Index HELEN


the woman





The transformation of the character of Helen from divine to heroic figure is a typical example of the functioning of Greek mythology. As the character of Helen evolves over time, it is accompanied by references to features associated with the goddess of vegetation and to specific magical abilities.

In early depictions of her, she is portrayed between two male figures - her brothers Castor and Polydeuces, who hold her hands. The symbolism in these scenes could refer equally well to the theme of the nature goddess between her acolytes, given the relationship between the Dioskouroi and chthonic cults, or to the myth of the abduction and liberation of the heroine.

The mythological origins of Helen, as daughter of Zeus and Leda or Nemesis, also stem from the divine roots of her character, and the episode of her birth from an egg has parallels in the births of Aphrodite, Athena and Hephaistos, all of whom came into the world without childbirth. The Helen of the epic poems possesses characteristics closely associated with sorceresses. In addition to her supernatural beauty, which probably symbolises female beauty, Helen concocts magic potions, using the plant helenium to prepare nepenthe, a draught bringing forgetfulness of sorrow, which soothes the pain and grief of her fellow-diners.

Helen possesses the ability typical of sorceresses to change her voice and imitate those of women that she has never met, and she also knows everything that is not seen by the human eye. In this sense, although the fallen goddess could easily have been a symbol of the low esteem in which woman (as woman-possession and the booty of a foreign abductor) was held, she instead becomes an apple of strife, around whom a major war is woven: for her sake, the Achaean leaders came together in an alliance for the first time ever. Instead of an object to be bought, sold and exchanged, an object of bribery, she becomes the embodiment of an idea, the means by which a great national adventure is realised.

The five husbands that she took successively into her bed, Theseus, Menelaos, Paris, Deiphobos and Achilles were all chosen by her. She selected them from amongst the host of men competing to win her because they were, for her, the best. From the Homeric poems and the Cypria, which present her as the victim of her beauty, and bait in the net of the goddess of love, to Hesiod and Aeschylus, who attribute to her the responsibility for sacrilegious deeds, Helen retains the halo of a supernatural 'purity' that stems from her beauty, a beauty that exists on an ideal level. In Euripides, she is the dangerous woman, always the cause of trouble but never brought to judgement for her actions. Menelaos at her side is like a caricature-husband, the butt of men's derision, incapable of holding her, or even of taking revenge for her infidelity.

In the scenes in which Menelaos is depicted with sword in hand, a warrior in full panoply, fearsome and ready to execute the adulterer, Helen is portrayed completely invulnerable, ethereal, fearless, armed only with her beauty.

    'At first, methinks, there came to llium the spirit of unruffled calm, a delicate ornament of wealth, a darter of soft glances from the eye, love's flower.'

    Aeschylus, Agamemnon 736 -743

She is the idea of woman, the idea of beauty and of love. she has no particular characteristics, nor determined form. For she is the empty vessel, destined to be filled by the dreams and fantasies of each individual man, and of all men together.
    'With her deep bosom, the sun in her hair
    and her stature
    shadows and laughter everywhere
    on her shoulders, thighs, knees.'
       G. Seferis, Deck Diary III, Helen
Helen is desire
    'but you live in the sound of my song
    you are my longing, my yearning
    my hunger and all my thirst are you, Helen
    you are everything, Helen...'
       Aris Diktaios, Poems 1934-1965, Helen
Helen is prayer
    'The first drop of rain killed the summer
    Drenched all the words brought forth by starry nights
    All the words that had only one end
    You. '
       Odysseas Elytis, Prosanatolismoi, Helen
Vague, diffuse, Helen transforms herself into different forms, like a female Proteus, and is also given new shape by the desires and visions of men. Circle of nature, circle of life, Helen is the eternal circle, the divine made human and the human deified. A goddess who continually becomes a woman, only to become a goddess once more.

 

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© GREEK MINISTRY OF CULTURE - ICOM-NATIONAL HELLENIC COMMITTEE
From Medea to Sappho - Radical Women in Ancient Greece
Athens, National Archaeological Museum - 20 March - 30 June 1995