Helen of Troy

by Jack Lindsay

  The theory that the post-Mykenean newcomers brought in an Asvin-type of Heavenly Twins is aided by the fact that the Dioskouroi were so thoroughly located in Lakedaimon in early days. It is barely possible however that their horse-aspect was strengthened by contacts with the mother-cults of Anatolia, with the mounted Amazons as attendants on the goddess. The Dioskouroi then took over the Amazonian function, which was linked with Helen instead of Kybele-Kubaba. There are no legends of Amazonian invasions of Lakedaimon, though Argos displayed in Hera’s temple the girdle which Herakles was said to have taken from their queen; and the Amazons were said to have attacked Attika, where Theseus defeated them and married the queen. (Another queen was killed by Achilles in the Troad.) There are no signs of Anatolian mother-cults directly moving in in the Dark Ages; the Great Mother appears in Attika in the late archaic period in the Mētrōon at Athens, then at Agrai and the Peiraios. But there had long been important fusions going on in the cities of the eastern coast of the Aegean. That two such important heroes as Herakles and Theseus, who above all others represented the triumphant initiates of the ordeal, should be brought into collision with the Amazons, suggests a conflict between the old mother-cults (especially with Anatolian elements) and the Olympian system. If this were so, the conflict in Sparta was resolved by Helen as tree-mother taking over male riders, Asvin-type twins, as her attendants. We lack iconographical evidence for the earlier phases of such a development; but in the epic tradition Helen is firmly attached to the Dioskouroi. The link must have been forged in the sub-Mykenean period, and then gradually extended.[334]

  We have seen how in Minoan-Mykenean times the goddess was shown flanked by worshippers. On a gold ring from a tomb at Isopata, she stands on a higher level, with two women one side, one woman the other. But we meet the triad on some Cretan seals or impressions, each member in the same pose, with hands on thighs. On a signet from Hagia Triada the two side-figures wear animal-skin aprons, and one holds a long staff. The sacral skin can be worn by either sex; but here the pair seem to be males. An alternation in the sexes of the attendants, as well as uncertainty as to whether they are male or female, appears in examples of the scene produced in the early Helladic period. The same situation often occurs in eastern art; and in Egypt, on a relief of the 20th or 19th Dynasty, a goddess, Kadesh on the Orontes, is shown naked, standing on a lion and flanked by two male deities. At Mykenai the gate-reliefs show the goddess in aniconic form as a pillar, with a lion on either side. In the archaic period we find the Lady of Wild Things flanked by a pair of beasts or birds, which at times she grasps. The Great Mother is later accompanied in ritual myth by young men, Kouretes or. Korybantes, but we do not find these depicte in the heraldic pattern. Female triads, we saw, were common; but a goddess flanked by two males does not appear in a regular series till we reach Helen and the Twins.

  The one work of art suggesting that group is a gold plaque from the Idaian Cave. The upper part is lost, but recently a new fragment has been fitted in. Here we see the goddess, frontal, with a male on each side in profile. Her robe is like that of Artemis on an ivory from the Orthia sanctuary (dated about 700); the way in which the legs of the males are set apart is like that on a gold ornament from the nekropolis of Kameiros (probably first half of the seventh century). Bronzes in the Idaian Cave show a goddess naked with lions or sphinxes. The many shields and tympana left as offerings suggest the Kouretes clashing shields round the baby Zeus. Notable in our plaque is the way in which the male on the left clasps the wrist of the goddess; we cannot doubt that his fellow on the right did likewise. This is the gesture of marriage or carrying off so common in scenes of Helen; but we cannot take the males as heroes like Theseus and Peirithoos ravishing her. There are no horses, no sign of weapons.

  An ivory from Orthia’s shrine shows a man with two women, who are certainly holding his hands; his legs are in profile while his head turns to the front. In another a man holds a woman’s wrist, while she holds a wreath; their missing hands may have been raised with another wreath. In a third relief a man and a woman, facing one another, have hold of two wreaths. But none of these works has the hieratic force of the Idaian design, though they suggest how the grasp of hand or wrist is used to express an important moment or form of contact; the garlands increase the ritual effect, perhaps expressing the union of deity and worshipper. We may recall the Hellotis in which the goddess seems enclosed and resumed in the wreath. In two of the plaques the women have tall kalathos-headgear. Perhaps for a work which brings out the link with an eastern tradition of the wrist grasp as symbol of divine union, we may take the central group from a bronze bowl of Nimrud in which is depicted a god with crossed arms, his wrists held by a symmetrical pair of attendants.

  We see how the Great Mother could attract a pair of male acolytes if we turn to the Phrygian area. At Boghazkoy we find Kybele-Kubaba flanked by two short-trousered males, one playing a seven-stringed kithara, the other blowing a double flute. The goddess wears a tall polos and holds a fruit. This group is later than the Idaian plaque but earlier than the reliefs with Helen and the Twins. The skirt of Kubaba with its long border and the edge tucked in to produce a set of curved folds looks back to East Greek art of the sixth century, such as the Samian Hera dedicated about 560, but the attendants are so different from the Idaian males or the later figures of the Dioskouroi that we certainly see here an independent development. As a whole the statue is eastern in character; it stands in a niche in the south-eastern gate of the citadel. The goddess is a gate-guardian, like Hekate or at times Athena.[335]

  The role of the Twins as stabilizers of the cosmos, which emerges strongly in later phrases, has very early roots. Thus, on a relief from Tell Halaf based on Hittite-Hurrian cosmology, we see a central male figure whose palms uphold the elbows of two flanking bull-men, whose hands in turn uphold the firmament. The bull-men have horns and beast-legs and tails, thus anticipating such daimones as satyrs and centaurs as well as such flanking cosmos-supporters as the Dioskouroi in whom the animal attributes have been separated out as the horses that they ride.

  The attendants on a mother-goddess might be daimōn-midwives. An archaic statue from Magoula in Lakonia shows one of two such attendants using epaphē (touch, handling), like Zeus with Io (who bore Epaphos); the other puts his hand to his mouth in the gesture of Vagitanus, the birth spirit who at Rome opened the lips of the newly-born. We perhaps see a scene of the birth-throes of the mother-goddess on the neck of a Boiotian amphora. The goddess wears a polos from which escape boughs of greenery, and she is flanked by two lions heraldic like those on the Gates of Mykenai; she is enveloped in a large falling tunic; and against her body press two daimones, the hand of one on her breast. Many scholars have refused to see a birth scene here; and perhaps it is merely lack of skill on the part of the artist that makes the two attendants, whose sex is uncertain, huddle against the huge barrel body.[336]

  While then in a very general way the cult-pattern that lies behind the triad of Helen and the Twins is clear enough, the precise way in which the mounted Twins originated and were connected with her as Tyndarids in heraldic designs is obscure. Though the trio were certainly linked in the theoxenai and as saviours at sea, we do not feel that this link was early enough to explain much — at least in the forms in which it has come down to us. Perhaps the pair at the outset were Helen’s attendant daimones who acted both as guards and as ravishers according to the ritual moment. They would have carried her off when as earthbride she was enacting some such role as that of Korē ravished by Hades. They would then have had something of the function of the pair of daimones whom we shall later meet moving round the Lykian tree with the goddess in it; they would represent a doubling of the divine figure or the hierophant who accompanied the departing goddess on the Minoan designs. They would thus beget, as a mythical projection of one aspect of themselves, such a pair as Theseus and Peirithoos, though in the rationalization of the myth only one of the pair is made the ravisher of Helen, the other is sent of
f after the Korē of the underworld herself; and the Twins in their guise of protectors rescue her from themselves as ravishers. The abduction of the Leukippides by the Twins would be another version of the same ritual myth, with a pair of white-mare women taking over the role of Helen and mating with the white-colt youths. This primitive level of the Helen myth, if indeed it existed, would be linked with the elements going into the representations of the uprising of Korē from the earth as the rebirth of vegetation, when her helping daimones, often shown as satyrs, leap into the air to facilitate her advent, or cleave the earth with double-axes or picks. On one black-figure lekythos two men, not satyrs, strike with great mallets at the earth from which the huge head is coming up; though not symmetrical in postures they stand on either side of the head, which is seen in profile.

  We can also point to an early black-figure amphora where, between Dionysos and a satyr, stands the mother with two small figures seated (in profile) on her shoulders. The latter have often been labelled Apollo and Artemis, and the mother, Leto. But there is no suggestion of differentiation in the two small figures, who both seem male. They are the Twins and the woman is the earthmother. Later, a similar nurse-mother has twins inscribed Himeros and E(ros): Desire and Love. Here the mother is certainly Aphrodite; and she is so inscribed in a fragment where, on the half of her body preserved, a child sits on her elbow. Pausanias mentions on the Chest of Kypselos a woman carrying on her arms two boys, one white, one black, who represent Death and Sleep, with Night as the mother-nurse. These latter examples show a sophisticated interpretation of the originally simple design of Nurse-Mother with Twins.[337]

  We see then how the pair of attendants on the Nurse-Mother or the Uprising Korē could develop into Twins symmetrically attached to their mistress. One piece of evidence shows how far back went the image of the two attendants on Kore. A Middle-Minoan cup (soon after 2000) BC from the first palace at Phaistos shows two votaries (or female daimones, nymphs) dancing about the goddess, whose head rests on, or comes up out of, a mound or elongated body with no arms, but with a series of arcs along the sides. This body suggests the tubular clay idols found at Prinias and in other early-Helladic sites of more than a millennium later. The tubes served for communication with the netherworld. On the cup a flower is bursting out at the side of Korē.[338]

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  Perhaps because of the increase of interest in Nemesis at her Rhamnousian temple in the second half of the fifth century, we find in the period 430-400 the theme of Helen’s birth appearing on vases, and in the resulting scenes the Dioskouroi also appear. The egg is deposited on an altar in the sanctuary of Zeus (? at Sparta); Leda makes a gesture of surprise; with her is a bearded man, Tyndareos; and on the extreme right and left stand the Twins; the eagle of Zeus hovers above. In some examples we see Hermes and the shepherd who found the egg; on the cup of Xenotimos, perhaps the earliest extant version, we are given merely Leda and her husband; and in one painting, on a krater, the artist shows through the shell of the egg the veiled form of the baby. In two cases the egg is put in direct contact with the warm remnants of the sacrifice, suggesting that Leda has been given the mission to warm the egg. The eagle appears in four cases, once near the egg, but always with his beak directed towards it — as if he means to break it open, as is done at times by swans.

  One krater, of Bari, is derived from the farces, phylakes of south Italy, which often parodied mythological subjects. Two phallic jokers approach the egg, which is wrapped in warm cloths in a basket; and one with blows of a double-axe splits the egg, from which the young goddess rises. (Here we have directly the theme of Helen as Korē.) The scene has shifted from the sanctuary to a domestic chamber. Another vase shows the Twins and Hermes sumptuously dressed; the painter seems to be thinking of some tragedy. The core of the series in question is Athenian, as we would expect if its main stimulus came from Rhamnous.[339]

  Connected with the Korē are two interesting works of art: one a small monument in steatite which shows a woman seated on a bed between two huge conical caps of the Dioskouric type (found in Egypt); and a terracotta which shows a woman rising from the earth in which she is buried to the waist, between two conical caps. This terracotta, though found in Ephesos, may be of Egyptian make. Here the Twins are reduced to one of their main attributes, which in later times was seen as an emblem of a cosmic hemisphere. The reduction of the Twins symbolically to their caps is not uncommon on coins, for example one of Pessinos shows the lion of Kybele between the two caps with stars at their tops, a pair of cymbals under the cap on the right. The stars bring out the cosmic significance. A coin of Lemnos, dated 280-190 BC, shows the starred caps flanking a torch inscribed Hephai(stieon), referring to the volcanic mountain Hephaistia, which was connected with the god Hephaistos. Whatever name the maker attached to the goddess of the Ephesian terracotta, and whatever syncretizing trends he expressed, his work is none the less of interest as a return to origins in a sophisticated setting. The reduction of the Twins to their caps was made easy by their indentification with the two revolving halves of the sky. Many sarcophagus scenes can be explained along these lines. Thus we find the pair with a Moira in the Phaethon story; the latter’s fall from the sky in a solar chariot he cannot control is a cosmic event which involves the two sky-halves. The Twins are associated with Eros as a cosmic uniting force; a nymph pouring an urn out over the shoulder of one of them represents the sky-waters.[340]

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  We cannot claim to have solved with any certainty the odd relation of Helen with the Twins; but we have perhaps found the clues that best help to explain it. On the one hand Helen is a vegetation Korē whose drama of descent into the earth and ascent out of it is linked with two daimones, originally female like herself but later imaged in terms of the young men warrior-dancers. This pair both carry her off below and rescue her from her plight. On the other hand she is an earth-mother, a tree-mother, between two mounted attendants, Amazons who yield to Twins of an Asvin type. The latter are horse-daimones, who in their heroized form appear as young warriors riding on horses. The warrior-dancers and the white horsemen merge to provide the Dioskouroi of classical cult; but as legend and saga develop from the cult bases, the Twins are displaced by ravisher or lover, first by Theseus and Peirithoos, then by Paris. They are able to keep a role in connection with Theseus and his friend; they drop right out of the picture when Paris appears. The earlier connections then survive only in tales of rescue by land or sea, in the ritual advents of the theoxenai, and in the reliefs or other artworks which revive the ancient scheme of Earthmother flanked by her attendant daimones.

  Chapter Eleven – Runaway Heroine

  The one myth pattern we have noted that seems at all applicable to Helen is that of the earth-bride who is carried off and mated by a chthonic deity. This pattern reappears in a worldwide series of tales in which a culture hero seeks or finds a spirit-bride in the otherworld and brings her back home. In folktales the spirit-bride is often a bird, such as a swan, whom the hero captures when she has temporarily doffed her feathers to bathe with her sisters in a lake or spring. (Helen, through Nemesis, Leda and Zeus, has her connection with spirit-birds.) Helen has at least two experiences of being carried off, by Theseus and by Paris, and in Alkman we found traces of yet another attempt to get hold of her. Theseus not only carried Helen off, he attempted to reverse the feat of Hades and abduct Persephone from below on behalf of his friend Peirithoos, and he also carried off Ariadne from the Crete of the Labyrinth. A lesser ravishment of his is worth noting. On his way to Athens to claim his birthright, among other adventures he killed the robber Sinis, son of Poseidon or of Polypēmōn (Wreaker of Much Woe) and Sylea (She who Plunders). Sinis thus seems to have a chthonic genealogy; and Theseus chased his daughter Perigounē (Around-the-Garden), who hid under the asparagus and pimpernels, and conjured the plants to rescue her. Theseus enticed her out and by mating with her he became the ancestor of a family holding asparagus and pimpernel in high honour — a sort of herbalist clan.


  The hiding in the garden reminds us of a legend of Aphrodite, which Athenaios mentions in connection with the reputation of lettuces as anti-aphrodisiacs able to make a man impotent. ‘Kallimachos says that Aphrodite hiding Adonis in the lettuce is an allegory of the poets to express the impotence in love that continual use of lettuces brings about. And Euboulos says in Impotents: Ah, don’t put lettuces on the table, wife; it’s in this salad, the legend says, that once Adonis, dead, was laid out by Cypris: so to eat it is like eating corpses. Kratinos says that Aphrodite, in love with Phaon, hid him away in “beautiful lettuce-beds”, while the younger Marsyas declares it was in a field of unripe barley....Lykos the Pythagorean says that the naturally flat-leaved lettuce, smooth and stalkless, is called Eunuch by the Pythagoreans, but Impotent by women; for it causes urination and relaxes desire; but it’s the best to eat.’ This notion of lettuces seems to have come about through their link with Adonis’ death. The lettuce may once have belonged to Aphrodite as in Egypt it did to Min, who is depicted with a huge erection among his plants. (There is however some truth in the statement that lettuces were anaphrodisiac.)[341]