When Paris, a Trojan prince, abducted Helen of Sparta, the Greeks came in hot pursuit and besieged Troy for ten years. But what was Helen’s role in all this? Was she really kidnapped, or did she elope? And whose side was she really on during the ensuing war? Mary and Charlotte turn to a variety of ancient texts to explore these questions.

In Homer’s The Iliad - the longest and greatest account of the war - Helen isn’t even one of the main characters. She watches Paris and Menelaus fight a duel in her name, draws the admiration of old men, and spends some sexy time with Paris. In The Odyssey, we find out about her role in the final episode of the war - the Trojan Horse. Here she appears more of a double agent: secretly communicating with Odysseus, but also tormenting his soldiers.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, she is a hate figure and a focus of murderous fantasies for the hero Aeneas. Finally, Mary and Charlotte look at The Trojan Women by Euripides, where Helen defends herself as a victim of the gods and her own beauty. Menelaus plans to slaughter her, but we know by the end of this play that is unlikely. What happens next is the focus of the next episode!

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Mary and Charlotte recommend some further reading:

The key sections of the Iliad that feature Helen are Book 3 (where she appears 4 times), Book 6, 342 ff and towards the very end of Book 24.

Helen herself and Menelaus tell her story of the war in Odyssey Book 4, esp. 220ff.

Aeneas’s outburst against Helen is in Virgil Aeneid Book 2, 567 ff.

Key modern works on Helen and her role in myth and literature are:

Ruby Blondell, Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation (Oxford UP, pb, 2015)

Bettany Hughes, Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore (Pimlico, pb, 2013)

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Villain, Victim... Double Agent? The Many Lives of Helen of Troy pt2

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