Villain, Victim... Double Agent? The Many Lives of Helen of Troy pt2

When Paris, a Trojan prince, abducted Helen of Sparta, the Greeks
came in hot pursuit and besieged Troy for ten years. But what was
Helen’s role in all this? Was she really kidnapped, or did she
elope? And whose side was she really on during the ensuing war?
Mary and Charlotte turn to a variety of ancient texts to explore
these questions.  In Homer’s The Iliad - the longest and
greatest account of the war - Helen isn’t even one of the main
characters. She watches Paris and Menelaus fight a duel in her
name, draws the admiration of old men, and spends some sexy time
with Paris. In The Odyssey, we find out about her role in the final
episode of the war - the Trojan Horse. Here she appears more of a
double agent: secretly communicating with Odysseus, but also
tormenting his soldiers.   In Virgil’s Aeneid, she is a
hate figure and a focus of murderous fantasies for the hero Aeneas.
Finally, Mary and Charlotte look at The Trojan Women by Euripides,
where Helen defends herself as a victim of the gods and her own
beauty. Menelaus plans to slaughter her, but we know by the end of
this play that is unlikely. What happens next is the focus of the
next episode! @instaclassicpod for Insta, TikTok and YouTube
@insta_classics for X email: instantclassicspod@gmail.com Mary and
Charlotte recommend some further reading: The key sections of the
Iliad that feature Helen are Book 3 (where she appears 4 times),
Book 6, 342 ff and towards the very end of Book 24. Helen herself
and Menelaus tell her story of the war in Odyssey Book 4, esp.
220ff. Aeneas’s outburst against Helen is in Virgil Aeneid Book
2,  567 ff.  Key modern works on Helen and her role in
myth and literature are: Ruby Blondell, Helen of Troy: Beauty,
Myth, Devastation (Oxford UP, pb, 2015) Bettany Hughes, Helen of
Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore (Pimlico, pb, 2013) Instant Classics
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