Hecuba placed a mottled hand across his own. ‘Golden Aphrodite can be a gentle goddess,’ she said, ‘but she is also ruthless. Perhaps you are a child of passion after all, but take care that her service does not consume you.’
‘Your mother speaks wisely,’ Priam nodded. ‘It’s best that a man tries to honour all the gods -- though there are times when it seems they have little care for us.’
Looking earnestly back at his parents, Paris saw how, even in this hour of celebration, difficult questions of state still troubled his father’s mind. He felt suddenly glad that he had refused Hera’s offer of a kingly throne. And when he studied his mother he could see the strength of Hera in her matronly grace, and he could hear something of Athena’s wisdom in her words. But the memory of Aphrodite’s fragrance assailed his senses in the heady scent of lilies from the banquet table, in the way a serving-girl casually brushed against him as she filled his goblet with wine, and in the vivid eyes that reached out to him across the room, brightened a moment, and swiftly darted away. For better or worse, he belonged entirely to the Golden One now.
‘I thank you both for your care,’ he answered, smiling, ‘but my vow was made before I came and I trust to Aphrodite’s divine protection.’ He took a deep draught from the cup of spiced wine he had raised. ‘Believe me, if it is my fate to be consumed by beauty, I shall go to meet it with an eager heart.’
A Horse for Poseidon
A man must make his choices but to a god almost all things are possible. Thus when amorous Zeus takes a fancy to a woman he has many means of ensuring his desire is gratified. Once, having set eyes on Europa while she sported on the shore, he took the form of a bull and behaved so tamely before her that she dared to mount his massive back. A moment later the girl was carried through the breakers, out across the open sea to Crete, where the god took pleasure in planting the seed of Minos in her loins. Again, when Zeus came across the moon-maiden Danae shut inside a brazen tower where she had been imprisoned by her father, the god dissolved into a shower of gold, and through his incandescent act of lust the hero Perseus was conceived.
But the most momentous of his changes happened one fateful day when the Sky-Father saw the wife of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, bathing naked and alone in the river Eurotas. Inflamed by passion, he plumed his mighty form into a swan and bore down on her with his strong neck and white wings. Lacking strength or time to resist the god s sudden swoop, Leda was taken, gasping, into his embrace. When he was done, and his need satisfied, Zeus flew away, leaving her pregnant with the deaths of thousands of men, for it was Helen who was sired by this rape.
So graceful and delicate was the blush of beauty on the child that men said she had truly been hatched from the egg of a divine swan. But Leda had lain with her husband earlier that night, so when Helen was born, Tyndareus chose to raise her as his own child at the Spartan court. Not long afterwards, drawn by the god who had taken possession both of her body and her soul, Leda left Sparta and travelled northwards to the oak forest of Dodona where she gave herself in an ascetic life of prophetic service to Zeus.
Meanwhile, as the child grew, so did the rumour of her beauty until men everywhere began dreaming that one day Helen might be theirs. But Tyndareus had another, older daughter, one who found it hard to endure the way that Helen’s poise and grace, those sea-green eyes and the long black fall of hair, consumed all the attention in a room the moment she entered it. Her name was Clytaemnestra, and though she was considered pretty in her own way, she had to learn from an early age that she must live in the shadow cast by the radiance of her younger sister’s face. And what came hardest was the knowledge that even her father was infatuated by Helen’s beauty, so there was little sisterly affection between the two girls.
Helen’s delight was to be out in the sunlight, swimming in the Eurotas, or testing her slender body as an athlete among the other young men and women of Sparta. Above all things she loved to venture into lonely stretches of wilderness, discovering hidden springs or hunting with her bow in the wooded mountains that ringed the Laconian plain. Perhaps to console herself for the early loss of her mother, she developed a strong affinity for animals, and on one occasion -- she was only eight years old at the time -- she caused a great consternation among the huntsmen when they found her on a craggy outcrop, fondling the cubs of a mountain lion while their mother licked her huge paws on a sunlit rock nearby. Soon afterwards she became a devotee of the Virgin Artemis and could often be found singing hymns to the goddess in some wild shrine or leading the maidens of Sparta in her dance.
By contrast, Clytaemnestra rarely left the grounds of the palace, and tried to win her father’s attention by taking an interest in the politics of his kingdom and his negotiations with ambassadors from other lands. When Tyndareus made it clear that her opinions were unwelcome, she withdrew into a studious world of her own where she developed a sharp, disputatious intellect, arguing over the interpretation of oracles with the priests, evolving a sharp-eyed pragmatic philosophy of her own, and dreaming of a time when a man of her choice would look her way rather than nursing fantasies of Helen.
One young man had already shown such a preference, but he was a big, coarse-grained, moody fellow of no great intelligence and not to her taste. He was one of two brothers who had fled to Sparta after their father Atreus was killed in the struggle for control of Mycenae, and the cast of his mind had been darkened by the bloody events he had survived. As was usually the case, the younger brother, Menelaus, soon began to moon over Helen’s beauty, but the elder brother, Agamemnon, was drawn to the sullen fire he sensed burning in Clytaemnestra. When he was not working with Tyndareus on their plans for a campaign to retake Mycenae, he would hang about watching her work at her loom, or stalk her at a distance when she walked alone in the palace gardens, thinking her own thoughts. His attentions were all the more infuriating in that he could never bring himself to say anything. He would only blush and look miserable when she dismissed him with some cruel remark or other and, as she said to him one day, she would rather be shut up for ever in some gloomy castle than have to endure his hangdog face following her about like a shade. So, despising her father, resentful of her sister, furious at her mother’s defection, and disdainful of the company round her, Clytaemnestra wanted nothing more than to get away from Sparta and live life on her own terms.
And then, two years later, when Helen was still only twelve years old, something happened which altered the life of the girls for ever. In northern Thessaly, far across the Isthmus from Sparta, the wife of King Pirithous the Lapith had died. When his time of mourning was over, Pirithous took ship to visit his old friend Theseus of Athens, who had fallen in a bad way when his wife Phaedra hanged herself after owning the blame for the death of his son Hippolytos. Pirithous was looking to lift Theseus’s spirits, for these two ageing heroes had fought side by side many times, both as kings and pirates, and always brought out the dare-devil in each other. It wasn’t long before they fell to talking about Helen’s fabled beauty. The wine did its work. Both men were restless for excitement. Pirithous set about persuading Theseus that they should mount an expedition to kidnap so desirable a prize. They knew that Tyndareus was away from Sparta, leading his army in a bloody campaign to restore his young ally Agamemnon to the Mycenaean throne. Sparta’s defences would be weak with no more than a rearguard keeping watch. It was a perfect opportunity. If the snatch was successful, Pirithous suggested, they could draw lots afterwards to see which of them should keep the girl.
Nevertheless it was a risky enterprise, and one made riskier by a sacrilegious act. When they advanced their small band of adventurers through the passes into the Laconian plain, they came across Helen in a woodland shrine where she was offering a sacrifice to Artemis with her friends. The chance was too good to miss. Pirithous grabbed the screaming girl and threw her over his saddle-bow. The kidnappers rode out of the sacred precinct, leaving her friends shouting and wailing behind them.
Once they had shake
n off their pursuers, they drew lots as agreed, and Helen fell to Theseus.
Theseus was then more than forty years older than his captive. There had been a time when he would no more have dreamed of harming such a girl than he would have dreamed of ravishing his own child, and it seems that not every trace of his noble soul had quite expired. Perhaps he recalled the hero he had once been when he lived with Hippolyta the Amazon and they fought side by side in defence of Athens against the invading Scythians. Perhaps his conscience was stung by the memory of some insult that Phaedra might have given him. Or perhaps the curse of Virgin Artemis was on him. Whatever the case, some glimmer of sense must have returned to the old man’s mind, for as he gazed into the frightened eyes of the young girl lying naked beneath him, he found it impossible to take her.
After a time, miserable and ashamed, he pulled away.
Instantly Helen closed her slender arms across her breast, drew up her legs, and lay trembling like the terrified child she was. Theseus sat for a while shaking his head, appalled that he had sunk so low. ‘It’s all right,’ he was muttering. ‘I won’t hurt you. It’s all right. It’s all right.’ He could hear the small, panting sobs of her breath. He saw that she was shivering. When he leaned over to cover her body with his cloak, he almost swooned with shame at the sight of such innocent beauty petrified with fear. He tried to comfort the girl but she would not be comforted. So he looked down on her sadly, saying, ‘To be gifted with such beauty must be less a blessing than a curse.’ And though he had been speaking to himself the words were blazed forever on Helen’s mind.
Unable to return her to Sparta, and knowing that he could no longer keep her with him, Theseus entrusted Helen to the charge of one of his more reliable barons at Aphidna in Attica, and sent his own mother Aethra to care for her. Then he took to wandering again until he fetched up at last at the court of King Lycomedes on the island of Skyros. It was there that he died shortly afterwards, having fallen -- or leapt -- from a windy cliff that overlooks the sea.
Shortly after Helen’s abduction, and before news of it had reached him, Sparta was visited by Tantalus, the young King of Elis. Having recently come to his throne, he was looking for a wife and had heard of Helen’s beauty. But on his arrival in Sparta he found the city in a state of chaos with the king away at war and his favourite daughter ravished into captivity. As befitted his royal status, Tantalus was lodged in an apartment of the palace and it was there, in one of the state rooms, that he came upon Clytaemnestra.
By now she was approaching marriageable age and had developed a dark, strong-boned glamour of her own. When Tantalus sought to console her for the loss of her sister, he was amazed to discover that this intense young woman was in a frenzy of guilt because she had been praying secretly that Helen would never return. He encouraged her to talk and felt his sympathies stirred. When he remembered that he too had come to Sparta in search of Helen without sparing so much as a thought for her sister, his feelings deepened. They talked of other matters. Again he was surprised by the range of this young woman’s interests and the quality of her mind. And as she relaxed, he was entertained too by her witty comments on her own predicament and the weaknesses of those around her. Soon he was in love.
Tantalus talked to Clytaemnestra about his kingdom. It lay beyond Arcadia beside the western sea, two hundred miles to the north, far away from Sparta. Zeus was worshipped there as first among the gods, and a lively festival of games was held in the Sky-Father’s honour on the plain at Olympia. His own city of Pisa lay close by that sanctuary, and though it was not so large as Sparta, it was cultured and prosperous, and lacked for nothing but a queen. If Clytaemnestra would give him her consent, he would send messengers to her father asking if his elder daughter might be allowed to grace the throne of Elis.
Clytaemnestra was thinking very quickly. She was under no illusions about Tantalus. He was neither the wealthiest nor the most handsome king in Argos. He had a homely face, with a somewhat pointy nose and ears that stood a little too eagerly to attention. But he was a man of feeling, and gifted with a generous disposition. He was royal and came of an ancient house, yet he had interesting thoughts on how a state might be ruled for the welfare of its subjects without recourse to despotic power. Also he had plans to renovate his city and furnish it with all that was best in modern culture. And he was intelligent. She felt that she might talk to him about absolutely anything and that he would approach each subject with an open mind. After only an hour or so of conversation she had been impressed by his fine discriminating intellect and a range of cultural reference that left her feeling less educated than she had thought -- though not humiliatingly so. Tantalus was far too kind for that.
All of this was a great deal, but more important than any of those considerations was the simple fact that he wanted her. He wanted her and not her sister. Since he had first learned of her plight and expressed a sincere anxiety for her well-being, Helen’s name had scarcely crossed his lips. He seemed as surprised by this fact as she was herself, but Clytaemnestra saw all the greater earnest of his honesty in that.
And with a little effort and imagination, his kingdom could be heavenly.
Was it possible that the gods had begun to smile on her blighted life at last? She could make a new life with this man, a good life, the kind of life that she had always wanted, a life where she could put her own fine mind to use and do rather more than raise babies and wait for her husband to come home from the wars with a sulky gaggle of concubines in tow.
Yet she also knew that if Tantalus spoke to her father now there could be only one reply.
At a time when Tyndareus had his hands full with the struggle for Mycenae, his favourite daughter had been stolen from him. Helen had vanished into thin air somewhere between Sparta and Athens, and her father would think of nothing else till he had found her, brought her back home, and finished the business that would leave Mycenae in grateful vassalage to Sparta.
At such a time, when there was, in fact, no certainty that Helen would ever return, Tyndareus would have no interest in marrying his elder daughter off to a minor monarch with comparatively little wealth and less power, who lived somewhere west of everywhere important. He would say no. He would say it very loudly, and not least, Clytaemnestra suspected, because her father secretly entertained hopes of sealing a new Mycenaean alliance by giving her in marriage to Agamemnon.
That was a thing she would never permit to happen.
For a moment, therefore, she contemplated elopement. But she saw at once that such a course would be disastrous. If Tyndareus came home to find that, with one daughter taken from him, the other had defected of her own free will, his anger would be terrible. Battle-hardened Spartan troops would soon come marching into Elis. Tantalus would not live long enough to argue his case. She would be dragged back home a widow. Clytaemnestra could see the pictures in her mind and could have wept at them.
She shared both her hopes and her fears with Tantalus. They discussed the difficulties, and though he declared himself ready to fight for her, she knew her father’s temper and strength better than he did. She saw that haste on their part could put everything at risk, so it would be necessary for them to wait. She was not yet quite of marriageable age but would soon be so. If she swore on her maiden honour that she would never agree to wed any other man, would Tantalus wait for her? Once Tyndareus was back from the war and Helen was rescued, he would be in a more tractable mood. Clytaemnestra would make it plain to him that she would marry Tantalus or no one. And she was prepared to make her father’s life a misery until he agreed to what she wanted. In two years, three at the most, she would have won his consent. And then they would be free to live as they wished with nothing to fear from anyone. Was this not the wise thing to do?
They agreed that it was. Tantalus returned to Elis. In a restless dream of longing, Clytaemnestra waited.
Over a year had passed before the spies despatched by Tyndareus across Argos learned where Helen was being held. He sen
t a force to rescue her and the stronghold at Aphidna fell before it. Theseus’s mother Aethra was taken into slavery, and Helen was brought back to Sparta in triumph.
As the war for Mycenae approached its conclusion, Tyndareus was still away at the front, but Clytaemnestra was appalled by the change in her sister. A girl who had once been adventurous and bold had turned into a nervous creature who lived inside her beauty like a woman trapped inside a fearful dream. She had been kept locked away in the draughty citadel at Aphidna, beyond public gaze, with only Aethra and her serving-women for company. And though she had seen nothing more of Theseus and Pirithous, she was still haunted by memories of her abduction -- the smell of horse-sweat and saddle-leather as the raiders galloped off with her, the numb terror of watching two old men throwing dice as she trembled between them, the weight of Theseus’s body pressing her down.
And the words he had spoken still rang in her ears. Her beauty was a curse, his judgement on it was a curse, and it seemed to Helen now that her whole life was cursed. She was afraid of the world around her. Beyond the confines of the palace, even Sparta, her homeland woods and hills that she had once wandered freely as a deer, had turned into places filled with dark imaginings. She became afraid of the avid way men looked at her whenever she stepped outside the women’s quarters, as though every passing glance seemed to threaten a wishful act of rape. Her eyes, which had always possessed the power to leave men standing breathless, took on a hunted look. She felt safe only in the company of Aethra, who had, strangely, become a kind of mother to her during her time of captivity. So Helen chose to remain secluded at her side, scarcely speaking, avoiding the light.
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