The Three Faces of Helen
Bronze Age Helen: The epitome of kharis, kallos, and kudos?
This brings us to my final installment of the Three Faces of Helen. The first is a Proto-Indo-European goddess, the second we know from Homer’s Iliad. The third might be a Mycenaean princess who married an Anatolian king or prince and inspired the second. But what connects the last two “Helens” to the divine one? Historians like Barry Strauss might entertain the notion of princess “eloping” (in their view) and thus sparking a war, but why would this act be the basis of such an enduring legend, and why would the woman involved become our most enduring icon (perhaps the world’s)?
We know that in the Bronze Age, a royal marriage gone wrong could lead to war but no one composed timeless epics about them, although in one example we know, the unfortunate princess almost certainly paid with her life. What makes Helen different?
References are indicated by brackets [1] but not linked (due to the current limitations of Substack when importing from MS Word files). Explanatory footnotes are linked. All works cited are listed at the end of the final installment.
Keywords: Helen of Troy, Helen of Sparta, Helen’s eidōlon, Helen in the Iliad, Helen in the Cyclic poems, the Sun Maiden, Bronze Age Anatolian Conflicts, Alaksandu of Wilusa.
Acknowledgements: I am deeply indebted to Cynthia Gralla of Royal Roads University for her kind assistance and support in the creation of this work, including help with research, excellent editorial suggestions and many insightful comments. I also received much-needed help and encouragement from Eric Luttrell of Texas A&M, which was indispensable to formulating my arguments and correcting my unfounded suppositions. They have saved me from many embarrassing errors. Those that remain are solely my own.
Bronze Age Helen: The epitome of kharis, kallos, and kudos?
Bronze Age princesses were judged on their kharis (grace, elegance and charm) and kallos (beauty). They were also expected to be in excellent shape; along with the crucial qualities of kharis and kallos, physical strength enhanced kudos (reputation in the eyes of one’s peers and the world at large); all these qualities were both treasures and treasured. We are keenly aware, in our image-obsessed society, of the value of these qualities and that some approach the ideal more closely than others. Those who do are celebrated and remembered. Therefore, it seems fair to ask: could there have been a woman so exceptional that she has never been forgotten – that is, a historical princess who inspired “Helen of Troy”?
In raising this possibility, it is not my purpose to argue for a “historical Helen” on such slim evidence. Rather my point, given the existence of such a woman has typically been denied, is to bring the possibility forward. Is that even worth considering? It is admittedly a romantic notion and romance is out of fashion these days, especially in historical inquiry. I make bold do so, because it appears to me to be the most plausible way of explaining the existence of divergent traditions about Helen and, in a sense, “reconcile” them. In that spirit, I would like return our attention to the marriage between a Mycenaean princess and an Anatolia royal house in the late Bronze Age and imagine a scene:
A King’s Palace, c. 1430 or 1290 BC...
The king is about to introduce his new queen to his people. He stands to one side, looking smug, for he knows what is about to happen to the multitude that crowd his vast throne room with its colorful frescoed walls and monumental columns. He’s been waiting for this moment, savoring it, for his queen is foreign-born, and while there have been rumors, along with speculation and gossip, his courtiers, his vassals, his lords and their wives, the visiting diplomats and their staffs, and those of his countrymen who were lucky enough to receive an invitation have not yet seen her. Only his immediate family have, and they’ve kept their lips sealed, as eager for this moment as he is.
A soft, musical clashing announces her, and all eyes turn toward the entrance from where the sound emanates. Her attendants appear first, a long procession of high-born women, entering in inverse order of rank. They wear skirts of fine wool or linen, one richly decorated layer upon another, dyed indigo, taupe, black and dark red. Linen stretched to the point of being filmy wraps their legs. Their torsos are encased in formfitting corset-like bodices with tight half-sleeves, edged with scarlet braid, fastened tightly just below the solar plexus and cinched at the waist to emphasize the swell of their generous hips. Their dark hair is oiled and done up with combs in elaborate coiffures that allow scented curls to brush their shoulders. The more exalted wear strings of carnelian or carved lapis beads. Yellow tassels sway gently as they walk. They are bare-breasted and proud, for they represent the pride of womanhood of from his new wife’s former home – but not too proud, as they know full well who follows them.
She enters the throne room, their queen, and ascends a cedarwood dais behind the great hearth, standing not by her husband, but by herself, her women in a semicircle on the brightly painted floor before her. Tall and regal, she is dressed in a long gown of the finest oiled linen that shimmers in the light slanting down from the opening in the ceiling. She is without all the heavy layers, so nothing weighs her down or distracts from the graceful lines of her lithe figure. Her gown has sleeves that end at the elbow and is bordered with gold, crimson and royal purple, parted at the front to reveal her saffron underdress. Ropes of amber beads circle her long elegant neck and drape across her upper chest; bracelets of gold twine around her slim wrists and up her sleek forearms.
Gold everywhere adorns her. Matching gold brooches fasten the garment at her shoulders. Gold beads and the thin gold disks that lent their music to her movements are sown with abandon to her skirts and her bodice, gleaming along with the glow of amber. Her pale skin has been rubbed down with delicately scented oil of iris mixed with rose petals so that it has the luster of pearls, and all the gold and amber she wears casts light up her arms and onto her face and chest, giving her flesh the hue of honey fresh from the comb.
Like her attendants, her full breasts are bare; so much whiter than milk, as pink as the dawn, tipped with nipples as tempting as ripe strawberries, and she stands proudly, even defiantly, precisely aware of the effect her gorgeous chest has on all who can catch even a tantalizing glimpse of it.
But more than even this, it is her hair that has the crowd mesmerized. Curls and tendrils frame her high forehead and noble features, kept in place by a jeweled headband, while glossy waves cascade down her back and – like everything about her – it is gold. Not the soft gold of her many amber necklaces or even the bright gleam of her numerous adornments, but a gold that catches the light (she knew exactly where to stand) and blazes like the sun.
Like the Sun…
And all who see her stare transfixed, with one thought in their dazed minds and one phrase sighing past their parted lips.
The Sun. She is the Sun.
Our queen, this beautiful radiant queen, from the land across the “wine-dark” sea, surveys her new subjects with intelligent (and shrewd) kohl-rimmed eyes that are as blue as a clear summer sky at noon, or perhaps the pale blue of ice that forms over clear water in midwinter, or even the deep turquoise of the Aegean that laps at the shores of her former home, and smiles because she knows in this moment she holds the whole throng in her hand like a puppy.1 What they are thinking is written plain as day on their rapt faces.
She is the Sun Maiden. She is Helen…
Lest I be accused of lavishing details on my presumptive Helen, to include her partial nudity, allow me to say I have no less authorities than Ovid and Homer on my side, with frescoes to back me up. It is Ovid who rhapsodized about her “breasts so much whiter than snow or milk,” nor did he stop there. “Pink as dawn” is supplied by the essay Le Sein d’Helene by Maurice des Ombiaux – he also added the strawberries line – and Homer speaks of her as “sashed and lovely in all her radiance, her long robes” (Il.3.273). Historically, we know from Bronze Age frescoes and other sources that blond or red hair was associated with divinity, while frescoes at Pylos and a sculpture of a woman’s head found at Mycenae provide details of how Mycenaean women were made up and dressed, and one especially notable fresco from the fifteenth-century Minoan-style palace at Thebes – the very place and time that concerns us – depicts a procession of bare-breasted women striding along as part of some important function, providing a model for the appearance and behavior of Helen’s attendants. I am indebted to Hughes and Strauss for other details of Helen’s appearance.
But the significance, for our purposes here, is her name. My notional queen is not named Helen. Whoever she was, we have no idea what her name might have been and neither did Homer. All that was passed down through the ages was her quality – the outstanding nature that defined her – the way we use the name of an iconic person to describe someone we feel merits the comparison.
Therefore, this queen is not named Helen, she is a Helen or the Helen – the Sun Maiden, known from time immemorial for marital strife. From this viewpoint, she could not simply have gotten married; she had to run off and she had to run off with her husband’s treasure (inspired by a memory that significant wealth was at stake?), starting a catastrophic war; a war worthy of a goddess – or the kalon kakon – that ended an age.
Conclusion
Thus, we have two traditions: one based on Helen as a goddess and one based on Helen as a queen. The Iliad primarily follows the latter, presenting us with a legendary Helen; the Greek lyric tradition and Cyclic poems follow the former. Although the poems of the Cyclic poems did not survive, their perspective became dominant and a prosaic marriage, along with its consequences, was buried – lost and gone forever, one might say.
That may not be all we have lost. To answer the question I posed at the beginning, I believe we long ago created our own eidōlon of Helen, and it has been obscuring our view of her ever since. For there are three faces of Helen: Helen the goddess, Helen of the Iliad and, perhaps, Helen the historical queen. The one we know best, who has persisted undimmed through the ages, is Helen the goddess. The Iliadic Helen and the historical queen, if she existed, have been almost completely eclipsed by the glare of their divine sister. The “spell” cast by the divine Helen has also affected how the Iliad is interpreted (even translated), then and now. I would be the last to deny Helen any of her power, but I could wish that the Iliadic Helen and her possible historical counterpart were more illuminated by their illustrious sister than hidden by her. They all deserve their place in the sun (so to speak).
So what name should we give her? Popularly, she is known as Helen of Troy not because of her origins, but because of the war fought there in her name. From the Iliad, she is known as Helen of Sparta, and as a goddess she was worshipped there. As a historical queen, maybe we should call her Helen of Thebes, or perhaps Aššuwa. In the end, it matters little. What we call her does not change the story – or the history – in any essential way. For in the final analysis, Helen belongs to everyone.
And no one.
Whether we call this queen Helen of Troy, Helen of Sparta or even Helen of Thebes, the hold she has on us is undeniable. For the past 2,500 years, she has polarized our opinions of her as only a powerful, complex, intelligent and quintessentially beautiful woman can. We should listen to Homer when he says she was not at fault for the war; she’s been given more than enough undeserved grief over it.
Not that I think she would care (though all the fuss might amuse her a bit) because more than anything else, she is enduring. She has been with us in one form or another for roughly seven thousand years, and even today, when Achilles is probably known more for his heel or as the name of a tendon that plagues sports figures, Trojan is associated with a college football team, a prophylactic and malware, and “hector” is a verb meaning to harass or bully, people still know Helen.
I suspect they always will.
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Footnotes
Strauss quotes an appropriate Hittite proverb: “Love runs after her like puppies” (Strauss 2006, 13).