Who Was Helen of Troy?

Helen is a figure from Greek myth -- a daughter of Zeus with a mortal woman, and said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. Learn more about her (and how she perhaps inadvertently started the Trojan War) in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/helen-of-troy.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Voblabahm.
Here when a person is known for having the face
that launched a thousand ships, they're bound to peak plenty
of interest and curiosity. Helen of Troy but also known
as Helene or Helen of Sparta, is a character in

(00:25):
Homer's epic poem the Iliad Aware. She's described as the
most beautiful woman in Greece, perhaps the most beautiful woman
in the world. She's also been blamed for sparking the bloody,
decade long Trojan War. But there's much more to Helen
than many realize, and her story is a piece of
the interconnected puzzle that is Greek mythology. Like many figures

(00:50):
from Greek myth, Helen's family life is a little complicated.
For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Spoke via email with Richard P. Martin, the Anthony and
Isabelle Robachek, professor in classics at Stanford University. He said,
the most important part of Helen's bio, aside from the
fact that she was the immediate reason for the Trojan

(01:11):
War being fought, is that she's the daughter of the
chief god Zeus. Her mother was a mortal Letta, who
was married to Tyndarius of Sparta. According to the myth, Zeus,
a master of disguise, took on the form of a
swan to seduce more possibly assault Letta. She went back

(01:31):
to her husband that night and later produced eggs, resulting
in four children, the girls Helen and Clytemnestra, and the
boys Castor and Polydeuces. He's better known by his Latin
name Pollix. Helen and Castor were descended from Zeus, and
Clydemnestra and Polyx were children of Tendarius. You may be

(01:52):
familiar with Castor and Pollox from the myth that they
shared Castor's immortality and became or perhaps inspired the constellation
gem meaning the twins. Meanwhile, Helen and Clytemnestra grew up
and married a pair of brothers, Menelaus and Agamemnon, respectively.
But Helen's history as an important mythological figure also runs deep.

(02:16):
Martin said Helen was worshiped as a goddess in Sparta
in historical times. She was especially associated with springs of
water and trees, rituals carried out by girls nearing the
age of marriage were dedicated to her, and Helen is
implicated somehow in the start of the Trojan War, the
legendary Bronze Age conflict between the early Greeks and the

(02:39):
people of Troy on the other side of the Aegean Sea.
Experts still debate which portions of the war were based
in reality and which were fabricated by creatives like Homer
and Virgil. The popular version of the story goes something
like this. Martin explained, Helen was the most beautiful woman
in Greece and had many suitors. Her father made them

(03:01):
all swear that they would come to the aid of
whichever suitor one Helen's hand in marriage should anything happen
to her. He chose Menalaus to be her husband. The
pair lived in Sparta and had a daughter, Hermione. While
Helen and Menelaus started their domestic life together, a young
prince of Troy named Paris was asked to judge a

(03:22):
beauty contest among the goddesses Harah, who is Zeus's wife,
and Athena and Aphrodite, who are often both listed as
Zeus's daughters, though not by Harah. At Zeus got around
anyway back to the contest ant. The three goddesses, who
all offered Paris bribes, Martin said, each promised success in

(03:45):
her own special field. Harah offered rule as a king,
Athena offered wisdom, and Aphrodite dangled Helen as a bribe,
And of course, Paris proceeded to judge the sex goddess
to be the fairest. When Paris went to visit Menelaus,
he seduced or in some versions, abducted Helen and sailed
back to Troy. This prompted the leading warriors of Greece

(04:08):
to faithfully join Menelaus and Agamemnon in taking Helen back
from Paris. Martin said, but he would not let her go,
and so a ten year siege of Troy by the
Greeks began, ending only with the ruse of the Trojan
horse that enabled the Greek fighters to secretly enter the
citadel and set it aflame. Menelaus finally got his wife

(04:29):
back when the Greeks conquered the city. As far as
that famous line about her face launching a thousand ships,
it refers to the Greek fleet that went in pursuit
of Helen, and it's the line from Christopher Marlow's play
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, published in sixteen oh four.
But okay, how did Helen come to be defined by

(04:51):
a contemporary of Shakespeare? Martin explained the main character, Faustus,
wants power at all costs and makes a deal with
an associate of the devil that he will sell his
soul provided he's given the service of evil spirits for
twenty four hours, so he gets the ability to summon
spirits of the long dead, the most impressive being Helen

(05:12):
of Troy, whom he takes as a lover. The version
of Helen's story at the center of Homer's work from
around six hundred and fifty BCE is considered the most
popular depiction of her narrative, but it's certainly not the
only depiction. The Iliad itself is based in the oral
tradition of earlier Indo European epics, and there's a version

(05:35):
from one hundred years after Homer that's different. It involves
the God sending a sort of ghostly clone or double
of Helen off to Troy and allowing the real Helen
to weigh out the war in Egypt. That version was
given a comedic twist another century later on stage in Athens,
and the events of the Iliad aren't even the first

(05:56):
story about Helen being abducted. Another myth has thesis is
stealing her away when she was younger. Really, Helen's story
has a kind of universal appeal that echoes through time,
perhaps unfortunately not because of her as a character. Helen
is presented sometimes as contemplative and regretful, sometimes as shallow

(06:17):
and fickle, but rather because of the trope surrounding her.
The line that struck me as I was writing this
is sorry, but your princess is in another castle. Martin said.
The story of Helen has deep connections with the folk
tale plot that is found all of the world, starting
in ancient Egypt, the Beautiful Wife abducted. There is a

(06:41):
terrific recent book on the many versions written by Lowell Edmunds,
Stealing Helen the myth of the abducted wife in comparative perspective.
Today's episode is based on the article The Curse of Beauty,
How Helen of Troy was blamed for sparking the Trojan
War on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Michelle Constantinofsky Brain

(07:03):
Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks
dot com and is produced by Tyler Klang. But four
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