Everybody knows the tragedy of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful of all mortal women who “sent” thousands of men to fight in the ten-year Trojan War. But what happened to Helen after the destruction of Troy and the death of Paris? Let’s unravel the tangle of myth.
Origin of Helen of Troy
Helen of Troy, 1819 By Antonio Canova
According to Greek legend, Helen of Troy was supposedly born in 1214 BC.
She is mostly thought to have been the daughter of the god Zeus and Spartan Queen Leda or the goddess Nemesis.
A sculpture showing the birth of Helen of Troy. Limestone, made in the 5th century BCE. (Archaeological Museum of Metapontum, Italy)
Whoever is the mother, in both versions, Helen is born from an egg in Sparta.
4th century BCE. Greek original by Timotheos. (Capitoline Museums, Rome)
Legend goes that Zeus seduced Leda while in the form of a swan and fathered Helen.
On the same night of the divine intercourse, her “official” father, Tyndareus, king of Lacedaemon, sided with his wife, Leda. Thus, Helen and Polydefkis but also Clytemnestra, the future wife of King of Mycenae Agamemnon, and the hero twins Castor and Pollux (of Dioscuri) were born. All children- children of gods or not – were considered children of Tyndareus.
One day, Tyndareus offered sacrifices to all the gods but forgot Aphrodite and the goddess, angered at the slight, then promised that all of the king’s daughters would become infamous for their adultery.
Euripides wrote in the tragedy “Helen”. “Helen, you are the daughter of Zeus, like a white swan, your parent sowed you at the top of Leda. Then all over Greece you were called unjust, unfaithful, atheist, traitor”.
The first written record of Helen is in the Iliad. However, the origins of the myth that surrounds her date back to the Bronze Age.
Five marriages, several children, two wars and an interesting afterlife.
An Estimate of Dates in Helen’s Life:
- 1214 BCE – her birth to Leda
- 1202 BCE – her rape by Theseus and possible birth of 1 child.
- 1201 BCE – her marriage to Menelaus and subsequent birth of 5 children.
- 1195 BCE – Paris abducts her
- 1186 BCE – Start of Trojan war
- 1176 BCE – End of Trojan war – she leaves with Menelaus
- 1168 BCE – She arrives back at Sparta after 8 years in Egypt
- 1166 BCE – Telemachus visits her for news of Odysseus.
- 1146 BCE – Her death at an old age.
Helen and Theseus
Helen and Thiseus. Rossi, Vincenzo di Raffaello, 1558
Tyndareo’s beautiful daughter showed from a young age what she would cause. At the age of 12, her first cousin, Enarforos, tried unsuccessfully to abduct her.
She was finally abducted by the 50-year-old hero Theseus and his companion Pirithous after they pledged themselves to marry daughters of Zeus. Pirithous chose Persephone. While Theseus was away adventuring, he left Helen in the protection of his mother Aethra. Somehow Helen was the cause of another war, long before the Trojan War. Spartan army led by Helen’s brothers, Castor and Pollux invaded Athens. They captured Aethra and took their beloved Helen back. Soon she gave birth to her first child, Iphigenia, in Argos, which she gave to her sister, Clytemnestra, to raise it in Mycenae, according to Hesiod.
Marriage to Menelaos
Fearing that his daughter would be abducted again, Tyndareus decided to get her a husband.
99 suitors —including Odysseus—came from all parts of Greece. Helen chose the king of Sparta, Menelaus, Agamemnon’s younger brother.
Menelaos as groom and Helen as bride.
Her father also preferred Menelaus, mainly because he was the richest but also because he was the brother of Agamemnon, the husband of his eldest daughter, Clytemnestra.
Helen and Menelaos had a daughter, Hermione, and three sons, Aethiolas, Maraphius and Pleisthenes.
Helen abducted by Paris.
Paris sees Helen for the first time. British museum
During an absence of Menelaus, however, Helen was abducted by Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, an act that ultimately led to the Trojan War.
Other accounts say that she went there by her own accord, and that she and Paris had eloped.
Helen had 5 more children with Paris.
In some accounts, Helen was thought to prosper in the city of Troy and be a treacherous woman. In other stories, she was considered to be in constant gloom and sorrow.
The life of Helen after the death of Paris
When Paris was slain during the fall of Troy, Helen married his brother Deiphobus, whom she betrayed to Menelaus once Troy was captured. According to some takes on the legends Menelaus tried to kill her for her treachery.
Menelaos sees Helen and drops his sword. 470-450 π.Χ British Museum.
However, she disrobed and her beauty weakened Menelaus and made him drop his sword. Menelaus and Helen then returned to Sparta, where they lived happily ever after.
But there are variants of the story.
Pausanias the geographer tells that the Rhodians have a different account on Helen’s fate: Menelaus was thought to have passed before Helen. Helen was driven out of Sparta by her stepsons: Nicostratus and Megapenthese. So she fled to Rhodes, to her friend Polyxo, queen of Rhodes. Polyxo, who lost her husband Tlepolemus (Son of Hercues and Astyoche) during the Trojan War and was left with an orphan boy, Polyxo desired to avenge the death of Tlepolemus on Helen. So, while Helen was bathing, her handmaidens dressed up as Furies, seized Helen and hanged her on a tree. This is why Helen had a temple at Rhodes, where she was worshipped as Dendritis (the tree goddess). Eleni of the trees, the dendrites was honored with many fertile tributes.
A curious fate is recounted also by Pausanias the geographer, which has Helen share the afterlife with Achilles on the island Lefki. They even had a son, Euphorion.
And of course there is another fate that has been mentioned about Helen.
The poet Stesichorus has Helen and Paris drive ashore the coast of Egypt, where King Protus detained Helen. It is believed that Helen of Troy (The Helen that actually went to Troy with Paris) was thus a phantom. The real Helen resided in Egypt and her husband found her after the Trojan War.
Euripides used this version in his play Helen. In his tragedy Trojan Women, performed in 412 BCE, Helen was taken back to Greece after being uncovered where she simply awaited a death sentence. In his play Orestes, Euripides had raised her to the heaven, up to Mount Olympus, with the intervention of the god Apollo, ordered by Zeus, saves Helen from the swords of the two friends, Orestis and Piladis. Like her brothers, the Dioscuri, she was a patron deity of sailors
Apollodorus has Eleni transferred to the Champs Elysees, where she lived with Menelaus.
According to other traditions, Iphigenia sacrificed her or Thetis (mother of Achilles) killed her on the return journey to avenge the death of Achilles,
It’s hard to simply pinpoint Helen of Troy’s fate after the Trojan War as many different regions told of her fate differently and over time different authors etc. altered it to suit better. My favourite variant of the story is the one that has Helen share the afterlife with Achilles.
Which story do you prefer?
via: britannica
