Helen

Who She Is

Helen is the woman for whom the Trojan War is fought: wife of Menelaus, taken to Troy by Paris, leaving behind her daughter, her kin, and her companions. In the poem she does not decide the course of the war, but everyone names her, and each names her in a different way: the victor's prize, a beauty to be returned, innocent, desire, a possession to be restored with a fine. The poem lets these descriptions coexist and gives Helen, in the few moments when she speaks, a voice that by turns condemns itself, refuses, and obeys. She weaves the war into a purple cloth, faces a goddess out of modesty, and in the end yields out of fear. At Hector's funeral she is the third to weep, after Andromache and Hecuba, and she says what she has lost with him.

Trajectory

In Book II, the war has Helen as its cause, spoken of by gods and elders. Hera sends Athena to stop the Achaeans who are fleeing, because she will not allow Priam and the Trojans to have the glory of Helen, for whose sake so many Achaeans died far from home. Nestor, rebuking the army, says that no one should go home before lying with the wife of a Trojan, to avenge the struggles and groans of Helen.

In Book III, Iris, in the form of Laodice, finds her weaving a double purple cloth in which she embroiders the many battles of the Trojans and Achaeans that they suffered on her account. She calls her to watch the duel and stirs in her a sweet longing for her first husband, her city, and her parents, and Helen goes out weeping, with two maidservants, as far as the Scaean Gates.

The elders of Troy, who no longer fight, say quietly that it is no wonder that so many suffer over a woman who looks like a goddess, but that she should go back in the ships. Priam calls her close, calls her a dear daughter, and says that the fault is not hers, it is the gods'. Helen answers that she would have preferred to die rather than follow his son, and that she wastes away in tears over it.

She identifies Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, and Idomeneus, and says she does not see her brothers Castor and Polydeuces, whom she supposes stayed away out of shame over her. The narrator adds that the earth already covered them, in Lacedaemon.

After Aphrodite rescues Paris from Menelaus and puts him in the bedroom, the goddess goes to summon Helen, in the form of an old woman who was carding wool for her in Sparta. Helen recognizes the goddess by her neck, her breast, and her eyes, and rebukes her: let her go and sit beside Paris herself. She refuses to prepare his bed, because the Trojan women will censure her. She yields when Aphrodite threatens to cast upon her the hatred of both sides, and goes in silence. In the room, she reproaches Paris for having come back from the battle, says he boasted he would surpass Menelaus, and sends him to challenge him again, and soon asks him not to. Paris invites her to bed.

In Book IV, Zeus, provoking Hera, says that if the gods prefer friendship, the city of Priam will remain inhabited and Menelaus will take Helen back. When Menelaus is wounded, Agamemnon fears that Helen will remain as a trophy for Priam.

In Book VI, Helen is at home with Paris, directing the maidservants, when Hector comes in. She calls herself a bitch, a schemer of evils, and wishes that a storm had carried her away on the day she was born. She shares the evil with the gods, who decreed it, and wishes she had a husband who would feel the reproach of men. She invites Hector to sit down, because his labor weighs heavily on account of her and Paris's madness. Hector refuses.

In Book VII, in the Trojan assembly, Antenor proposes returning Helen and the goods to the Atreidae, because they fight after breaking their oaths. Paris answers that the woman will not be returned and offers only the goods he brought from Argos. Later, among the Achaeans, Diomedes says that no one should accept the goods of Alexander or Helen.

In Book IX, Achilles asks Odysseus whether the war is not for Helen, and says that every good and sensible man loves his own wife, as he loved Briseis. In Book XI, the sons of Antimachus, fallen from their chariot, are killed by Agamemnon, because their father, who had received gold from Paris to prevent Helen's return, had proposed killing Menelaus when he came as ambassador. In Book XIII, Menelaus, facing the Trojan Pisander, says that the Trojans took his lawful wife and many goods, though they were welcomed by her, and that they never tire of combat.

In Book XIX, Achilles, speaking of his mourning for Patroclus, says that he fights the Trojans because of hateful Helen. In Book XXII, Hector imagines laying down his arms and offering Achilles Helen, the goods Paris carried to Troy, and half of what the city keeps, and discards the idea: Achilles would kill him naked, as one kills a woman.

In Book XXIV, Helen closes the third lament over Hector's body. She weeps for the dearest of her brothers-in-law: in twenty years he never spoke a harsh word to her, and he calmed with gentleness anyone who insulted her, whether brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, or the mother-in-law. She weeps for him and for herself, because in all of Troy no one else is kind to her now and all fear her. She says her husband is Alexander, of godlike appearance, who brought her to Troy, and she wishes she had died before.

Themes Embodied

Helen embodies War as both cause and question: she is the reason men kill one another, and each character deals with her in a different way, without the poem choosing between them. She embodies Honor and Reputation seen from the side of shame, in the weaving of the war, in the refusal of the bed, and in the brother-in-law who shielded her from the words of others. Fate and Free Will lies in the way Priam absolves her by the gods and in how she herself condemns herself, and Loss and Grief closes her presence in the lament of the last book.

Helen is the center of Book III, and each character names her in a particular way: for Iris, she is the victor's prize; for the elders, a beauty to be returned; for Priam, innocent; for Agamemnon, someone to be handed over with the goods and the fine; for Paris, desire; for herself, now a woman who ought to have died, now someone who refuses the goddess's command and then obeys it. The text does not choose, and the descriptions coexist. There are two readings of her refusal of the bed and of the obedience that comes right after: awareness of her own shame and the impossibility of resisting a goddess who loves her and can hate her. What the poem records is that, in the last book, the man who shielded her from the words of others is dead, and she says so aloud.

Relationships

• Paris: the husband who brought her to Troy, whom she censures and with whom she lies, and whom she names as husband in Book XXIV.
• Menelaus: the first husband, who claims his wife and goods.
• Priam: the father-in-law who calls her a dear daughter and absolves her by the gods.
• Hector: the brother-in-law who never spoke a harsh word to her and whom she mourns.
• Agamemnon: the chief who demands Helen, the goods, and a compensation.
• Achilles: the warrior who, in Book IX, cites Helen as the reason for the war.
• Hera: the goddess who, in Book II, invokes Helen's glory to stop the Achaeans from fleeing.
• Aphrodite: the goddess who forces her to go to Paris's bed and threatens to make her hated.