Helen (mythology)
Helen (in ancient Greek: Ἑλένη), sometimes known as Helen of Troy or Helen of Sparta, is a character from the Greek mythology whose name has the meaning of "tea" or "torch". Almost all classical mythographers allude to his myth. She was considered the daughter of Zeus and sought after by many heroes due to her great beauty. She was seduced or kidnapped by Paris, prince of Troy, which started the Trojan War.
Birth
Zeus, transformed into a swan, seduced Leda and lay with her the same night as Tyndareus, husband of Leda and king of Sparta. As a consequence, Leda laid two eggs; from one were born the children of Zeus, Helena and Pollux, both immortal, and from the other the children of Tyndareus, Clytemnestra and Castor, mortals. In any case, Castor and Pollux were considered twins and were known as Dioscuri. Helen's other sisters were Timandra and Philonoe.
Another tradition said that Helen was born from the union of Nemesis and Zeus, transformed respectively into a goose and a swan. The egg that Nemesis laid was found by a shepherd who gave it to Leda. From the egg Helena was born and Leda cared for her as if she were her true mother.Hesiod, on the other hand, alleges that Helen is the daughter of Zeus and an unnamed Oceanid.
In the sanctuary of the Leucipides in Sparta there was an egg hanging from the ceiling and supported by ribbons. This was believed to be the one in which Leda had given birth.
Abduction of Helen by Theseus and Pirithous
Helena was recognized for her beauty from the time she was a child. One day, while she was participating dancing in a sacrifice in the sanctuary of Artemis Ortia in Sparta, she was surprised and kidnapped by the Athenian hero Theseus in the company of her friend Pirítoo. After capturing her, they cast lots for her maiden, corresponding to Theseus. But when Theseus returned to Athens, the Athenian people did not allow the girl to enter the city, which is why Theseus led her to Afidna, along with her mother Aethra. Next, Theseus and Pirítoo decided to march to Hades to kidnap Persephone with the intention of making her a consort of Pirítoo. During Theseus and Pirithous' stay in Hades, the Dioscuri rescued Helen. In turn, they took the mother of Theseus and the sister of Pirithous as prisoners, who they led to Sparta to turn them into slaves of Helen.
There is a tradition that says that Helen and Theseus had Iphigenia as a daughter, but that, when Helen was released by her brothers, she decided to give her daughter to her sister Clytemnestra, who was already married to Agamemnon. But the legend The most widespread pointed out that Iphigenia was the natural daughter of Clytemnestra.
Wedding with Menelaus
When Helena reached marriageable age, she had many suitors who flocked from all over Greece, encouraged by the fame of her great beauty and that she and her future husband would rule Sparta. Tyndareus, fearing to provoke a war between the rejected suitors, followed Odysseus's advice. In return, he promised to help him get his niece Penelope as his wife.
Odysseus's advice consisted of extorting from the suitors the oath to abide by the decision made about who would be Helen's husband and the obligation to come to the aid of the chosen one if at any time his wife was seduced or kidnapped. Once the oath was made, Tyndareus chose Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who was married to his other daughter, Clytemnestra, as Helen's husband. In other versions, it was Helen herself who chose Menelaus.
Menelaus and Helena had a daughter, Hermione, and according to some authors, also a son, Nicostrato.
Kidnapping or seduction of Paris
The goddess Aphrodite had promised the Trojan prince Paris the love of Helen as a prize for having decided in her favor in the beauty contest that had pitted her against Hera and Athena.
Paris went to Sparta with his brother Hector, where he was hospitably received by the marriage of Menelaus and Helena. However, during his stay, Menelaus had to travel to Crete to attend the funeral for the death of his maternal grandfather, Catreo.
Aphrodite caused Helen to fall in love with Paris, and the lovers fled together from Sparta with Helen's treasure while Menelaus was still in Crete. They first came together on an island of uncertain location called Cránae. Hera sent them a storm and, after passing through Cyprus and Phoenicia, they reached Troy.
Another version states that Helen did not actually travel with Paris to Troy but that Zeus, Hera or Proteus formed a spectrum of hers, which was what accompanied Paris while the real Helen was transferred to Egypt by Hermes. It is believed that the first source of this version was the palinodia composed by the lyric poet Estesícoro, of which few fragments remain. A legend added that the poet had been blinded by Helena (once she had been deified) because he had previously composed a first poem that treated her very unfavorably. When Stesichorus composed his palinodia, his sight was restored. A scholiam attributes to Stesichorus a comment that Aphrodite made unfaithful to Helen and her sisters Clytemnestra and Timandra to punish Tyndareus, who had forgotten to offer sacrifices to the goddess.
Another tradition tells that Paris kidnapped Helen and took her with him by force.
Trojan War
Mythographers disagreed about how Helen and Paris were received when they arrived in Troy. Some said that they were poorly received by the people, but the brothers of Paris and Queen Hecuba received her favorably. Others claimed that all the Trojans fell in love with Helen and even King Priam swore that he would never let her go. For her part, the soothsayer Cassandra predicted that Helena would be the ruin of the city, but she was not believed.
Menelaus, accompanied by a large coalition of armies led by Helen's former suitors and other Achaean warlords, set sail for Troy in search of his wife.
Before the start of the war, Menelaus and Odysseus went as ambassadors to Troy to claim Helen and the treasure she had taken with her, but the Trojans refused to return her and would have killed them but for the intervention of Antenor, an old Trojan adviser, in his favor. For his part, Parthenius of Nicaea points out in Love Sufferings that those in charge of claiming Helen were Diomedes and Acamante.
Herodotus offers a different version: the Trojans claimed that they did not have Helen or her treasures in their possession and that all of this was in Egypt with their king Proteus. The Greeks thought the Trojans were mocking them, but when Troy was finally conquered, Helen did not appear, so they believed the Trojans and Menelaus was sent to Egypt to find his wife. Herodotus personally adhered to this version, arguing that if Helen had been in Troy she would have been returned to the Greeks because neither Priam nor the rest of the Trojans would have agreed to risk war just to please Paris.
Some ancient authors relate that, during the war, Aphrodite and Thetis arranged a meeting between Helen and Achilles.
Helen in the Iliad
Helen is an important character in the Iliad. She is esteemed and respected by King Priam and Hector, while the inhabitants of Troy recognize her divine beauty but attribute to her the cause of the evils that their city suffers. She presents the main Achaean warlords from the city tower to her father-in-law, Priam, episode known as teichoskopia. From there she witnesses the singular duel between her former husband, Menelaus, and Prince Paris. She argues with Aphrodite when the goddess urges her to go to Paris once the duel is over but then, for fear of Aphrodite's threats, give in.
In the final part of the poem, Helena laments the death of her brother-in-law Hector, noting that he has been in Troy for twenty years now.
Helena in the events after those narrated in the Iliad
Coritus was a son that Paris had had with his previous wife: the nymph Oenone. Corito fell in love with Helena and it was said that it was a reciprocated love. When Paris discovered them, he killed Corito. Some mythographers, on the other hand, pointed out that Corito was one of the children of Helena and Paris.
In the course of the war, Paris was killed and Helen was forced to remarry Deiphobus, another of Priam's sons. For this reason, another son of Priam, Helenus, who was in love with Helen, left Troy. Since, like his sister Cassandra, he had the gift of divination and Calchas, a diviner of the Greeks, knew that he knew the oracles that protected the city, Odysseus captured him, took him to the camp and forced him to reveal those oracles..
Helen recognized Odysseus when he entered Troy as a spy disguised as a beggar, but she did not denounce him. The Achaeans, to enter Troy, built a wooden horse and a handful of outstanding warriors hid inside it. The Trojans, ignorant of the horse's contents, brought it into their city. Before the warriors got off the horse, the cunning Helen, aware of the Achaeans' plan, circled around her several times accompanied by Deiphobus, imitating the voices of the wives of the Greek warriors. The Achaeans were about to respond from inside the horse and give themselves away.
In some versions, Helen was the one who waved a torch from her room during the night, which was the signal the Achaeans were waiting for: that the gates of Troy were about to be opened by the men who had dismounted.
The war ended with the victory of the Achaean coalition. Menelaus killed Deiphobo and was about to kill Helen as well, but he was dazzled and fell in love again with her beauty and forgave her. Some ancient authors say that it was Helen herself who killed Deiphobus and that Menelaus forgave Helen when he saw her bare breasts. After a rough return trip in which they had to spend a long time in Egypt, both returned to Sparta. In Attica there is an island that was called the Island of Helen, because it was believed that he had landed there during his return to Hellas. After this return, Helen and Menelaus were the parents of Nicostratus, according to some authors.
Helen in the Odyssey
Helena appears as a character in the Odyssey, mainly in Canto IV. On the journey made in search of news about his father, Odysseus, Telemachus arrives in Sparta, where he meets Helena and Menelaus, who have reigned there again.
Homer states categorically that Helena had his daughter Hermione as her only descendant.
Helen plays hostess with her husband and reminisces about some of the events that occurred in the Trojan War.
Death or divinization
There are multiple versions of Helena's final fate. In some of them, Helena was deified and sent to the Champs Elysées or to the island of Leuce, in the company of Menelaus. There was even a tradition that mentioned that she was in Leuce, but married to Achilles.It was said that Achilles and Helena had a son there who had wings: Euphorion.
The tragedy Orestes, a work by Euripides, presented a variant of this version, in which Orestes and his friend Pylades had decided to kill Helen because they considered her the cause of their ills, since Orestes and his sister Electra had been sentenced to death for having killed their mother Clytemnestra. But they could not fulfill their purpose, because Helen was saved and deified by Apollo.
Others, however, insisted that the tombs of Helen and Menelaus were in the temple of Menelaus at Therapne, near Sparta. Helen was worshiped there.
In a Rhodian version, Polyxo, wife of the Achaean warlord Tlepolemus, pretended to welcome Helen to Rhodes during her exile from Sparta by the sons of Menelaus. Polixo took revenge for the death of her husband: after disguising her servants as Erinyes to torment her banished, he made Helena end up hanging herself by her. For this reason, the Rhodians have a sanctuary of Helen Dendritide on their island. his wife and had put the best ornaments on the most beautiful maid. Polyxo and the Rhodians, mistaking her identity, stoned and burned her, believing that she was Helena.
Consorts and offspring
- With Teseo:
- Ifigenia
- With Menelaus:
- Hermíone
- Nicostrate
- With Paris:
- Helena
- Choice
- Bunomo
- Agano
- Ideo
- Deifobo
- Achilles:
- Euphoration
Modern adaptations
- In the theatre play Fausto (1806), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dr. Fausto falls in love with the Greek beautiful to the point of sickness and about to die. To conquer it, Fausto calls for the assistance of Mephistopheles. Once together, Fausto and Helena procreate Euforion.
- In music, Helena has been represented in numerous operas:
- At Christoph Willibald Gluck's refurbishment opera Paride ed Elena (1770), the writer Ranieri de' Calzabigi narrates the love story between Helena and Paris.
- The legend of Helena was brought to the lyrics by Jacques Offenbach in his opera Belle Hélène (1864).
- Die ägyptische Helena (1928) was an opera with music by Richard Strauss and libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
- In the cinema, Helena has been represented in numerous films and series:
- In Helena de Troya (1956), led by Robert Wise, was interpreted by Rossana Podestà.
- In The Adventures of Ulysses (1969), miniserie directed by Franco Rossi, was interpreted by Scilla Gabel.
- In The Trojans (1971), led by Michael Cacoyannis, was interpreted by Irene Papas.
- In the mini TV series on the character, called Helena de Troya (2003), was interpreted by Sienna Guillory.
- In Troy (2004), led by Wolfgang Petersen, was interpreted by Diane Kruger.
- In the Netflix miniserie Troy: The Fall of a City (2018), Helena's character is played by Bella Dayne.
- In the episode Helena's huntingof the series DC Legends Of TomorrowIt's interpreted by Bar Paly.
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