuring M.7.0, which resulted in the deaths of 50 people.

  5 See Papadopoulos (1996).

  6 Thanks to Tim Kirby.

  7 Thanks to Ken Wardle, Diana Wardle and Elizabeth French.

  8 The figurines of ‘Smiting’ gods and ‘Storm-gods’ have distinct eastern characteristics – and either individually or as an iconographic influence could have been imported from, for example, Syria. See Houston-Smith (1962); also D. Collon (1972), ‘The Smiting God: A Study of a Bronze in the Pomerance Collection in New York’, in Levant 4: 111–34; J.V. Canby (1969), ‘Some Hittite Figurines in the Aegean’, in Hesperia 38: 141–9.

  9 Iliad 2.661 [LCL 2.570].

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Fragrant Treasuries’

  1 H.D., Helen in Egypt, 1.8 (Palinode), in Gregory (1961), 16: Achilles to Helen.

  2 Pausanias 2.32.7–8.

  3 Notes taken during a first site visit in 1988.

  4 Pausanias 2.35.

  5 Iliad 2.650 [LCL 2.650].

  6 Pausanias 2.35.5–8 and 2.34.2.

  7 Isocrates, Encomium of Helen, 10.63.

  8 Notes made on 10 November 2003 at a lecture organised by the Greek Archaeological Committee (UK) and given by the excavator, Professor Alexander Mazarakis-Ainian, in the Great Hall, King’s College London.

  9 See Archaeological Reports 2002–3: 75–6 for current published evidence. A forthcoming publication will appear as ‘Inside the Adyton of a Greek Temple: Excavations on Kythnos (Cyclades)’, in Architecture and Archaeology in the Cyclades: Colloquium in honour of J.J. Coulton, Oxford University, Lincoln College. Thanks to Professor Mazarakis-Ainian for information on this point.

  10 Pindar, Olympian Ode 7.32. Thanks to Simon Hornblower.

  11 The Spartan–Arcadian incursions continued into the 4th century BC. See Wide (1893) and Cartledge (1987), 328–9 for Aegesilaus’ campaign in Egypt in the 360s.

  12 The Egyptian Helen counted the influential (Greek) Ptolemaic dynasty among her admirers.

  13 Herodotus 2.212.

  14 F.T. Griffiths (1979), 88, says that the cult of Helen, particularly the chaste Helen, was popular in Egypt, and cites Herodotus 2.112 as one reference, with his identification of the shrine of ‘Foreign Aphrodite’ as Helen’s; but there is also Plutarch, Moralia 857b, who said that Helen and Menelaus were much revered among the Egyptians. In the Pannychis (fragment 227 Pf.) Callimachus (a Hellenistic poet who was the royal librarian in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC) celebrates her as a goddess together with her brothers the Dioscuri (Diegesis 10.7). See also Hunter (1996); Visser (1938), 19–20 and Wide (1893), 345.

  15 The gold dish was bought by the museum in 1908. It has no clear provenance.

  16 The inscription was made on 9 January in AD 58 (the fifth year of the reign of Nero) by a certain Ploutas. Perdrizet (1936), 5–10 and Plate 1.

  17 Chapouthier (1935).

  18 Rosivach (1994), 28.

  19 Lycophron, Alexandra 852–5.

  20 ‘A Plea for Christians’: W.R. Schoedel, ed. and trans. (1972) Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

  21 October 2004.

  22 This letter, when prefixed by the asper C (which denotes rough breathing) becomes in ancient Greek ‘He’.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The Daughter of the Ocean

  1 Euripides, Orestes 1629–43, 1673–4. Trans. P. Vellacott.

  2 Anthropomorphic idols in fertility cults were regularly taken out of shrines and sanctuaries by temple-officials to be washed and refreshed in streams and springs; the water was believed to renew their purity and virginity.

  3 Hesiod, Fragment 24 in Merkelbach and West (1967). Nemesis too – another maternal candidate – started her mythological life as a sea-nymph.

  4 Pausanias 2.2.3.

  5 Pausanias 2.2.3.

  6 The Romans destroyed the town in 146 BC, only to build it up again in 44 BC.

  7 See Williams (1986), 21, for the suggestion that sex did not take place in the temple sanctuary itself.

  8 Pindar, fragment 107, 11.18ff.

  9 Strabo, Geography 8.6.20.

  10 See Williams (1986), 18.

  11 The Christians were only too aware of the hold Aphrodite had over men’s imaginations and actively engaged in a struggle to wrest the faithful’s focus away from carnal to spiritual love. Contrary to popular opinion, the Christians did not deny Eros’ power; they recognised it, as Sophocles, Euripides and other dramatists did, as ‘a killer’. In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul, who had lived for two years in Corinth with the Temple of Aphrodite towering above him, was not talking about hell-fire when he declared: ‘It is better to marry than to burn with vain desire’ (I Corinthians 7.9). He was using Greek symbolism and imagery.

  12 For an interesting discussion of the root of Helen’s name as attested on two early 6th-century kraters see Skutsch (1987), 190; also R. Arena (1967), Le inscrizione Corinzie su vasi. Accad. Dei Lincei, series 8 xiii 2 (Rome): nos. 15 and 29.

  13 Some modern Greeks still offer up imprecations to? (and occasionally on Lesbos this is the name given to a rainbow), although there may be a conflation here with St Helena, Constantine’s mother. See Skutsch (1987), 92.

  14 Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnika 265.5. A grammarian living in Constantinople at this time, Stephanus of Byzantium was probably a contemporary of the Roman emperor Justinian.

  15 Called Messeis: Pausanias 3.19.9.

  16 Pausanias 2.32.7.

  17 Although Helen was honoured at a number of locations by both republican and imperial Romans, for them she was a vexed figure of womanhood. Unlike Lucretia who honourably committed suicide following her rape by Sextus Tarquinius, Helen post-Troy lived on, unrepentant and unpunished. She was certainly not the model of a good Roman girl. As with other female characters in the Roman canon – Medea and Cleopatra – Helen challenged the Roman concept of virtus.

  18 Trajan was emperor of Rome from AD 98 to 117. For an illustration of the altar, see LIMC no. 19.

  19 Pliny, Natural History 19.92. Trans. H. Rackham. Cf. Dalby (2003), 131.

  20 Pliny, Natural History 21.59.4.

  21 Strabo, Geography 9.1.22.

  22 The Greek Civil War lasted from 1946–9.

  23 Also known as St Erasmus’ Fire.

  24 We know very little about Sosibius, other than that he was from Sparta, probably writing in the 3rd century BC.

  25 Statius, Thebaid 792–3. Trans. O. Skutsch (1987), 192. See also Silvae 3.2.8–12; and Sosibius FrGrH 595.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Helen in Athens

  1 Joseph of Exeter, Trojan War 6. 953–8. Translated by Neil Wright and reproduced with his kind permission.

  2 When the Dorians claimed Heraclid descent during their take-over of Sparta, it was important to emphasise their connection to local heroes and heroines – one of the reasons that Helen’s cult was promoted. They needed to prove they were autochthonous. In this sense Helen had already enjoyed political influence.

  3 Cartledge (1997), 6.

  4 Euripides lived c. 485–406 BC.

  5 The arguments are simple but clever: ‘Well, you gave birth to Paris,’ says Helen at one point. For a good general study of Euripides’ Trojan Women, see Croally (1994).

  6 Cartledge (1997), 17.

  7 See Goldhill (1997), 57–8. An estimate of around 14,000 spectators in the theatre audience is given.

  8 For a powerful account of the Great Dionysia, see S. Goldhill (1990), ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in J.J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin, eds, Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Ath
enian Drama in Social Context (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

  9 See Isager and Skydsgaard (1992), 44–66 on agricultural implements.

  10 See Taylor (1999), 21–2, on the excitement of the festival atmosphere. The Theoric fund was established (probably at the time of Pericles) so that even the poorest citizens on the deme roll could claim the price of a ticket (c. 2 obols). Women did not qualify. See Goldhill (1997), 67.

  11 A few still survive in the Athenian Agora Museum although there is fierce debate as to whether all these examples are tickets or gaming counters.

  12 See Pickard-Cambridge (1988), 272 who describes how in the ‘Rural Dionysia’ dried fruit and nuts and confectionery could also be used as missiles if the acting became boring or bad. See also Demosthenes, On the Crown 262.

  13 Visiting the site today, one realises that the acropolis would also have created its own stagey backdrop. Vast rocks of marble shot through with red veins loom above the visitor. The other-worldly stone mass was living proof, as far as many Greeks were concerned, that the gods too were capable of an earthy coup de théâtre.

  14 Boardman (1985), 234: metopes 24 and 25.

  15 Also likely in the Colosseum at Rome. On women at the theatre, see Cartledge (1997), 8 and Goldhill (1997), 62ff.

  16 On women in Greek drama, see Foley (1981).

  17 See Taylor (1999), 18, on masks and actors’ properties.

  18 Plutarch, Life of Pelopidas 29. 4–6.

  19 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 12.537d.

  20 Roman tragedians such as Seneca and Ennius attempted their own versions of The Trojan Women. It was one of ten Euripidean tragedies chosen for study in schools of the ancient world in the first and second centuries AD. Despite the later popularity of Sophocles, when Erasmus translated Euripides’ Hecuba into Latin in 1524, it became one of the most popular ancient plays of the Renaissance, and study of Euripides was revived. Under her tutor Roger Ascham, the future Elizabeth I translated Euripides as part of her education in ancient Greek. In the 20th century, The Trojan Women was performed more often than any other Euripides play, including at the foundation of the League of Nations in 1919 and 1920. All details from introduction to J. Morwood’s translation (2000), except Elizabeth I’s Greek, for which see Rice (1951), 47.