Villain, Victim... Double Agent? The Many Lives of Helen of Troy pt 3

What happened to Helen after the Trojan War? Mary and Charlotte
pick up the trail of mythology’s most famous femme fatale as she
makes the long journey home from Troy. The big question at the end
of the previous episode was whether her husband Menelaus would kill
her as revenge for betraying him with Paris.  Needless to say,
her charms win out and, after a long stop in Egypt, where she
acquires some amazing accessories, they return home to Sparta. Just
in time for Telemachus, son of Odysseus, to arrive and ask them if
he knows where his father is? The Helen of The Odyssey Book 4 takes
us by surprise. She and Menelaus have settled into a rather humdrum
domestic companionship. And it raises the question: was all that
fighting and bloodshed worth it? For this?  Just as
fascinating as Homer’s surprise depiction is a theory embedded in
Greek texts that Helen never actually went to Troy, but sat out the
whole affair in relative safety in Egypt. The Helen people saw on
the ramparts of Troy was simply an eidolon - an image.  Mary
and Charlotte show how the true nature of Helen - villain, victim
or double agent? - provided an endless source of debate, and
opportunities for creative flights of fancy, in the ancient world.
Finally, they look at a few of the different accounts of her final
years.  @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube
@insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Mary and
Charlotte recommend some further reading: In addition to the
reading recommended for the earlier episodes: The whole tradition
of the phantom of Helen is discussed in detail by Norman Austin in
Helen of Troy and her Shameless Phantom (Cornell UP, 2018) Helen
and Menelaus in Sparta feature in Book 4 of the Odyssey (with a
detailed recent discussion by J Burgess in The Oxford Critical
Guide to Homer’s Odyssey, ed Christensen (Oxford UP, pb, 2025))
Herodotus’ account is at his Histories 2, 112 ff Euripides’ play
Helen is available online here
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0100
though it is a rather old-fashioned translation (be warned!) 
and there is a full performance (by students) on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MVyAZbRaK0 Emily Wilson translated
Euripides’ Helen as part of a recommended (if you want to go for
it) fat selection of Greek plays in recent translation: The Greek
Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Modern
Library Classics, pbck, 2017) edited by Mary Lefkowitz and James
Romm Instant Classics handmade by Vespucci Producer: Jonty
Claypole  Video Editor: Jak Ford Theme music: Casey Gibson
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