The Memoirs of Helen of Troy

by Amanda Elyot

  What had I done? A scream escaped my body as though I had been speared through the heart. Was this the gods’ revenge for my transgression of love? If the gods controlled my destiny, wasn’t I fulfilling it according to their plans by eloping with Paris Alexandros? Or was Agamemnon’s invocation of the sky gods merely a convenient excuse for his overarching hubris—to demonstrate to fifty thousand angry and impatient warriors that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his country and that the very least they could do was to lay down their own lives for Achaea. Iphigenia must die for Hellas, the demon had argued, and who is she, a mere girl, to deny Greece? The High King would rather shed his “daughter’s” blood than surrender his own illusions, much less compromise his vainglorious imperial and military career. He had invented the idea of Hellas—a unified Achaea—as well as the view of the cosmopolitan Troyans as “barbarians,” whose very existence, he convinced his troops, were an affront and a threat to young Hellenic girls like Iphigenia. Agamemnon had crafted a kind of “demophilia” or patriotism, to conceal the shabby, all-consuming self-interest and thirst that he shared with Menelaus for more: more land, more power, more goods, more slaves. There were two sacrifices that horrible afternoon in Aulis: my Iphigenia and Truth. The way I saw it, the High King had to invent the lie, then had to force himself to believe in the atrocity of Iphigenia’s sacrifice as a moral, national, and religious obligation; for the alternative was to admit that a father could murder his daughter for the sake of his own ambitions. And yet, according to Clytemnestra, her husband’s final words to his army as the winds whipped up and the soldiers made for the ships, were, “Let our wars rage on abroad with all their force, to satisfy our lust for fame.”

  I sank to the floor and unleashed my fury at the Olympians and at the High King; I lashed out against my own celestial father who had permitted this brutal chieftain to commit the most heinous of crimes in his exalted name. I had to stuff my fist in my mouth to prevent the slaves from discovering my secret, which made the mourning a hundred times more painful. My baby. My beautiful, innocent girl of the red-gold hair. Conceived in love and first child of my loins. Now I would never see her again, never hope nor dream that our paths would cross once more, and the woman she believed to be her aunt would embrace her and bedew her damasked cheeks with tears only a mother can weep.

  I was full with child again, and the news of Iphigenia’s death made me violently ill, so much so that it was feared I would expel the baby prematurely. My body had suddenly become too weak to bear it. I could confide in no one: Not even Paris Alexandros knew the secret of Iphigenia’s conception and her birth. The Troyans thought I mourned for my niece, and there were murmurs, even among my slave women, that my grief was excessive under the circumstances, that the Spartan harlot played upon the hearts of others with her high drama, the better to win their sympathies.

  I was alone in my suffering. No one could reason me out of my lacerating guilt. My adoring Paris Alexandros was unable to ease the aching in my heart; and in my depleted physical condition, I was unsure whether I would be delivered of a healthy babe.

  Not even when I was taken from Theseus’s arms by my brothers, nor when I learned of their horrific deaths, nor when I received the news of Theseus’s surprising demise, had I felt such complete and overwhelming sorrow, such eviscerating pain. How I wished to die myself, but my demimortality doomed me to live forever with the fatal damage my misdeeds had wrought.

  Perhaps the most painful knowledge of all was that the death and devastation had not even truly begun. Clytemnestra had written that as soon as the lifeless body of Iphigenia was taken from the altar, a strong wind churned up the waters of the Euboean Strait and the order was given to hoist the sails. The oars of a thousand ships were lowered into the white-tipped waves of the winedark sea. The Greeks were on their way.

  TWENTY

  In the throes of my grief, and in the terror of the impending invasion, I was delivered of a baby girl. There was a part of me that wished to name her Iphigenia, but I knew that another Iphigenia, no matter how much love I gave her, could never replace the angelic infant I had held in my arms and who all-too-briefly had nestled on my chest thirteen years earlier. So I permitted Paris Alexandros to name our daughter Helen. I was delighted to have another girl, finally, and in celebrating a new life, I felt able to rob Death of the full measure of his triumph.

  Already the high house that Paris had commissioned from the finest laborers and artisans in the wide Troad seemed too small. Still, I was glad to be liberated from the emotional discomfort I had endured in Priam’s vast palace where his numerous too-proximate offspring dwelled in interconnecting rooms, yet refused to acknowledge Idaeus and little Helen as legitimate members of the royal family. I was relieved to be freed from the unkind remarks of the wives of Alexander’s brothers, from Hecuba’s disapproving scowl and Andromache’s diffident air of superiority. In our new home at the summit of the citadel, with its lavishly frescoed and intricately tiled greeting hall, courtyard, and sleeping rooms, I could at last be Helen: the Helen my beloved Paris Alexandros cherished, the Helen who never allowed a day to pass when we did not set aside the time to pleasure each other, tasting every sensual delight we could devise. Nearly three years had passed since we eloped from Sparta, and our mutual affection had never diminished. Our openly passionate union was yet another source of envy among the royal household. Once Paris Alexandros and I became parents, they seemed to expect our passion to wane. Although she and Hector certainly had an exceptionally loving marriage as well, Androm-ache often made it clear that our inability to refrain from touching or caressing or kissing each other in public was unseemly, undignified, and thoroughly disgusted her.

  When Paris Alexandros and I moved into separate quarters, An-dromache had sent us a house gift: one of her own slaves, a girl from the island of Lesbos, widely known for its beautiful and skilled women. It had been Andromache’s fondest hope, I am certain, that Myrrhine’s fine looks would entice my husband from our bed, a wish that was doubly insulting, for Paris Alexandros never so much as noticed another woman from the moment we had met; and no one—no matter how charming and beautiful—could ever supplant my own desirability. She would have to have some special talent indeed, one in which I lacked all skill, to gain Alexander’s attention. Thus far, such a woman did not exist.

  The House of Atreus, and I, having made the ultimate sacrifice, the Achaeans should have reached our shores within a week’s time now that the winds had become favorable. But day after day passed and their sails had yet to be sighted from the towers. Some Troyans were lulled into complacency by the delay, believing that the warnings had been dire, as the fleet had not materialized. Others heeded the suggestions to stockpile food and water, filling huge amphorae with wine, water, oil, and grain and burying them beneath the floors of their dwellings, which, thus “paved” with jar lids took on a cobbled appearance. Confident that his walls were impregnable, but taking no chances, Priam ordered the entire defensive ditch to be studded with wooded stakes, designed to impale man or beast who attempted to breach it. Citizens of the lower city hoarded sling bullets and arrows.

  I was nursing Helen when I was interrupted by the sound of wailing and shouting in my courtyard. Andromache, paying her first visit ever to my home, cursed my name and called for me to come out of my chamber. With my daughter still latched on to my engorged breast, I stepped out onto the balcony. Hector’s wife displayed none of her customary dignity. Her dark hair was disheveled, hanging loosely about her shoulders, and her dress had been rent to shreds. “Whore!” she shrieked, “harlot of Sparta, whore of Troy, you are to blame for this!”

  Little Helen, terrified by Andromache’s hysteria, bit my nipple. Wincing in pain, I called for Xanthippe to take her while I sought to communicate with Andromache. I knew she bore me no love, but she rarely allowed herself to show it in any way other than deliberately shunning me. She was never one for direct confrontation. For me to welcome Andromache—who
had come to excoriate me for some offense that I could only assume explained her unkempt appearance—merited a swallowing of my pride. I descended the stairs and urged her to sit with me in the courtyard, but she slapped away my arm, a gesture that enabled me to swiftly reclaim my honor. “Your Greeks have taken Thebes,” she told me, each word choking in her throat. “They have not yet come to Wilusa because they were pillaging the cities along the coast. Achilles himself, with his battle-mad Myrmidons, destroyed a dozen towns and plundered their spoils. Lyrnessus is now rubble, Mynes slain, and his queen, Briseis, taken by Achilles to warm his lustful bed. And Thebes . . .” Andromache added, so distraught that her hands clutched at the air as if to feed her lungs with a fistful of it, “was entirely razed. My seven brothers. My father, King Eëtion, my blameless mother. All slain by Achilles’s hand. There is nothing left of once-powerful Thebes. And I . . . have . . . nothing.” She lunged for my throat and ended up grabbing a hank of my unbound hair, jerking my head forward. My golden diadem clattered onto the smooth stones. “You have brought this sorrow . . . this torture . . . to my soul. Unfaithful shrew, who deserves not to see another day’s sunlight. May your immortality be ever your curse. You, who can never know the touch of Ker—the evil death—like my beloved kin tasted at the tip of Achilles’s spear. May the memory of those whom your unslakable thirst for eros has slain haunt you like the shades of the unburied.”

  I had no words of comfort. What could I possibly say that would be believed, or received, by Andromache as an offer of condolence? The sacking of every city from Aulis to Anatolia during a voyage to ostensibly claim revenge for Helen’s marital infidelity was proof itself that they were not fighting for Helen at all, but for power and plunder, for land, for precious metals, for supplies, and for slaves—but no one would listen to my voice of reason. I empathized with Alexander’s sister Cassandra. But even she would have nothing to do with me. She claimed to see the blazing holocausts of the future, but she focused entirely on the outcome and not upon the motive.

  Polemos, war, was now imminent; we in Ilios could feel the hot breath of Ares on the backs of our necks.

  The winds brought the Achaeans to our beaches, their black-hulled ships already bursting with the ill-gotten spoils of plunder.

  We watched with trepidation as each crew lowered and stowed their sail, let down the mast by the forestays, settling it into the mast crutch, and then rowed the rest of the way to the shore. Vessel after vessel was dragged onto the beach, and the Greeks made camp beside them, erecting their tents and, according to our spies, adorning their interiors as though they intended to remain indefinitely. They had brought nearly all the comforts of their homelands, including furniture, gold and brazen mixing cauldrons, tripods, goblets, fleeces, and finely woven blankets. Captive women, willing or no, the victims of the Achaeans’ raids en route to Ilios, were taken to the tents for the pleasure of the Achaean chieftains while the common men slept on the ships and adhered to the soldiers’ vow of celibacy. The Greeks had brought their horses and chariots, too, as well as livestock most likely stolen from the pillaged cities within Ionia, Lydia, and Phrygia.

  And the fighting began, on a windy plain just beyond the city walls and down by the ships near the Greeks’ encampment. The Troyans preferred to clash on the broad plain, enabling them to employ their light chariots, which were by far the Wilusans’ best weapon. Their chariotry was second to none in the known world.

  The members of Priam’s great family would gather on the ramparts of the citadel to watch the daily clashes. His young grandsons, uncomprehending of the terrors of battle, would admire the warriors’ armor: the silver-hilted curving blades favored by the Troyans and the straight-bladed swords employed by the Achaeans; the battle-axes and ash spears and the elegantly curved bows like the one Paris Alexandros prized; the fancy bronze helmets with their horsehair plumes, whose earpieces and noseguards obscured the wearer’s identity; the great rectangular shields of the Troyans, some shaped like a broad double axe; and the enormous round shields of the Achaeans. I remember the first time I recognized the shield of Menelaus. The Gorgon head emblazoned in its center was designed to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, for it was believed that the Gorgons turned all who looked on them to stone. It certainly filled me with dread. I was terribly shaken. Suddenly, the conflict spun into sharp relief, like the silhouette of a black hawk against the cloudless sky. The fighting was so terrible, so fierce, that it was hard for me to believe that what I was watching, what I was living, was real and not an awful dream, a never-ending vision visited upon me by the vengeful gods. The sight of bellicose Menelaus, an identifiable figure in the midst of the fray, sent me crumpling to my knees on the smooth stones of the battlements. If the Achaeans emerged victorious, that butcher and his brother would bring me back to the Peloponnese—or torture me right here in Troy.

  According to military custom, the armies clashed during the spring and summer, when the weather was most favorable. The summer season, when the earth was baked as dry and brown as unleavened bread, was also used by both sides for foraging expeditions. Owing to their proximity to Ilios, the villagers of Mount Ida and other nearby towns were the first to suffer losses; raiders from both armies would appropriate the produce of their fields, orchards, and vineyards and steal their livestock in order to feed the troops. As the Troyans quickly cut off the Achaeans’ access to fresh water and a ready supply of food, the Greeks also took to raiding the northern Cyclades and Anatolia’s coastal cities for fresh supplies. Strategically, it was in their best interest to go farther afield, for they risked alienating the neutral inhabitants of cities near Ilios. If they angered them enough, as Achilles had done in Thebes, the citizens would enter into an alliance with the Troyans, if only to seek revenge.

  In the autumn and winter months, when the winds blew ever colder from the Black Sea and the plains were bitten with frost and blanketed with snow, an official ceasefire was universally observed. During the winters in peacetime, the king presided over numerous festivals. In Ilios, we celebrated at least eighteen different festivals annually. Once, there had always been a reason for celebration. Then, when all began once more to become sweet and green, when the warblers sang and the buds burst forth into achingly beautiful riots of color, the carnage would resume.

  Down in their encampment, life was hard for the Achaeans. For those who slept out of doors, the morning dews soaked their clothes and filled their heads with lice. The men who made their foul beds on the ships suffered impossibly cramped quarters. In the winter, the snows came down from Ida. The summer heat was sultry and windless. The weather alone might have caused many of the miserable souls to consider raising the anchor stones and sailing for home. It was commonly said that the seas were like a shifting gray shade, salty from all the tears shed by the wives left behind upon the Achaean shores.

  We were in a state of unending siege. Our walls remained impenetrable and our city protected, but the fighting continued in earnest nonetheless. During the first few years, the Troyan and Achaean armies were evenly matched, which meant that a vast amount of men, some scarcely older than boys, were slain in equal number on both sides. Agamemnon’s and Priam’s royal households each received daily reports, sometimes more often, of the status of the fighting, wherein the heralds would recite to their respective commanders in chief the names of the men who had been wounded or had perished, and by whose hand the felling blow had been delivered. All too soon it became a numbing recitation of the departed. The casualties were staggering. And gruesome: a tongue punctured by a spear entering through the throat or neck; a limb or head lopped off with one swipe of a blade; sliced tendons, shins; arrows piercing nipples and groins. And for every name a face, for every face a soul, for every soul, a wife or mother, sister or daughter who mourned the senseless loss. I recall hearing the herald name Tlepolemus of Rhodes and remembered that he was the husband of Polyxo, my girlhood playmate. A friendship I had always treasured as emblematic of childlike innocence wa
s now dead, too. The war had come right to the doorstep of my memories and laid its bloody issue at my feet.

  Each year, the sweet fragrance of the spring air grew fetid with the stench of death. Bodies frozen in their final moment of agony might for several days remain strewn across the plain or down by the ships, mangled, twisted, despoiled, and defiled by dogs, crows, or their enemy who had stripped their armor, robbing them of their dignity, even in death. On some nights, the funeral pyres, piled high with corpses and tributes to the fallen—their cherished possessions and perhaps a favorite horse or dog, sacrificed for the occasion—blazed as high as Olympus itself, blowing the acrid soot toward the sky gods as if to demand that they take note of the butchery below. According to custom, livestock were also slaughtered as part of the sacrificial ritual, their fat wrapping the bones of the departed, while the soldiers, who could have used the meat to fill their complaining bellies, went hungry. We lit braziers filled with brimstone so that the medicinal fumes might clear the air of the nauseating scent of gore and blood.

  Each army was convinced that certain gods were on their side. When the fighting went well for them, they propitiated their Olympian patrons; when it went badly, they blamed those who aided their enemy, thereby avoiding both responsibility and accountability. Supporting Ilios were Aphrodite (assuredly, since she was the one who had brought Paris Alexandros to me); her sometime lover Ares, god of war; and the brother and sister archers: golden Phoebus Apollo, whom Alexandros resembled, and brave Artemis, who was angry that Agamemnon had murdered the virgin Iphigenia, for she was the patron goddess of unmarried maidens. It was also said that Agamemnon had further angered the chaste Artemis by killing one of her sacred deer before he sailed from Aulis. Throwing their protection and support to the Achaeans were Poseidon the earth-shaker as well as Hera and Athena, to whom Paris Alexandros in his dream had denied the golden apple. The most powerful god of all, great Zeus, my own father, must certainly have been on our side, as I now thought of the Troyans after so many years in their midst. Without a doubt, he wanted to see his daughter happy. But there were those who believed that he could not openly take our part because he despaired of incurring Hera’s insistent and unrelenting wrath. Even if there had never been a contest for the golden apple, even if Paris Alexandros had never been born, or had indeed died on Mount Ida, my very existence was proof of Zeus’s infidelity. For that alone, Hera surely believed she had cause to aid the Achaeans.