Helen of Troy

by Jack Lindsay

  The dual or triadic group of nurse-mothers had three main points of contact with human life: birth, initiation, death. Under initiation we may class both the puberty passage rite and marriage, which were often connected. Both were steps into a new life, a new level of experience: telos, a word with a very rich series of meanings, but at root signifying consummation or completion, was applied to each of them. The Nymphs (taking that as the generic term) guided men through the ordeals, fostered them, protected them at danger points of growth. As they were also nature spirits, through them men entered into the life of nature as well and found their unity with natural process. So nympha meant both a nature spirit and a bride. In the Iliad it is used for young wife or bride; Iris calls Helen nymph at Troy and Eurykleia uses the same word for Penelope. These women were hardly young girls, but they were being complimented as if in their first and desirable bloom. Nympha also means a nubile girl. Homer further uses it for nature spirits: ‘On the lonely mountains where men say are the bedding places of goddesses, of the nymphs who range swiftly in the dance about Acheloos’ (the name of several rivers, including one in Lydia, but also used for rivers, springs, water in general). We find nympha later used for the clitoris and for various physical slits, eg the hollow between underlip and chin, the depression on a horse’s shoulder; for a niche, an opening rosebud, a kind of mollusc, a bee or wasp in the pupa stage. A nymph-kōmos was a bridal festival. At Nymphona on the Sikyon-Phlios road was a temple, Nymphon, with images of Dionysos, Demeter and Korē, in which only the faces were shown; the women here held festival, while the men celebrated in Hera’s shrine.[262]

  The dancing nymphs expressed the eternal life and movement of nature, ever bursting into new forms. A woman as nympha entered into the fullness of life and was also one of the ever-dancing. But the nymphs were above all nurses, fosterers of vegetation and of human beings, and were thus especially linked with Dionysos as the babe of plenty, of overbrimming life and energy. An attempt has been made to explain the -nysos end of the god’s name as Thracian for son: linguistically possible, but not likely. Nysa was his nurse, later supposed to give her name to a city in India. On a vase of Sophilos a triad of Nysai receive the child-god; but the name came to be applied to all the nurses of the gods, Nysai or Nysiades. The Parthenoi (maidens) Hyakinthides or Hyades at Athens, with the names Protogeneia, Pandora, Chthonia (Firstborn, All-gifts, Earth) have been regarded as nurses of Dionysos.[263] In fact all women taking part in the ecstatic dances of the god were his nurses. In tales such women are often a triad. The three sisters of his mother Semele cared for him after she was blasted by Zeus; they led his bands on the mountains. The three daughters of Minyas were overcome by his madness; they had a little boy in the midst, who was killed. The three daughters of Proitos, resisting, were driven mad. There were three Mainads of the lineage of Ino, Semele’s sister, who came to Magnesia on the Maiandros to establish Dionysiac women choruses.[264] Vases often show nymphs and Mainads taking care of young children. The Thyiades at regular intervals woke the sleeping babe Dionysos. In Lakedaimon, we noted, was the Tithenidia, festival of nurses; it was the nurses, not the mothers, who brought the young boys (not girls) to Artemis as nurse of Hyakinthos. We see again the earthmother as guardian of boys and overseer of their initiations.[265] In Knidos, Artemis was Hyakinthotrophos, nurse of Hyakinthos, a young god or daimōn connected with both the flower and with Dionysos: the initiate in his aspect of death, of withered vegetation.[266]

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  We can now make out the originating elements in the tale of the Judgement. A triad of nymphs, not yet differentiated, are connected with a herdsman; they are gift-bearers and some question of choice arises about their gifts; they are led by Hermes, who as psychopomp or soul-leader is the natural intermediary between mankind and the spirit world. If we add Oinone, we have the further fact that the herdsman has entered in love union with a nymph, bringing out the bridal aspect of the nymphs. We can clarify these elements of the tale by considering further the role of Hermes, the bridal aspect, and the nature of the herdsman who is linked with the nymphs through their gifts and their bridal nature.

  Hermes is leader of the nymph triad, quite apart from the Judgement story. An archaic relief from the Akropolis shows the three Horai dancing to his pipe; behind them is a young figure, perhaps Eniautos, the blithe New Year of the reviving Earth rather than a worshipper tacked on. Hermes was called Charidotes, giver of charis or joy. (The Graces were the Charites.) A later votive relief from Gallipoli shows him leading the triad of dancing nymphs into the cave of Pan, who stands on a sort of pedestal at the side; we are reminded of the dual Pan of the Agraulids.[267] On a Boiotian red-figure kylix (second half of the fifth century) we see three nymphs of Nyssa with Hermes bringing the child Dionysos; on a Chalkidian psykter nymphs or Graces are apparently with him. A relief of the fourth or third century has three dancing nymphs, with a large head of the river-god Acheloos on the right, in the rocks; on the left were probably Pan and Hermes.[268] Hermes himself was son of Zeus and the mountain-nymph Maia.

  The gift-bringing triad appear on an archaic relief. Two women carry fruits, one a wreath; the three stand close together in profile, suggesting their ultimate unity; the inscription calls them the Korai. Three reliefs to the Eumenides, found outside Argos, show three maidens standing behind one another, holding snake and flower or two snakes. A stēlē of the fourth century depicts three standing women, the first holding a poppy, on the left; on the right are a man and two women with a child. The Furies were not necessarily terrible; in origin they were earth-daimones like the Fates or Graces.[269]

  Hermes leading three gift-bearing Nymphs was thus an ancient idea, which turned into the Judgement through the introduction of a beauty contest. But we cannot deduce that a nymph triad was at first attached to Paris, then differentiated and vulgarized by the competition. Much development must have gone on before the complex was shaped into the Judgement episode. The earlier depictions of the scene on black figure work show the three goddesses as hardly differentiated; and at this stage the Judgement itself is never shown. We merely see the triad on their way, generally with Hermes at their head. Paris is at times not included, though his absence is not as common as has been stated; and at other times he turns to run away in alarm, but is caught by Hermes. The explanation for this way of presentation does not lie in some literary model or in a general liking for processional scenes. Rather it lies in the fact that artists are still thinking of Hermes and the gift-laden Graces; they adapt this design to the Judgement story. The lack of differentiation may not be intentional; it is sufficiently explained by the style of the period’s art. On the François vase the triad of the Hours is very similar to the group of Chariklo, Hestia, Demeter. Still, it is correct enough to say that the artists are thinking of the nymph triad more than of competing goddesses.[270] And this feeling carries on right into the dramatists. Sophokles speaks of ‘a troika of Olympians’; Euripides of a ‘triple team’, ‘a three-filly chariot of daimones, beauty-yoked’. Significantly he uses a similar phrase for the Graces and the daughters of Erechtheus, while Sophokles calls the Graces ‘three-yoked’. Such terms stress the unity of the group, assimilating the three goddesses to the triad of the Graces. Aristophanes parodied the turn of phrase as ‘three-slave yoke’ in his Hours; and we are reminded of Alkman’s Maidensong and the Leukippides by the repetition of the horse image.[271]

  The episode of the bathing in the spring further links the goddesses and the nymphs. We saw how Euripides stressed it, even calling it the start of all the troubles. Certainly he did not do so out of a wish to add merely a decorative detail. We can realize the importance of the toilet moment by glancing back at the passage from the Cypria describing Aphrodite’s preparations, which merge her with the bright flower life of the earth. The Homeric Hymn tells how, when getting ready to seduce the herdsman Anchises, she goes into her fragrant temple at Paphos. ‘She went in and closed the glittering doors, and the Graces bathed her in ambros
ial oil, such as blooms on the bodies of the eternal gods, oil divinely sweet.’ We may compare an early Egyptian tale of a goddess seducing a herdsman. ‘See, when I approached the swamp bordering on this meadow, I saw a woman who did not have a human body. My hair stood on end as I saw her hair[iness], as her skin wasn’t smooth. Never will I do what she suggested as her terror [still] pervades my limbs.’ Scared, he decides to leave the meadow with his herd. Departure is set for next day. The other herdsmen object; but next day they begin to carry out their orders. While the work is going on, he again faces the water and again sees the goddess, who is now however naked, without her animal fur. The story then breaks off. The goddess seems to be Hathor, with her dual nature; her cult-symbol consists of two faces looking in opposite directions. In the story she seems to appear first as a wild animal (lioness), then as a lovely naked goddess. Presumably even in the first encounter she keeps her human face, so that the image presented is that of the female-headed sphinx — a form usually considered to be purely Greek. The Greeks identified Hathor with Aphrodite, and we might say that in the goddess, lioness and lovely woman, destroyer and preserver, we have a crude expression of the idea concretely incarnated in the Homeric Helen, which works out in the later notion of beauty as the supreme good and a malefic force.[272]

  We may further compare the fear felt by Anchises when he learns that he has embraced a goddess, and the alarm shown by Paris on some black-figure vases at the arrival of the trio. On Samos there is a belief that a man who sleeps with nymphs grows impotent; so impotent persons are said to have been carried off by the nymphs when young.[273]

  Hathor in the Egyptian tale is not described as bathing, but she seems connected with the water. The spring on Ida does not appear in art save in one late red-figure krater, where Athena is shown washing in a spring. Kallimachos’ Fifth Hymn is entitled The Bath of Pallas. It describes the toilet before the Judgement. ‘Come, girls of Achaia, and don’t bring perfume or alabasters — I hear the voices of the axle-naves! Come, you pourers of bathwater, don’t bring perfume or alabasters [vessels of alabaster made to hold perfumes], for Athena doesn’t love mixed unguents. And don’t bring a mirror. Always her face is lovely, and even when the Phrygian judged the eris on Ida, the great goddess didn’t look into orichalk [a bronze mirror] nor into the transparent eddy of Simois. And neither did Hera. But Cypris took the shining bronze and again altered the same lock of hair. But Pallas, after running twice sixty double courses, as the Lakedaimonian Stars did beside the Eurotas [the Dioskouroi], took simple unguents, the product of her own tree [olive], and skilfully anointed herself with it. And, maidens, the red flush rose on her, like the colour of the morning rose or pomegranate seed. So now you too bring her only the manly olive oil, with which Kastor and Herakles anoint themselves. And bring her a comb all of gold, so that she may comb her hair, when she has anointed her glossy tresses.’ (Oddly we see Helen reflected here in both the mirror-obsessed Aphrodite and the runner-by-the-Eurotas; she too had her tree, the plane.)

  The nymph-nurses were associated with rivers or springs, as were the nurse-goddesses. Artemis was Alpheiara or Alpheionia in Elis with its river Alpheus. The local legend at Haliartos told how baby Dionysos was washed by his nurses in Kissousa spring. There were tales of his nurses and of himself being chased or thrown into waters. The link with water derives from initiation practices. In Messenia the katharmata (that which is thrown away in purifications) from the birth of Zeus were said to have been cast into the River Neda; at that site the children of Phigalia, apparently on coming of age, used to dedicate their hair. At Tanagra in Boiotia women went down to the sea to purify themselves before festivals; the legend told how women, assaulted there by the sea-god Triton in the water, cried out to Dionysos, who found and overcame their attacker. The link with female mysteries is shown by tales such as that of Leukippos (White Horse) of Pisa, who, in love with Daphne, put on female clothes and went hunting with her; when the girls bathed in the Ladon they found him out and stabbed him to death. The tale of Aktaion is similar: he came on Artemis bathing in a spring, Parthenis (maiden); she turned him into a hind and his own hounds tore him to bits and ate him.[274] The river-god Alpheios fell in love with Artemis and tried to catch her at an all-night festival; but she and her nymphs covered their faces with mud so that he could not tell one from another. Here we can make out some secret rite in which nubile girls went down to the river, perhaps at Artemis’ shrine on its banks, and smeared their faces so as to partake of the water’s life-giving powers. The medicinal qualities ascribed to the river is shown by its name — River of Leprosy (alphos). Down on the coast from the valley was a shrine of Zeus Leukaios, god of the white sickness; and a stream in the district, Anigros, had a cave to which lepers made pilgrimage.[275]

  The fact that so many streams or springs were called Parthenia or Parthenios shows the link with the rites of nubile girls, who bathed there for purifications before festivals. Brides customarily bathed before marriage in the local river or in water from it. Again we see the strong connection with initiations. Widely-spread customs insisted on an act of immersion to purify girls at their first menstruation. The water also made the bathers fertile; nuptial water was called life-giving. Girls bathing in the Skamandros used to pray to the river-god, ‘Skamandros, take my virginity!’ We see the ritual basis of legends about women impregnated by river-gods; and the link with the great initiation moments is brought out by the customs of the Dardaneis in Illyria, who washed only at birth and marriage, then were washed in death.[276]

  We may add the custom of bathing a holy image once a year to renew its powers. Argive women on an appointed day took Athena’s image and Diomedes’ shield to be washed in the Inachos. (The image was said to be the Trojan palladion carried off by Diomedes.) The goddess Daitis (dētis, torch) of Ephesos went to her yearly sea-bath, as did Hera at Samos, while Kybele at Rome went to be bathed in the Almo. At Sikyon in Aphrodite’s shrine, says Pausanias, none may enter but ‘a female verger, who after appointment may have no intercourse with a man, and a virgin called the Bathbearer, who holds the sacred office a year. All others may see the goddess only from the entry and must pray from there.’ The gold and ivory image had a polos on its head, in one hand a poppy, in the other an apple. Opposite Kenchrai, a Corinthian port, was a site called Helen’s Bath. ‘It’s a large stream of salt tepid water flowing from a rock into the sea,’ says Pausanias, but gives no explanatory legend.[277]

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  Behind the visit of the goddesses to Ida we then see the dancing triad of the nurse-nymphs or Fates, led by Hermes; the Moirai attending a birth with gifts or destinies; and a bridal ritual or initiation which involved purification by water. The beauty contest doubtless originated also from initiation ritual; we saw how such contests were carried on at Athens in the Panathanaia and the Theseia. But, like other forms of competition or agōnes, the beauty contest detached itself as rite or game in its own right, though maintaining cult-links. Herdsmen are commonly connected with nymphs as lovers, perhaps because they often lived or worked alone in the wilds. So the complex we have analyzed gathered round Paris. Let us look at him more closely.

  In the fully elaborated version, we saw, he was the child of doom, whose birth was accompanied by prophecies of his calamitous role; he was exposed as a baby on Ida, fed by a she-bear and reared by a herdsman; his identity was discovered when he was victor at the funeral games his parents belatedly held for him; he became the umpire in the beauty contest, then went off to gain Helen.

  It is easy to show the inorganic nature of all that. We cannot make a plausible connection between Judgement and Recognition. The umpire who is promised Helen cannot be a poor mountain herdsman; the herdsman who wins the games cannot be the proud favourite of Aphrodite. The episode of Oinone was obviously developed after Paris had become a familiar figure in epic and in song. The first addition to the Homeric account seems the motifs of his mother’s dreams and the prophecies of doom. Some suggestions of such themes m
ay indeed have come up in early bardic lays, which Homer ignored; but the expansion was certainly later, with its first important expression by Pindar. Then people felt that such a child would never have been reared; he must have been exposed. Exposure would explain his position as herdsman on Ida. Once he was seen as an exposed babe, a recognition story was needed. So it was devised, regardless of the difficulties it created in relation to the Judgement. One of the transitional stages may be shown on a cup by the Briseis painter, which has been taken to depict Paris’ return to Priam’s palace after the Judgement; Kassandra’s hand is lifted in imprecation. But the interpretation is not certain; Paris may be coming home from Greece.[278]