21 See Goldhill (1986), 20.
22 See Goldhill (1986), 19–20. The untitled poem, that Patrick Shaw-Stewart is believed to have written from Gallipoli in the First World War, echoes Aeschylus’ play on Helen’s name: ‘O hell of ships and cities, / Hell of men like me, / Fatal second Helen, / why must I follow thee?’
23 The finest examples of Helen’s abduction and her return can be found in L.B. Ghali-Kahil’s splendid Les Enlèvements et le retour d’Hélène dans les textes et les documents figurés (1955).
24 Euripides, Electra 1018–34 (1997) Euripides: Medea, Hippolytus, Electra, Helen. Trans. J. Morwood. Intro. Edith Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
25 Thucydides 2.46. Trans. Rex Warner.
26 Xenophon, Household Management 7.30.
27 For a good study of Euripides’ Helen, see Foley (2001).
28 Euripides’ Cyclops 179ff. Trans. W. Arrowsmith. The view has been put forward that the phrase ‘peri meson ton aukhena’ would have been suggestive to a Greek audience, as the word for neck or middle is a double entendre for penis and the word for neck-lace can mean a prisoner’s neck-shackle or dog-collar.
29 See Coles (1996), 123. Helen also made an appearance on the comic stage in the Nemesis (431 BC) and the Dionysalexandros of Kratinos (430 BC).
30 Fragments 70–6 in R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds (1983) Poetae Comici Graeci, Vol. 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter). Alexis lived c. 372–270 BC.
31 There is a Greek vase from Apulia in the museum at Bari, which shows Helen’s birth and is probably the visual representation of a satyr play, mocking the harlot of Troy. Helen’s step-father Tyndareus seems to be smashing open Leda’s egg with an axe. The figures are leering caricatures. Bari, Museo Archaeologico 3899.
32 Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1302–16. Trans. A.H. Sommerstein.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Helen Lost and Helen Found
1 Trans. W.H. Parker (1988), 175 (No. 68).
2 For a description of the manuscript, see Bianchi Bandinelli (1955), 37–9.
3 Perhaps, too, the Lion of St Mark, now on the column of the Piazzetta: see Brown (1996), 17. The original horses can now be seen in the Museo Marciano.
4 Nicetas Choniates, Historia 10.652. Trans. H.J. Magoulias.
5 ibid.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Helen, Homer and the Chances of Survival
1 Trans. P.H. Young (2003), 59.
2 British Museum GR 1906. 10–20.2.
3 Petrie (1889), 24.
4 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Gr.class. a. 1 (P)/1–10.
5 Thanks to Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield for locating these examples. The plump ‘Germanic’ Helen can be found on a battered fragment of a manuscript copy of Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Troiana, made in southern Germany c. 1440: MS. Germ. D.1, fol. 5r. Other examples from the Bodleian, featuring Helen, include a 1461 manuscript of Histoire de Troye, a French translation by Jacques Milet of Orléans: MS. Douce 336, fol. 167r; and a first volume of the Miroir du Monde, a universal history from the Creation to the birth of Christ, in French, dating probably from before 1463: MS. Douce 336, fol.32. The latter features a single miniature of Helen’s abduction by ship.
6 All data in these two paragraphs gathered from P.H. Young’s exhaustive work The Printed Homer: A 3,000 Year Publishing and Translation History of the Iliad and the Odyssey (2003).
7 The Homeric epics do not appear to have been written down until the 7th century BC. For the next fifteen hundred years, it would have been only the super-rich who had prized written copies of the poems, but more importantly Homer’s words (and there-fore the character of Helen) were also in the popular consciousness, kept alive for one generation after another by professional travelling bards. This was a tradition that continued right up until the 19th century; Schliemann claimed that when he was a child a drunk miller wandered into the little grocer’s shop where the proto-archaeologist sold herrings and swept the floor, and started to recite the epics in return for a couple of glasses of whisky. See Schliemann (1880); see also Traill (1995), 17–18.
8 Pliny in his Natural History, 13.68–89 describes its production and lists the other uses of this wonder plant: ‘The roots of the papyrus plant are used by local people for timber, not only to serve as firewood but also for making various utensils and containers. Indeed they plait papyrus to make boats and they weave sails and matting from the bark and also cloth, blankets and ropes. They chew it when raw and when boiled, but only swallow the juice.’ Trans. J.F. Healy.
9 Plutarch, Life of Alexander 8.2 and Strabo, Geography 13.594.
10 See Casson (2001), chapter 3, on the history of the library of Alexandria.
11 As I write, archaeologists are excavating at Alexandria, trying to get a clearer picture of exactly how the library and the museum worked together.
12 Iliad 3.492–7 [LCL 3.423–6].
13 Harley MS 2472f. 19b.
14 Virgil, Aeneid 6.494–512. Trans. D. West.
15 See Reynolds and Wilson (1991) for a comprehensive and authoritative study of the transmission of ancient texts.
16 The manuscript was known as ‘L’ and its copy as ‘P’: see edition and commentary by Dale (1967), xxix–xxxi for a brief account of the history of the text. We have no evidence for how the manuscript came into Demetrius Triclinius’ possession, but it seems it must descend at least from a master edition made for the library of Alexandria in about 200 BC.
CHAPTER FORTY
Veyn Fables
1 John Lydgate, Troye Book (1412–20), Prologue, 265–6.
2 Herodotus, 2.113–20.
3 Thucydides, 1.9–11. Trans. Rex Warner.
4 ‘[Homer] made lies / Feyning his poetries / And was to the Greeks favourable.’ Chaucer, House of Fame 3.386–8. See Myrick (1993), 8–9, n. 5, for further examples.
5 Take John Lydgate, for instance. Lydgate, a monk, was commissioned by Henry V while he was still Prince of Wales, to write The Troye Book. It was in the grand surroundings of the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, the broken skeleton of which still remains, that this new epic was penned. Lydgate’s version is thought to be more ‘cutting-edge’, more ‘true’. Along with other medieval authors and chroniclers, instead of using Homer as a source, Lydgate chooses men whom he considers to be eyewitnesses to the real Trojan War; men such as Dictys and Dares.
6 See Myrick (1993), 9 and n. 7.
7 Dating Dictys and Dares is a vexed issue: for a summary of the arguments, see Frazer (1966), Myrick (1993) and Merkle (1994). Frazer (1966), 7, points out that it was only at the turn of the 20th century that proof for a Greek original of the surviving Latin translation of Dictys was found – on a fragment of Greek papyrus, the back of income tax returns for the year AD 206.
8 Iliad 2.747 [LCL 2.652].
9 Merkle (1994) makes the interesting point that whereas the tale starts in a rather idyllic way, with the terrible news of Helen’s rape begins a slow gradual descent of the great Greeks into moral degeneracy. Merkle suggest that Dictys might in fact be writing to reveal the disastrous effects of war on human character.
10 Dictys, 1.7. Trans. R.M. Frazer Jr.
11 Dares, 10 Trans. R.M. Frazer, Jr,
12 Dares, 12. Trans. R.M. Frazer Jr. Joseph of Exeter’s Trojan War, Chaucer’s retelling of the tale and the Irish story of Troy, Togail Troi, appear to be based on Dares.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Helen of Troy and the Bad Samaritan
1 The Collected Poems of Dorothy Parker (1936), 94. (New York: The Modern Library). Heartfelt thanks to Rev. Peter Watkins for quotation.
2 All the descriptions are from Crowfoot et al. (1957).
3 Virgil, Aeneid 6.515–28.
4 See Vincent (1936), 221 and n. 1, citing J.W. Crowfoot.
5 A sobriquet derived from Edwards’ article ‘Simon Magus, the Bad Samaritan’ (1997). Thanks to Mark Edwards for his help with this chapter.
6 Samaria had once been the capital of Israel, but after its invasion by the Assyrians in the
8th century BC, it was resettled by Babylonians, Aramaeans and a scattering of Israelites. The region was fertile, the town on a good defensive position overlooking the north/south route through Palestine.
7 Philip carried on towards Gaza (converting an Ethiopian eunuch on the way) and Simon was left in Samaria as a new acolyte of a fledgeling religion.
8 It is disputed whether a single author called Hippolytus was responsible for author-ship of the Hippolytan corpus. See, for example, J.A. Cerrato (2002) Hippolytus between East and West: The Commentaries and the Provenance of the Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press) and A. Brent (1995) Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century: Communities in Tension before the Emergence of a Monarch-Bishop (Leiden: Brill).
9 Helene was a common spelling of the name at this time.
10 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 6.19. Trans. F. Legge.
11 See Hoffman (1995), 16, n. 30.
12 Justin Martyr, in his First Apology (c. AD 160) records the cult of Simon and Helen in Rome, and even refers to a statue being erected in Simon’s honour, although it is generally thought he mistook the statue’s identity.
13 Some argue that this female Wisdom, referred to as the Idea of the Godhead or the Mother of All, makes an appearance in the Book of Proverbs of the Old Testament; for example, Proverbs 9.1 and 8.19.
14 See the following note for the principal sources for Simon Magus and his consort Helene.
15 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 6.19; also Justin Martyr, Apology 1.26.3.
16 Tyre might be significant, as here and elsewhere in Phoenicia there was a conspicuous cult of the ‘mother-goddess’ Astarte/Selene. See Haar (2003), 264.
17 The Trojan Horse was used as an allegory for the ignorance of non-believers: ‘as the Phrygians, in drawing it, unwittingly invited their own destruction, so the Gentiles – the persons outside the sphere of my knowledge – draw destruction on themselves through ignorance.’ Epiphanius, Panarion 21.3.3. Trans. F. Williams. And Helen’s Trojan story does in fact lend itself rather well to being hijacked by this particular branch of heresy. For the Gnostics, Helen’s suffering epitomises the ‘tragic epic of womanhood … in which a female deity emerges as creative, good, but subject to loss, pain, humiliation and limits.’ Mortley (1981), 55.
18 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 6.19. Trans. F. Legge.
19 The devotees of Simon and Helene had to remember to accord the cult-leaders the respect they deserved, calling their images Lord and Lady rather than Simon and Helene, otherwise ‘he is cast out as being ignorant of their mysteries’. See Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies 6.20. Trans. F. Legge. Up until the 3rd century AD Simon’s statue continued to be cast in the image of Zeus, and Helen, having left Aphrodite behind once and for all, embraced her mental acuity again, in the form of Athena. See Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.23.4.
20 For the notion of ‘Sophia’ in Gnostic thought see S. Petrement (1990) A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper) or E. Pagels (1978) The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House).
21 Epiphanius claimed that around a thousand years before, Homer too had recognised Helen not just as a wayward Greek, but as a manifestation of the one, true God. ‘For this is Ennoia, she whom Homer calls Helen. And this is why Homer has to describe her as standing on a tower, signalling the Greeks her plot against the Phrygians with the lamp. But with its brightness, as I said, he indicated the display of the light from on high.’ Describing his prostitute companion, Simon Magus was supposed to have supported this argument himself: ‘This woman was, then, she who by her unseen powers has made replicas of herself in Greek and Trojan times and immemorially, before the world and after. She is the one who is with me now, and for her sake I am come down.’ Epiphanius, Panarion 21.3.1. Trans. F. Williams.
22 Clementine Homilies 2.25. Trans. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (1870). This work tells us that both Helene and Simon were disciples of John the Baptist.
23 Her story was used as a convenient model by the Gnostic movement. As one authority on the Gnostics has put it. ‘… the story of Helen and Simon symbolises the story of the soul fallen into this world of darkness and ignorance, a whore, but ready to be converted and to receive her heavenly spouse, her liberator and Saviour. The charms of the eternal female and the magic arts of the male counterpart combine so cleverly as to produce a model and a legend destined to last for centuries.’ Filoramo (1990), 149–50. Simon liberates Helene from sex-slavery in Tyre, just as Paris liberates Helen from slaving in the bed of an uninspiring husband. In this very carnal love affair was found an allegory of the journey of the soul. This is the Helen who – in a new heretical, but Christianised environment – suffers torment, but ends up redeemed, celestial.
24 Epiphanius, Panarion 21.3.5.
25 ‘How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.’ Matthew 18:12–13.)
26 See Crowfoot et al. (1957), 8.
27 Mark Edwards has pointed out to me that Simon Magus is sometimes considered to be a representative of an old Samarian tradition in which some ‘Gnostic’ assumptions (such as the contrast between the god who creates and the highest god) were already ensconced before the advent of Christian Gnosticism.
28 See Quispel (1975), 300. Also see Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (1988), vol. 14: 343.
29 In the original Greek sense of the word, when a kategoros was an accuser in the assembly.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
‘Perpulchra’: More Than Beautiful
1 Lord Dunsany, ‘An Interview’ in Mirage Water (1938), 61 (London: Putnam).
2 Virgil’s Aeneid is a tribute to this resourceful hero.
3 I.N. Hume (1956) Treasure in the Thames, 49–51 and Plate V. London: Frederick Muller.
4 This is the English royal lineage as described by Geoffrey of Monmouth; many different versions were produced by other authors and other nationalities.
5 For a fuller discussion of these themes, see Waswo (1995). For an excellent overview of the uses and abuses of the Troy story in medieval England, see Benson (1980).
6 Robert III, 1390–1406.
7 Nicholson (1974), 220.
8 STC 5579.
9 Simon (1961).
10 Jean Bonnard (1884) Les Traductions de la Bible en vers français au moyen âge.
11 Gervase of Canterbury, writing after 1160.
12 O’Callaghan (2003), 311–13.
13 Giraldus Cambrensis, De Principis Instructione Liber 8.300.
14 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie 4769–71. Trans. T.F. O’Callaghan (2003), 307.
15 The degree of this cultural florescence is debated. It is sometimes known as the Carolingian Renaissance.
16 Matthew of Vendôme, The Art of Versification 56.23–57.8. Trans. A.E. Galyon (1980).
17 Joseph of Exeter, Trojan War 3.329ff. Trans. A. K. Wright.
18 Trojan War 4.180–92. Trans. N. Bate.
19 The subtleties of these arguments are discussed at length in O’Callaghan (2003).
20 Thanks to Alison Weir for sourcing this quote.
21 See A. Weir (1999) Eleanor of Aquitaine (London: Jonathan Cape).
22 Codex 4660, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. Hecuba, Paris and perhaps Helen are also mentioned in the songs.
23 Ezra Pound conflates the two women – Helen and Eleanor – in Canto II. See also C.F. Terrell (1993) A Companion to the Cantos of Ezra Pound (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press), 5–6.
24 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie 4741–8. Trans. T.F. O’Callaghan (2003), 306.
25 See Highet (1949), 580, 46.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Dancing with the Devil
1 The first record
ed performance of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus was on 30 September 1594 at the Rose Theatre on Bankside, London. See Bevington and Rasmussen (1993), 48. There were possibly earlier productions at the Theatre in Shoreditch.
2 Henslowe was an entrepreneur if ever there was one, trading in goat-skins and coinage as well as in theatrical talent.
3 Hall (1998), 114.
4 In the 1594–5 ‘season’ the Admiral’s Men (who first staged Marlowe’s Dr Faustus) put on thirty-eight plays, twenty-one of which were new.
5 Figures from Hall (1998), 114–59.
6 For a good summary, see Emerson (2002).
7 Marlowe’s Dr Faustus was not published until after his death. There are two early versions of the play, the A text (1604) and the B text (1616), which differ significantly from each other. Helen’s entrance between cupids occurs only in the B text, Act V, scene i.
8 The interpretation of this scene is much debated. Although the consensus is that Helen is indeed a succubus, and that as a result of sex with her, Faustus is eternally damned, there are alternative readings. See, for example, Ormerod and Wortam (1985), Allen (1968) and Greg (1946).
9 The boom in tanners and starchers is particularly to be found in the 17th century. For the context of Bankside and the Rose see Bowsher (1998), passim.
10 Bowsher (forthcoming).
11 Site visit, July 2003.
12 Shakespeare had King Lear bemoaning the propensity for tittle-tattle (known as ‘jangling’ since the medieval period), ‘As if we were God’s spies’ with our talk of ‘who’s in, who’s out’.
13 Thanks to Jonathan Bate for his help with this point. See Bate (1997), 113–15, on Shakespeare’s adaptation of the line in Richard II (4.1.271–9).
14 See Bowsher (1998), 67.
15 See Sir John Melton, Astrologaster; or the Figure-Caster.
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