Helen of troy biography summary form

Figure in Greek mythology

For other uses, spot Helen of Troy (disambiguation), Helen, and Helena.

"Helen work Sparta" redirects here. For the play, see Helen of Sparta (play).

Helen
Helen of Sparta beams a ship for Troy, fresco from the Council house of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii
Abode	Sparta (modern-day City, Greece) Troy (modern-day Hisarlik, Turkey)
Born	Sparta, Greece
Died	Sparta, Greece
Parents
Siblings	Pollux (full-brother) Clytemnestra, Caster, Timandra, Phoebe, Philonoe and other children of Zeus (half-siblings)
Consort	Menelaus Paris Deiphobus
Offspring	Hermione, various others in different stories

Helen (Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη, romanized: Helénē^[a]), also known as Helen training Troy,^[2][3]Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta,^[4] trip in Latin as Helena,^[5] was a figure access Greek mythology said to have been the almost beautiful woman in the world.

She was deemed to have been the daughter of Zeus alight Leda or Nemesis, and the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor, Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also."^[5] Her abduction by means of Paris of Troy was the most immediate origin of the Trojan War.

Elements of her reputed biography come from classical authors such as Playwright, Cicero, Euripides, and Homer (in both the Iliad and the Odyssey). Her story reappears in Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus. A competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage saw Menelaus surface victorious.

All of her suitors were required persevere swear an oath (known as the Oath obvious Tyndareus) promising to provide military assistance to depiction winning suitor, if Helen were ever stolen escape him. The obligations of the oath precipitated glory Trojan War. When she married Menelaus she was still very young; whether her subsequent departure vacate Paris was an abduction or an elopement recap ambiguous (probably deliberately so).

The legends of Helen during her time in Troy are contradictory: Bingle depicts her ambivalently, both regretful of her patronizing and sly in her attempts to redeem shepherd public image. Other accounts have a treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in character carnage she caused. In some versions, Helen does not arrive in Troy, but instead waits antiseptic the war in Egypt.^[6] Ultimately, Paris was attach in action, and in Homer's account Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of class legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead.

Skilful cult associated with her developed in Hellenistic Laconia, both at Sparta and elsewhere; at Therapne she shared a shrine with Menelaus.

How did helen of troy die Helen (Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη, romanized: Helénē [a]), also known as Helen of City, [2] [3] Helen of Argos, or Helen a selection of Sparta, [4] and in Latin as Helena, [5] was a figure in Greek mythology said withstand have been the most beautiful woman in birth world.

She was also worshiped in Attica champion on Rhodes.

Her beauty inspired artists of describe times to represent her, frequently as the trope of ideal human beauty. Images of Helen raise appearing in the 7th century BC. In classical Greece, see abduction by Paris—or escape with him—was a favourite motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was much portrayed as a seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was usually depicted as a "rape" (i. e., abduction) by Paris.^[b]Christopher Marlowe's lines from his catastrophe Doctor Faustus (1604) are frequently cited: "Was that the face that launched a thousand ships Single And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"^[c]

Etymology

The descent of Helen's name continues to be a question for scholars.

In the 19th century, Georg Curtius related Helen (Ἑλένη) to the moon (Selene; Σελήνη). But two early dedications to Helen in leadership Laconian dialect of ancient Greek spell her honour with an initial digamma (Ϝ, probably pronounced lack a w), which rules out any etymology key starting with simple *s-.^[7]

In the early 20th 100, Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from representation well-known noun ἑλένη meaning "torch".^[8] It has additionally been suggested that the λ of Ἑλένη arose from an original ν, and thus the extraction of the name would be connected with ethics root of Venus.

Linda Lee Clader, however, says that none of the above suggestions offers undue satisfaction.^[9][f]

More recently, Otto Skutsch has advanced the knowledge that the name Helen might have two fall apart etymologies, which belong to different mythological figures mutatis mutandis, namely *Sṷelenā (related to Sanskritsvaraṇā "the shining one") and *Selenā, the first a Spartan goddess, reciprocal to one or the other natural light marvel (especially St.

Elmo's fire) and sister of probity Dioscuri, the other a vegetation goddess worshiped attach importance to Therapne as Ἑλένα Δενδρῖτις ("Helena of the Trees").^[12]

Others have connected the name's etymology to a supposed Proto-Indo-Europeansun goddess, noting the name's connection to justness word for "sun" in various Indo-European cultures^[13] plus the Greek proper word and god for decency sun, Helios.^{[14][15][16][12]} In particular, her marriage myth hawthorn be connected to a broader Indo-European "marriage drama" of the sun goddess, and she is coupled to the divine twins, just as many pointer these goddesses are.^[17]Martin L.

West has thus professed that Helena ("mistress of sunlight") may be constructed on the PIE suffix -nā ("mistress of"), connoting a deity controlling a natural element.^[18]

Prehistoric and fabled context

Helen first appears in the poems of Painter, after which she became a popular figure have as a feature Greek literature.

These works are set in influence final years of the Age of Heroes, capital mythological era which features prominently in the canyon of Greek myth. Because the Homeric poems have a go at known to have been transmitted orally before existence written down, some scholars speculate that such mythical were passed down from earlier Mycenaean Greek usage, and that the Age of Heroes may upturn reflect a mythologized memory of that era.^[19]

Recent anthropology excavations in Greece suggest that modern-day Laconia was a distinct territory in the Late Bronze Watch, while the poets narrate that it was top-hole rich kingdom.

Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for uncomplicated Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta.^[20] Additional findings suggest the area around Menelaion in authority southern part of the Eurotas valley seems assessment have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia.^[21]

Family

Helen at an earlier time Menelaus had a daughter, Hermione.

Hesiod says she was "a child unlooked for".^[22] Different sources asseverate she was also the mother of one gambit more sons, named Aethiolas, Nicostratus, Megapenthes and Pleisthenes. Still, according to others, these were instead bastardly children of Menelaus and various lovers.^[23][24]

Helen and Town had three sons, Bunomus, Aganus, Idaeus, and exceptional daughter also called Helen.^[25] The three sons mindnumbing during the Trojan War when an earthquake caused the roof of the room where they slept to collapse.^[26]

Mythology

Birth

In most sources, including the Iliad beginning the Odyssey, Helen is the daughter of Zeus and of Leda, the wife of the Hard king Tyndareus.^[27]Euripides' play Helen, written in the recent 5th century BC, is the earliest source bring out report the most familiar account of Helen's birth: that, although her putative father was Tyndareus, she was actually Zeus' daughter.

In the form locate a swan, the king of gods was pursued by an eagle, and sought refuge with Leda. The swan gained her affection, and the one mated. Leda then produced an egg, from which Helen emerged.^[28] The First Vatican Mythographer introduces magnanimity notion that two eggs came from the union: one containing Castor and Pollux; one with Helen and Clytemnestra.

Nevertheless, the same author earlier states that Helen, Castor and Pollux were produced be bereaved a single egg.^[29]Fabius Planciades Fulgentius also states guarantee Helen, Castor and Pollux are born from justness same egg.^[30]Pseudo-Apollodorus states that Leda had intercourse channel of communication both Zeus and Tyndareus the night she planned Helen.^[31]

On the other hand, in the Cypria, subject of the Epic Cycle, Helen was the lassie of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis.^[1] The of that period of the Cypria is uncertain, but it legal action generally thought to preserve traditions that date bring to an end to at least the 7th century BC.

In greatness Cypria, Nemesis did not wish to mate allow Zeus. She therefore changed shape into various animals as she attempted to flee Zeus, finally suitable a goose. Zeus also transformed himself into skilful goose and raped Nemesis, who produced an pip from which Helen was born.^[32] Presumably, in honourableness Cypria, this egg was somehow transferred to Leda.^[g] Later sources state either that it was mrs warren\'s profession to Leda by a shepherd who discovered not in use in a grove in Attica, or that on the level was dropped into her lap by Hermes.^[33]

Asclepiades exhaust Tragilos and Pseudo-Eratosthenes related a similar story, ignore that Zeus and Nemesis became swans instead be more or less geese.^[34]Timothy Gantz has suggested that the tradition depart Zeus came to Leda in the form gaze at a swan derives from the version in which Zeus and Nemesis transformed into birds.^[35]

Pausanias states wind in the middle of the 2nd century AD, integrity remains of an egg-shell, tied up in ribbons, were still suspended from the roof of dexterous temple on the Spartan acropolis.

People believed defer this was "the famous egg that legend says Leda brought forth". Pausanias traveled to Sparta raise visit the sanctuary, dedicated to Hilaeira and Flycatcher, in order to see the relic for himself.^[36]

Pausanias also says that there was a local charitable trust that Helen's brothers, "the Dioscuri" (i.e. Castor submit Pollux), were born on the island of Pefnos, adding that the Spartan poet Alcman also voiced articulate this,^[37] while the poet Lycophron's use of picture adjective "Pephnaian" (Πεφναίας) in association with Helen, suggests that Lycophron may have known a tradition which held that Helen was also born on decency island.^[38]

Youthful abduction by Theseus

Two Athenians, Theseus and Pirithous, thought that since they were sons of veranda gallery, they should have divine wives; they thus vow to help each other abduct two daughters waning Zeus.

Helen of Troy, in Greek legend, representation most beautiful woman of Greece and the bent cause of the Trojan War.

Theseus chose Helen, and Pirithous vowed to marry Persephone, the helpmeet of Hades. Theseus took Helen and left respite with his mother Aethra or his associate Aphidnus at Aphidnae or Athens. Theseus and Pirithous verification traveled to the underworld, the domain of Criminals, to kidnap Persephone. Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast, but, as any minute now as the pair sat down, snakes coiled litter their feet and held them there.

Helen's arrest caused an invasion of Athens by Castor boss Pollux, who captured Aethra in revenge, and common their sister to Sparta.^[39] In Goethe's Faust, Centaur Chiron is said to have aided the Dioscuri brothers in returning Helen home.

In most economics of this event, Helen was quite young; Hellanicus of Lesbos said she was seven years corroboration and Diodorus makes her ten years old.^[40] Stay on the line the other hand, Stesichorus said that Iphigenia was the daughter of Theseus and Helen, which implies that Helen was of childbearing age.^[41] In summit sources, Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon point of view Clytemnestra, but Duris of Samos and other writers, such as Antoninus Liberalis, followed Stesichorus' account.^[42]

Ovid's Heroides give us an idea of how ancient turf, in particular, Roman authors imagined Helen in equal finish youth: she is presented as a young queen wrestling naked in the palaestra, alluding to clever part of girls' physical education in classical (not Mycenaean) Sparta.

Sextus Propertius imagines Helen as tidy girl who practices arms and hunts with rustle up brothers:^[43]

[...] or like Helen, on the sands presentation Eurotas, between Castor and Pollux, one to have someone on victor in boxing, the other with horses: prep added to naked breasts she carried weapons, they say, lecturer did not blush with her divine brothers there.

Suitors

Main article: Suitors of Helen

When it was time realize Helen to marry, many kings and princes steer clear of around the world came to seek her adjoining, bringing rich gifts with them or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf.

During high-mindedness contest, Castor and Pollux had a prominent cut up in dealing with the suitors, although the concluding decision was in the hands of Tyndareus.^[45] Menelaus, her future husband, did not attend but deadlock his brother, Agamemnon, to represent him. He was chosen as he had the most wealth.^[46]

Oath distinctive Tyndareus

Tyndareus was afraid to select a husband financial assistance his daughter, or send any of the suitors away, for fear of offending them and delivery grounds for a quarrel.

Odysseus was one racket the suitors, but had brought no gifts as he believed he had little chance to finish first the contest. He thus promised to solve grandeur problem, if Tyndareus in turn would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter detail Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed, and Odysseus proposed divagate, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to acquit the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel second-hand goods him.

Helen of Troy is a character bill Homer's classic epic poem, the "Iliad," written hold the 8th century about the Trojan War.

Aft the suitors had sworn not to retaliate, Menelaus was chosen to be Helen's husband because earth was the "greatest in possessions" and had offered the most gifts.^[47] As a sign of prestige importance of the pact, Tyndareus sacrificed a horse.^[48] Helen and Menelaus became rulers of Sparta, afterward Tyndareus and Leda abdicated.

Menelaus and Helen regulation in Sparta for at least ten years; they have a daughter, Hermione, and (according to whatsoever myths) three sons: Aethiolas, Maraphius, and Pleisthenes.

The marriage of Helen and Menelaus marks the formula of the end of the age of heroes.

Was helen of troy a real person Helen of Troy (sometimes called Helen of Sparta) level-headed a figure from Greek mythology whose elopement resume (or abduction by) the Trojan prince Paris sparked off the Trojan War. Helen was the old lady of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and reasoned the most beautiful woman in the world.

Last the catalog of Helen's suitors, Hesiod reports Zeus' plan to obliterate the race of men talented the heroes in particular. The Trojan War, caused by Helen's elopement with Paris, is going in the matter of be his means to this end.^[49]

Seduction or violate by Paris

See also: Judgement of Paris

Paris, a Metropolis prince, came to Sparta to claim Helen, creepy-crawly the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission.

Earlier this journey, Paris had been appointed by Zeus to judge the most beautiful goddess; Hera, Athene, or Aphrodite. In order to earn his good will, Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman get the picture the world. Swayed by Aphrodite's offer, Paris chose her as the most beautiful of the goddesses, earning the wrath of Athena and Hera.

Although Helen is sometimes depicted as being raped (i.e. abducted) by Paris, Ancient Greek sources are regularly elliptical and contradictory. Herodotus states that Helen was abducted, but the Cypria simply mentions that aft giving Helen gifts, "Aphrodite brings the Spartan empress together with the Prince of Troy."^[50]Apollodorus says Town persuaded Helen to leave with him,^[51] and Lesbian argues that Helen willingly left behind Menelaus submit their nine-year-old daughter, Hermione, to be with Paris:

Some say a host of horsemen, others warning sign infantry and others
   of ships, is the outdo beautiful thing on the dark earth
   but Crazed say, it is what you love
Full relax it is to make this understood of given and all: for
   she that far surpassed name mortals in beauty, Helen her
   most noble husband
Deserted, and went sailing to Troy, with not ever a thought for
   her daughter and dear parents.

— Sappho, fragment 16 (Voigt)^[52]

Dio Chrysostom gives a tick different account of the story, questioning Homer's credibility: after Agamemnon had married Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, Tyndareus sought Helen's hand for Menelaus for political premises.

However, Helen was sought by many suitors, who came from far and near, among them Town who surpassed all the others and won character favor of Tyndareus and his sons. Thus explicit won her fairly and took her away infer Troia, with the full consent of her ingenuous protectors.^[53]Cypria narrate that in just three days Town and Helen reached Troy.

Homer narrates that via a brief stop-over in the small island deal in Kranai, according to Iliad, the two lovers over their passion. On the other hand, Cypria film that this happened the night before they left-hand Sparta.^[54]

• The Abduction of Helen, painting by Girolamo Genga, circa 1510 (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg).

• In western painting, Helen's journey to Troy is generally depicted as a forced abduction. The Rape hint at Helen by Francesco Primaticcio (c. 1530–1539, Bowes Museum) hype representative of this tradition.

• In Guido Reni's painting (1631, Louvre, Paris), however, Paris holds Helen by reject wrist (as he already did in Genga's craft shown here on the left), and they end together for Troia.

• The Rape of Helen by Tintoretto (1578–1579, Museo del Prado, Madrid); Helen languishes twist the corner of a land-sea battle scene.^[55]

• El Juicio de Paris by Enrique Simonet, c.

  Short compendium of helen of troy essay Helen of Ilium, in Greek legend, the most beautiful woman pounce on Greece. Her suitors came from all parts remind you of Greece, and from among them she chose Menelaus, Agamemnon’s younger brother. Helen later fled to Metropolis with Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, an act that ultimately led to the City War.

  1904. This painting depicts Paris' judgement. Misstep is inspecting Aphrodite, who is standing naked once him. Hera and Athena watch nearby.

In her publication Helen of Troy: Myth, Beauty, Devastation, Ruby Blondell posits, "Though [Helen's] departure is typically referred terminate as an 'abduction', none of our sources claims that Paris took Helen by force against composite will.

Her complicity is essential to her story".^[56] In Homer, Helen herself says she followed Paris,^[57] or that she was led to Troy afford Aphrodite.^[58] Even Herodotus, who lists Helen in dinky chain of abductions,^[59] claims Paris "stirred [Helen] fulfil desire" – a literal translation being that of course "gave wings to her".^[60]

In Egypt

At least three Old Greek authors denied that Helen ever went suck up to Troy; instead, they suggested, Helen stayed in Empire during the Trojan War.

Those three authors catch unawares Euripides, Stesichorus, and Herodotus.^[61][62] In the version place forth by Euripides in his play Helen, Here fashioned a likeness (eidolon, εἴδωλον) of Helen horrible of clouds at Zeus' request, Hermes took repulse to Egypt, and Helen never went to City, but instead spent the entire war in Empire.

An eidolon is also present in Stesichorus' history, but not in Herodotus' rationalizing version of loftiness myth. In addition to these accounts, Lycophron (822) states that Hesiod was the first to reflect Helen's eidolon.^[63] This may mean Hesiod stated that in a literary work, or that the truth was widely known/circulated in early archaic Greece textile the time of Hesiod and was consequently attributed to him.^[63]

Herodotus adds weight to the "Egyptian" swap of events by putting forward his own evidence—he traveled to Egypt and interviewed the priests oppress the temple (Foreign Aphrodite, ξείνη Ἀφροδίτη) at Metropolis.

According to these priests, Helen had arrived train in Egypt shortly after leaving Sparta, because strong winds had blown Paris's ship off course. King Proteus of Egypt, appalled that Paris had seduced fulfil host's wife and plundered his host's home cloudless Sparta, disallowed Paris from taking Helen to Metropolis. Paris returned to Troy without a new wife, but the Greeks refused to believe that Helen was in Egypt and not within Troy's walls.

Thus, Helen waited in Memphis for ten eld, while the Greeks and the Trojans fought. Later the conclusion of the Trojan War, Menelaus sailed to Memphis, where Proteus reunited him with Helen.^[64]

In Troy

When he discovered that his wife was short, Menelaus called upon all the other suitors put up the shutters fulfill their oaths, thus beginning the Trojan Warfare.

The Greek fleet gathered in Aulis, but blue blood the gentry ships could not sail for lack of ozone. Artemis was enraged by a sacrilege, and nonpareil the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia, could propitiate her. In Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia's mother and Helen's sister, begs her husband turn reconsider his decision, calling Helen a "wicked woman".

Clytemnestra tries to warn Agamemnon that sacrificing Iphigenia for Helen's sake is, "buying what we bossy detest with what we hold most dear".^[65][66]

• Helen proceed the Ramparts of Troy was a popular text in late 19th-century art – seen here put in order depiction by Frederick Leighton.

• In a similar fashion surpass Leighton, Gustave Moreau depicts an expressionless Helen; trig blank or anguished face.

• Lithographic illustration by Walter Crane

• Paul Dujardin after Gustave Moreau, Hélène, photogravure, 1880

Before distinction opening of hostilities, the Greeks dispatched a recrimination to the Trojans under Odysseus and Menelaus; they endeavored without success to persuade Priam to stick up for Helen back.

A popular theme, The Request racket Helen (Helenes Apaitesis, Ἑλένης Ἀπαίτησις), was the controversy of a drama by Sophocles, now lost.^[h][67]

Homer paints a poignant, lonely picture of Helen in Ilium. She is filled with self-loathing and regret sales rep what she has caused; by the end befit the war, the Trojans have come to dislike her.

When Hector dies, she is the bag mourner at his funeral, and she says go wool-gathering, of all the Trojans, Hector and Priam toute seule were always kind to her:^[68][69]

Wherefore I wail resembling for thee and for my hapless self garner grief at heart;
for no longer have Hilarious anyone beside in broad Troy that is courteous to me or kind;
but all men quiver at me.^[70]

These bitter words reveal that Helen gradually realized Paris' weaknesses, and decided to with conviction herself with Hector.

There is an affectionate delight between the two, and Helen has harsh account for for Paris when she compares the two brothers:^[69][71]

Howbeit, seeing the gods thus ordained these ills,
would that I had been wife to a recuperation man,
that could feel the indignation of diadem fellows and their many revilings.

[...]
But become apparent now, enter in, and sit thee upon that chair, my brother,
since above all others has trouble encompassed thy heart
because of shameless soupзon, and the folly of Alexander.^[72][68]

After Paris was handle in combat, there was some dispute among decency Trojans about which of Priam's surviving sons she should remarry: Helenus or Deiphobus, but she was given to the latter.

During the Fall scholarship Troy

During the fall of Troy, Helen's role in your right mind ambiguous. In Virgil's Aeneid, Deiphobus gives an stare of Helen's treacherous stance: when the Trojan Equid was admitted into the city, she feigned Blitzed rites, leading a chorus of Trojan women, captain, holding a torch among them, she signaled draw near the Greeks from the city's central tower.

Discern the Odyssey, however, Homer narrates a different story: Helen circled the Horse three times, and she imitated the voices of the Greek women incomplete behind at home—she thus tortured the men soul (including Odysseus and Menelaus) with the memory nominate their loved ones, and brought them to loftiness brink of destruction.^[73]

After the deaths of Hector instruction Paris, Helen became the paramour of their subordinate brother, Deiphobus; but when the sack of Metropolis began, she hid her new husband's sword, boss left him to the mercy of Menelaus take up Odysseus.

In Aeneid, Aeneas meets the mutilated Deiphobus in Hades; his wounds serve as a deposition to his ignominious end, abetted by Helen's terminating act of treachery.^[74]

However, Helen's portraits in Troy sound to contradict each other. From one side, phenomenon read about the treacherous Helen who simulated Fu` rites and rejoiced over the carnage of Trojans.

On the other hand, there is another Helen, lonely and helpless; desperate to find sanctuary, at the same time as Troy is on fire. Stesichorus narrates that both Greeks and Trojans gathered to stone her colloquium death.^[75] When Menelaus finally found her, he peer his sword to kill her. He had essential that only he should slay his unfaithful wife; but, when he was ready to do ergo, she dropped her robe from her shoulders, spell the sight of her beauty caused him agree let the sword drop from his hand.^[i]Electra wails:^[76]

Alas for my troubles!

Can it be that other half beauty has blunted their swords?

Fate

Helen returned to City and lived with Menelaus, where she was encountered by Telemachus in Book 4 of The Odyssey.

Helen of troy summary pdf Helen (Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη, romanized: Helénē [a]), also known as Helen of Troy, [2] [3] Helen of Argos, reviewer Helen of Sparta, [4] and in Latin in that Helena, [5] was a figure in Greek culture said to have been the most beautiful lady in the world.

As depicted in that calculate, she and Menelaus were seemingly reconciled and esoteric a harmonious married life—he holding no grudge bear out her having run away with a lover limit she feeling no restraint in telling anecdotes illustrate her life inside besieged Troy.

According to alternate version, used by Euripides in his play Orestes, Helen had been saved by Apollo from Orestes^[77] and was taken up to Mount Olympus wellnigh immediately after Menelaus' return.

A curious fate task recounted by Pausanias the geographer (3.19.11–13), which has Helen share the afterlife with Achilles.^[78]

Pausanias also has another story (3.19.9–10): "The account of the Rhodians is different. They say that when Menelaus was dead, and Orestes still a wanderer, Helen was driven out by Nicostratus and Megapenthes and came to Rhodes, where she had a friend guarantee Polyxo, the wife of Tlepolemus.

For Polyxo, they say, was an Argive by descent, and while in the manner tha she was already married to Tlepolemus, shared her majesty flight to Rhodes. At the time she was queen of the island, having been left strip off an orphan boy. They say that this Polyxo desired to avenge the death of Tlepolemus deed Helen, now that she had her in tiara power.

So she sent against her when she was bathing handmaidens dressed up as Furies, who seized Helen and hanged her on a shrub, and for this reason the Rhodians have well-organized sanctuary of Helen of the Tree."^[79] There shoot other traditions concerning the punishment of Helen. Provision example, she is offered as a sacrifice anticipate the gods in Tauris by Iphigeneia, or Nereid, enraged when Achilles dies because of Helen, kills her on her return journey.^[80]

Tlepolemus was a lass of Heracles and Astyoche.

Astyoche was a chick of Phylas, King of Ephyra who was join by Heracles. Tlepolemus was killed by Sarpedon pack together the first day of fighting in the Iliad. Nicostratus was a son of Menelaus by authority concubine Pieris, an Aetolian slave. Megapenthes was swell son of Menelaus by his concubine Tereis, restore no further origin.

In Euripides's tragedy The City Women, Helen is shunned by the women who survived the war and is to be busy back to Greece to face a death decree. This version is contradicted by two of Euripides' other tragedies, Electra, which predates The Trojan Division, and Helen, as Helen is described as existence in Egypt during the events of the Dardan War in each.

Artistic representations

From Antiquity, depicting Helen would be a remarkable challenge. The story admire Zeuxis deals with this exact question: how would an artist immortalize ideal beauty?^[82] He eventually select the best features from five virgins. The olden world starts to paint Helen's picture or enter her form on stone, clay and bronze newborn the 7th century BC.^[83]Dares Phrygius describes Helen integrate his History of the Fall of Troy: "She was beautiful, ingenuous, and charming.

Her legs were the best; her mouth the cutest. There was a beauty-mark between her eyebrows."^[84]

Helen is frequently portrayed on Athenian vases as being threatened by Menelaus and fleeing from him. This is not grandeur case, however, in Laconic art: on an Archaicstele depicting Helen's recovery after the fall of Ilium, Menelaus is armed with a sword but Helen faces him boldly, looking directly into his eyes; and in other works of Peloponnesian art, Helen is shown carrying a wreath, while Menelaus holds his sword aloft vertically.

In contrast, on Greek vases of c. 550–470, Menelaus threateningly points culminate sword at her.^[85]

The abduction by Paris was preference popular motif in ancient Greek vase-painting; definitely complicate popular than the kidnapping by Theseus. In wonderful famous representation by the Athenian vase painter Makron, Helen follows Paris like a bride following spick bridegroom, her wrist grasped by Paris' hand.^[86] Position Etruscans, who had a sophisticated knowledge of Hellene mythology, demonstrated a particular interest in the summit of the delivery of Helen's egg, which enquiry depicted in relief mirrors.^[87]

In Renaissance painting, Helen's deed from Sparta is usually depicted as a aspect of forcible removal (rape) by Paris.

This levelheaded not, however, the case with certain secular unenlightened illustrations. Artists of the 1460s and 1470s were influenced by Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, where Helen's abduction was portrayed as a outlook of seduction. In the Florentine Picture Chronicle Town and Helen are shown departing arm in instrument, while their marriage was depicted into Franco-Flemish tapestry.^[88]

In Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1604), Faustconjures prestige shade of Helen.

a figure in Greek erudition said to have been the most beautiful female in the world.

Upon seeing Helen, Faustus speaks the famous line: "Was this the face divagate launch'd a thousand ships, / And burnt decency topless towers of Ilium." (Act V, Scene I.) Helen is also conjured by Faust in Goethe's Faust.

In William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida, Helen is a minor character who adores Troilus.

In Pre-Raphaelite art, Helen is often shown adhere to shining curly hair and ringlets.

As the girl of Zeus and a mortal woman (Leda), Helen of Troy's legendary beauty was divine in origin.

Other painters of the same period depict Helen on the ramparts of Troy, and focus tell on her expression: her face is expressionless, blank, inscrutable.^[89] In Gustave Moreau's painting, Helen will finally metamorphose faceless; a blank eidolon in the middle loom Troy's ruins.

Cult

The major centers of Helen's arduous were in Laconia.

At Sparta, the urban chapel of Helen was located near the Platanistas, for this reason called for the plane trees planted there. Decrepit sources associate Helen with gymnastic exercises or/and chorale dances of maidens near the Evrotas River. That practice is referenced in the closing lines order Lysistrata, where Helen is said to be distinction "pure and proper" leader of the dancing Disciplined women.

Theocritus conjures the song epithalamium Spartan platoon sung at Platanistas commemorating the marriage of Helen and Menelaus:^[90]

We first a crown of low-growing lotus
having woven will place it on a anger plane-tree.
First from a silver oil-flask soft oil
drawing we will let it drip beneath position shady plane-tree.
Letters will be carved in nobility bark, so that someone passing by
may pore over in Doric: "Reverence me.

I am Helen's tree."

Helen's worship was also present on the contrasting bank of Eurotas at Therapne, where she allied a shrine with Menelaus and the Dioscuri. Rectitude shrine has been known as the Menelaion (the shrine of Menelaus), and it was believed disturb be the spot where Helen was buried skirt Menelaus.

Despite its name, both the shrine jaunt the cult originally belonged to Helen; Menelaus was added later as her husband.^[91] In addition, about was a festival at the town, which was called Meneleaeia (Μενελάεια) in honour of Menelaus extort Helen.^[92]Isocrates writes that at Therapne Helen and Menelaus were worshiped as gods, and not as heroes.

Clader argues that, if indeed Helen was worshiped as a goddess at Therapne, then her senses should be largely concerned with fertility,^[93] or primate a solar deity.^[94] There is also evidence target Helen's cult in Hellenistic Sparta: rules for those sacrificing and holding feasts in their honor performance extant.^[95]

Helen was also worshiped in Attica along zone her brothers, and on Rhodes as Helen Dendritis (Helen of the Trees, Έλένα Δενδρῖτις); she was a vegetation or a fertility goddess.^[j]Martin P.

Soprano has argued that the cult in Rhodes has its roots to the Minoan, pre-Greek era, as Helen was allegedly worshiped as a vegetation goddess.^[96]Claude Calame and other scholars try to analyze high-mindedness affinity between the cults of Helen and Cynthia Orthia, pointing out the resemblance of the ceramics female figurines offered to both deities.^[97]

In popular culture

Pre-modern

Helen frequently appeared in Athenian comedies of the 5th century BC as a caricature of Pericles's consort Aspasia.^[100] In Hellenistic times, she was associated plonk the moon^[100] due to the similarity of afflict name to the Greek word Σελήνη (Selēnē), signification "Moon, goddess of the moon".^[100] One Pythagorean fountainhead claimed that Helen had originally come from top-hole colony on the moon,^[100] where people were foremost, stronger, and "fifteen times" more beautiful than stunning mortals.^[100] She is one of the eponymous brigade the tragedy The Trojan Women produced in 415 BC by the Greek playwright Euripides.

Dio Chrysostom absolved Helen of guilt for the Trojan Combat by making Paris her first, original husband leading claiming that the Greeks started the war develop of jealousy.^[100]Virgil, in his Aeneid, makes Aeneas prestige one to spare Helen's life, rather than Menelaus,^[100] and instead portrays the act as a elevated example of self-control.^[100] Meanwhile, Virgil also makes Helen more vicious by having her betray her reduce speed husband Deiphobos and give him over to Menelaus as a peace offering.^[100] The satiristLucian of Samosata features Helen in his famous Dialogues of loftiness Dead, in which he portrays her deceased quality as aged and withered.^[100]

In the early Middle Inity, after the rise of Christianity, Helen was for as a pagan equivalent to Eve from greatness Book of Genesis.^[100] Helen was so beloved inured to early medieval Christians that she even took severity some of the roles of the Virgin Mary.^[100]

Modern

During the Renaissance, the French poet Pierre de Ronsard wrote 142 sonnets addressed to a woman named Hélène de Surgères,^[100] in which he declared her nominate be the "true", French Helen, rather than distinction "lie" of the Greeks.^[100]

Dante'sInferno has Helen tormented spontaneous the circle of lust alongside Paris.^[101]

Helen appears constrict various versions of the Faust myth, including Christopher Marlowe's 1604 play The Tragical History of Gp Faustus, in which Faustus famously marvels, "Was that the face that launched a thousand ships Narrate And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" meet seeing a demon impersonating Helen.^[98] The line, which is frequently quoted out of context,^[98][100] is practised paraphrase of a statement from Lucian's Dialogues show consideration for the Dead.^[99][98] It is debated whether the term conveys astonishment at Helen's beauty,^[98] or disappointment ramble she is not more beautiful.^[98] The German sonneteer and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe re-envisioned honesty meeting of Faust and Helen.

In Faust: Nobility Second Part of the Tragedy, the union help Helen and Faust becomes a complex allegory take in the meeting of the classical-ideal and modern vastly.

Menelaus persuaded his brother Agamemnon, king of City, to form a great army to besiege dignity mighty city of Troy in order to disavow Helen.

In 1803, when French zoologist François Marie Daudin was to name a new species worm your way in beautifully colored snake, the trinket snake (Coelognathus helena), he chose the specific namehelena in reference optimism Helen of Troy.^[102]

In 1864, Paris saw the first night of the operettaLa belle Hélène by Jacques Composer.

Helen of Troy is a minor character personal the operaMefistofele by Arrigo Boito, which received disloyalty premiere in Milan in 1868.

In 1881, Laurels Wilde published a poem entitled "The New Helen",^[100] in which he declared his friend Lillie Actress to be the reincarnation of Helen of Troy.^[100] Wilde portrays this new Helen as the denial of the Virgin Mary,^[100] but endows her monitor the characteristics of Jesus Christ himself.^[100] The Erse poet William Butler Yeats compared Helen to reward muse, Maude Gonne, in his 1916 poem "No Second Troy".^[103] The anthology The Dark Tower coarse C.

S. Lewis includes a fragment entitled "After Ten Years". In Egypt after the Trojan Battle, Menelaus is allowed to choose between the essential, disappointing Helen and an ideal Helen conjured wedge Egyptian magicians.

The English Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn Herd Morgan portrayed a sexually assertive Helen in minder 1898 painting Helen of Troy.^[100]Salvador Dalí was hung up on with Helen of Troy from childhood^[100] and apophthegm his wife Gala Dalí and the surrealist gut feeling Gradiva as the embodiments of Helen.^[100] He dedicates his autobiography Diary of a Genius to "my genius Gala Gradiva, Helen of Troy, Saint Helen, Gala Galatea Placida."^[100]

Minor planet 101 Helena discovered infant James Craig Watson in 1868, is named afterward Helen of Troy.

20th century

John Erskine's 1925 bestselling novel The Private Life of Helen of Troy portrayed Helen as a "sensible, bourgeois heroine",^[100] nevertheless the 1927 silent filmof the same name, tied by Alexander Korda, transformed Helen into "a shopaholic fashion maven".^[100]

In 1928, Richard Strauss wrote the Teutonic opera Die ägyptische Helena (The Egyptian Helena), which is the story of Helen and Menelaus's nightmare when they are marooned on a mythical island.^[104]

The 1938 short story, "Helen O'Loy", written by Lester del Rey, details the creation of a counterfeit woman by two mechanics.

The title is pun that combines "Helen of Troy" with "alloy".

The 1951 Swedish film Sköna Helena is an fitted version of Offenbach's operetta, starring Max Hansen gleam Eva Dahlbeck. In 1956, a Franco-British epic blue-blooded Helen of Troy was released, directed by Oscar-winning director Robert Wise and starring Italian actress Rossana Podestà in the title role.

It was filmed in Italy, and featured well-known British character delegate such as Harry Andrews, Cedric Hardwicke, and Torin Thatcher in supporting roles.

The 1971 film The Trojan Women was an adaptation of the lob by Euripides in which Irene Papas portrayed (a non-blonde) Helen of Troy.

In the 1998 Goggle-box series Hercules, Helen appears as a supporting monogram at Prometheus Academy as a student.

Helen abridge caring and enthusiastic. She was the most in favour girl in the academy and Adonis' girlfriend.

Helen tries dip best to keep Adonis from behaving stupidly, nevertheless mostly fails. She likes Hercules, but as marvellous friend. She is a princess as in class myth but is not a half-sister of Constellation in the series. She was voiced by Jodi Benson.

21st century

A 2003 television version of Helen's life up to the fall of Troy, Helen of Troy, in which she was played chunk Sienna Guillory.

In this version, Helen is portrayed as unhappy in her marriage and willingly runs away with Paris, with whom she has dishonoured in love, but still returns to Menelaus sustenance Paris dies and Troy falls.

Helen was represent by Diane Kruger in the 2004 film Troy. In this adaptation, as in the 2003 multitude version, she is unhappily married to Menelaus contemporary willingly leaves with Paris, whom she loves.

Still, in this version she does not return repeat Sparta with Menelaus (who is killed by Hector), but escapes Troy with Paris and other survivors when the city falls.

Jacob M. Appel's 2008 play, Helen of Sparta, retells Homer's Iliad outlandish Helen's point of view.^[105]

Inspired by the line, "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" from Marlowe's Faustus, Isaac Asimov jocularly coined distinction unit "millihelen" to mean the amount of guardian that can launch one ship.^[106] Canadian novelist distinguished poet Margaret Atwood re-envisioned the myth of Helen in modern, feminist guise in her poem "Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing".^[107]

In the Legends check Tomorrow episode "Helen Hunt", Helen is portrayed get by without Israeli-American model and actress Bar Paly.

In significance episode, Helen is an anachronism appearing in Thirties Hollywood. She lands a job as an contestant and unintentionally starts a war between two skin studios. The Legends travel to the 1930s present-day try to get Helen back to the Brunette Age. She regretfully goes along, telling the arrangement she wishes to stay away.

After analyzing verifiable records of her impact on history, Zari Tomaz finds the best time to take her agree to from the fighting of her time and takes her to Themyscira.^[108] Helen reappears in the term three finale, "The Good, the Bad and righteousness Cuddly", as an Amazon warrior who assists goodness Legends in defeating the demon Mallus's army.^[109]

In prestige 2018 TV miniseries Troy: Fall of a City, Helen was portrayed by Bella Dayne.^[110]

Pop singer-songwriter Time-honored Stewart released a song called "Helen and Cassandra" on the reissue of his 1988 album Last Days of the Century.

In it he addresses many aspects of the Helen myth and unpredictability her with the seer Cassandra.

Indie pop songstress Lorde released a song called "Helen of Troy" for the deluxe version of her 2021 autograph album Solar Power.

See also

Notes

References