Helen of Troy (111 page)
I bent my head over my knees, crying. “No. You have seen it. Troy is gone, swept away.”
“And now begins to live,” he said. “I tell you, the story of Troy will live long beyond these pitiful, fallen stones.”
“So many cities, so many kingdoms, have risen, fallen. Troy is just another.”
“I cannot believe that the extraordinary deeds and persons of Achilles, Hector, Paris, and you will disappear. These were different than all those others. Different from Theseus and the Minotaur, different from Jason and his Argonauts, beyond the destruction of Andromache’s city of Thebes.”
I smiled. At that moment I felt so much wiser than he. “Dear friend,” I said, “they all felt thus-felt they, and their valiant deeds, could never vanish.”
He had one thing left to show me. He did not tell me what it was until we mounted the steps of a small marble temple modestly hidden behind a grove of sacred plane trees, well out of sight of the ugly mound of dead Troy.
“What is this?” I asked.
“I think it is what you have been seeking,” he said. “Are you ready to behold it?”
I looked into his gold-flecked eyes, squinting now with the lowering sun. “You are always full of riddles,” I said. “Can you not speak plain for once?”
“Ah, that would spoil it,” he said. “Why should we alter what has been our way since the beginning?”
“Because this is the end?”
“Ends should not differ from beginnings,” he said. “To do so would impugn the truth of one or the other. We must keep our integrity.” He turned me toward the pillars. “Look upon it.”
I left him and slowly mounted the steps. It was a small shrine, such as dotted the Greek countryside. But I could feel my heart beating faster. This was no ordinary shrine, or he would not have brought me to it.
There were pedestals with objects displayed upon them, and offerings beneath. They were all from the Trojan War, things I had not thought to see again. There was a knife of Hector’s, a sandal of Polites, a comb of Troilus. And then, the largest of all, a shrine dedicated to Paris.
It held his armor! His armor, which I had allowed to be awarded at his funeral games and which I had lamented as lost ever since. It was all there-his helmet, his breast plate, his sword. With a cry, I rushed toward it, touched them.
“I knew you would want to know they were safe,” Gelanor said.
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “I berated myself for letting them pass into other hands,” I said. “But at the time, my grief blinded me.”
“Whoever took them honored them,” he said. “That is why I wanted you to see them.” He stepped back. “I will leave you alone with them.” He touched my arm. “Farewell.”
“What do you mean?”
Sadly, he shook his head. “Our brief reunion was all I dared ask. I knew it could not last, if I was honest and showed you what I must.”
“I still do not know what you mean,” I told him.
“You will,” he said. He retreated into the shadows.
I approached the pedestal, boldly took and clutched the tarnished bronze helmet in my arms. If not I, then who?
Dearest helmet, which had protected the head of Paris, I thought as I clasped it. Paris, so long ago. Would he even recognize me now? He had died a young and vibrant man. I was now an aged woman.
Yet I was near him. The nearest I could get to him.
Paris, I have come all
this way to honor you,
I told him.
I left Sparta once again and sailed to Troy.
It was not a voyage of love and excitement as ours was, but it brought me here.
And here I am, as near to you as I can come in this mortal life, a life that still
binds me.
I sat for a long time, recalling with all my might our time together, calling him forth.
If you are not here, I know not where to seek you.
I sat for what seemed an eternity before I set down the helmet.
I thought the
helmet was lost to me. I gave it away after your death and bitterly bemoaned
my folly. But now I have it. Some things can be recovered. Some things can be
restored.
But, Paris, some lost things we seek forever. I seek you. Come to me. If you are
not here, where are you?
I sat and waited. I was docile in the hands of the gods, the gods I had so often railed against.
I closed my eyes. I could feel the sun, pouring into the shrine, upon their lids. That was beguiling, luring. It said,
There is nothing but this. Only the sun,
shining this day. Why seek anything else? Why look beyond this?
Paris. Paris. Are you still here, in any semblance? Even as a ghost, a shade, I
will welcome you. I want nothing else!
I squeezed my eyes shut. All was silence. And then I felt a gentle touch on my fingers.
“Do not look,” a dear voice said. “Do not open your eyes.”
They started to flutter open. A sweet touch held my eyelids down. “I told you, do not open them.” There was a brush along my neck, my cheek. “Ah, to touch you again.”
“Do not torture me,” I said. “Let me look full upon you.” I opened my eyes.
Then all fell away, and I saw Paris standing before me. Paris in all his glory-young, handsome, and glowing.
Where have you been all these years . . .
what has happened since . . . and where are we going?
All surged through my earthly mind. And none could be answered.
“Helen,” he said, taking my hand.
“Paris, I come,” I answered.
One of my treasured possessions is an inscribed copy of Jack Lindsay’s
Helen of
Troy
in which he confides to his friend, “After the
Cleopatra
was out, Constable suggested another book on a famous ancient heroine, but none of them had the fame of Cleopatra. At last they themselves suggested Helen, apparently unaware that she wasn’t a historical character in the same sense as Cleopatra was. But I was delighted at the theme and never raised this point.” Like Mr. Lindsay, I, too, had come to Helen of Troy from Cleopatra, and I was under the mistaken impression that she was almost equally historical. Not so. We have no evidential corroboration that there ever existed a Helen of Troy-nor an Agamemnon, nor a Menelaus, nor an Achilles, nor a Paris. Among scholars, there are fierce disputes about Homer, and whether, even if there is an actual site of a historical Troy, there ever took place anything we can truly call the Trojan War.
Like Camelot, Troy is steeped in magic. It may well have its grounding in real people, but the Troy we “know” is mythological. Perhaps there really was an Arthur who was a minor Celtic chieftain in the waning days of Roman Britain, and perhaps there really was a nasty little trade war between a few proto-Greeks and a small fortified city in Asia Minor. But that is not really what the Trojan War is all about in our minds. The grandeur of the Trojan War has come to represent warfare in all its facets-both the glory and the hideous destruction. It acts as a paradigm for all wars.
So, even though Helen is not real in the usual sense of the word, still there were boundaries to be honored. The time period in which she lived and the Trojan War took place is the time of the Mycenaean civilization in the Peloponnese in Greece. We have citadels, palaces, and bridges still standing from that time, and we also have artifacts, so it is possible to locate the characters in a real setting. We have their character descriptions from not only Homer but the wider writings covering the Trojan War. (Homer’s
Iliad
only describes seven weeks of the war in its tenth year, while his
Odyssey
briefly summarizes the fall of Troy.) Other writings, known as the Epic Cycle, fill out the entire story, from the Judgment of Paris, when he made the fateful choice that led him to Helen, all the way through the fate of the heroes of the war many years later. The
Aeneid
has vivid details about the fall of Troy, and some Greek lyric poetry also supplies information.
Quintus Smyrnaeus (Quintus of Smyrna), writing in the fourth century
A.D
., picks up where the
Iliad
ends, with the death of Hector through the departure of the Greeks in his
Posthomerica,
also known as
The Fall of Troy.
Later medieval romance writers added other episodes, and finally Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Marlowe all wrote their own Trojan stories, culminating in the famous line: “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” Thus the ultimate description of Helen was written not by an ancient Greek who had seen her face, but by an Elizabethan poet, Marlowe, who only imagined it.
For people who may not ever have existed, the characters in the Trojan War have exceptionally colorful and unforgettable personalities. That is why they “feel” so real, and why we want so badly for them to be real. They speak directly to us and we believe in them. Thus I have chosen to act as though they are all real and truly lived, and we have just lost the official identity papers confirming this. Perhaps one day we will find them. I hope so, as they seem so alive.
I grounded the characters in their proper historical setting and tried to be as accurate as possible. For example, Helen was the daughter of the king and queen of Sparta, and the crown passed through the woman, so it was Helen who bestowed the throne on Menelaus. Sparta at that time was not “Spartan” in our sense of the word, but quite the opposite-literature and music flourished there. Homer only has one instance of writing in the
Iliad,
and although there were palace inventories in very early Greek script, Linear B, no letters from that time have ever been discovered, so unless absolutely necessary-or part of the legend, as in Paris writing his name in wine on a table-my characters do not write letters. The oracle at Delphi may not have been fully developed in Homer’s time (although characters in the Trojan saga do visit it), but the Herophile Sibyl, who foretold the Trojan War, was certainly there at the time. Homer does not have horseback riders, but we know acrobats performed on horseback, and Quintus of Smyrna has an episode involving mounted riders, which I kept. That Greek symbol, the Olympic Games, did not exist yet, but local athletic contests were already popular and important.
Besides the historical reality of the characters, two other problems rear their heads in dealing with this story. The first has to do with the mythology, and the second with tone and voice. Both are stumbling blocks for the modern author and reader.
To embrace the mythology or to leave it out? In the original telling of the tale, the gods were major characters as much as the humans were. There were two levels of drama-the humans, who were more or less playthings of the gods, and the gods looking down on them and enacting their own power struggles through their hapless puppets. A squabble between three goddesses over who was the most beautiful led to the love affair of Helen and Paris. Certain gods lined up on either side in the Trojan War, with Athena, Hera, and Poseidon on the Greek side and Apollo, Aphrodite, and Ares on the Trojan side. In addition to that, many of the humans had a god for a parent-Achilles, Aeneas, Helen-so that their parents became involved in their protection. What can one do with this? Eliminating the gods completely makes the motivations collapse, but to us the gods bickering and tricking one another is cartoonish and detracts from the seriousness of the story.
I chose to leave the gods in on an individual level, but not depict what was happening on Mount Olympus. For one thing, since the story is told from Helen’s viewpoint, she would not be privy to that. But in the modern world people still have individual encounters with their gods, still pray to them and seek direction from them, and often feel their presence. I also chose to leave intact the idea of having a god for a parent. Thus, Helen is the daughter of Zeus, who came to her mother in the form of a swan, but she did not hatch from an egg. After all, these people believed in such parentage. This was true even as late as the time of Alexander the Great: the oracle at Siwa revealed to him that he was the son of Amun, and he embraced it and believed it.
The tone in telling this story is another question. For such high matters it would seem that a heroic tone is needed, but again, that can seem comical to us now. On the other hand, the modern use of the vernacular, in an attempt to make the characters more accessible, diminishes the story. It somehow doesn’t feel right. Being mythological, they should be a bit more lofty. So I have tried to keep the speech and language dignified and a bit “other” without sounding pompous.
I do take the liberty of using terms a modern person can recognize, such as “the Greeks” rather than “the Achaeans” or “the Danaans,” to avoid confusion and obscurity. Also, two characters sometimes associated with the story are missing: Cressida and Theseus. Cressida seems to be a later invention of the medieval romantic tradition, not found in the original story, which does include Troilus. Theseus likewise is a later addition, as the Athenians, who did not participate in the Trojan War, that great defining moment in Greek identity, wanted to find some way to link their hero with it, and so invented an episode in which he kidnaps Helen. Neither was authentic-insofar as anything can be authentic in myth-so I omitted them.
Since this is not history as we know it, there are no exact time sequences in the sources. The classically accepted time for the Trojan War is ten years, but the elapsed time to cover all the added incidents, from delayed departure of the Greeks to fight in Troy, to the non-Homeric stories of what happened after the death of Hector, is longer than that. In one instance in the
Iliad
Helen says she has been in Troy for twenty years. The years inside the walls must have passed in an odd fashion, and we do not know what happened to fill them. So I have tried to capture that unusual passage of time and at the same time avoid specific dates whenever I can.
The same problem of history versus mythology applies to Priam and his family. Not all of his children are named; although Hecuba was said in one source to have borne nineteen sons (or children, in other sources), only ten sons are named. Priam’s fifty sons has a ring to it, and perhaps it was always symbolic rather than accurate. In any case, I stick only to the named ones.
If you would like to read more about Helen and the Trojan War, of course the place to start is with Homer, the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey.
There are many fine translations, some in poetry, some in prose. The Epic Cycle, which includes the
Cypria,
Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliu Persis, Nostoi,
and
Telegonia,
now exists only in summary, as the original writings have been lost. The summaries can be found in Apollodorus,
The Library,
Vol. II (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1996) and
Epic Cycle
(Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 2000), as well as Jonathan S. Burgess,
The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides also cover aspects and characters of the Trojan War and its aftermath.
Continuing the story, there is Quintus of Smyrna,
Posthomerica,
also available in many versions and translations, including
The War at Troy: What Homer
Didn’t Tell
(University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, reprinted 1996, Barnes & Noble Books).
Biographies exclusively of Helen herself are rare. The most complete, covering every aspect of her story, is Jack Lindsay,
Helen of Troy: Woman and Goddess
(London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1974). In addition, there are John Pollard,
Helen of Troy
(New York: Roy Publishers, 1965), and Ivor Brown,
Dark
Ladies
(London: Collins, 1957). Just published is Bettany Hughes,
Helen of Troy:
Goddess, Princess, Whore
(New York: Knopf, 2005).
Books on Homer and Troy include: Barry B. Powell,
Homer
(Oxford: Black-well publishers, 2004); J. V. Luce,
Celebrating Homer’s Landscapes
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); J. V. Luce,
Homer and the Heroic Age
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1975); Denys Page,
History and the Homeric Iliad
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959); Walter Leaf,
Troy: A Study in Homeric Geography
(London: Macmillan and Company, 1912; reprinted by Elibron Classics); Manfred O. Korfmann,
Troia/Wilusa
(Canakkale-Tubingen: Troia Foundation, 2005); and Michael Wood,
In Search of the Trojan War
(Oxford: British Broadcasting Company, 1985).
Background information about the period is found in
The Mycenaean World
(Athens: National Archaeological Museum, Ministry of Culture, 1988); M. I. Finley,
Early Greece: the Bronze and Archaic Age
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981); and
The World of Odysseus
(New York: New York Review of Books, 2002); John Chadwick,
The Mycenaean World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Nic Fields, illustrated by D. Spedaliere,
Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350-1200
B.C.
(Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2004); Nic Fields, illustrated by D. Spedaliere and S. Sulemsohn Spedaliere,
Troy, c. 1700-1250
B.C.
(Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2004); Margaret R. Scherer,
The Legends of Troy in Art and Literature
(London: Phaidon Press, 1964), excellent and inclusive; Susan Woodford,
The Trojan War in
Ancient Art
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Eric Shanower,
Age of
Bronze
(Orange, CA: Image Comics, 2001), an award-winning graphic novel in progress that will cover the entire Trojan War and eventually have seven volumes. His bibliography, time lines, and genealogies are exhaustive and accurate.
More specialized information can be found in Henry A. Ormerod,
Piracy
in the Ancient World
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Adrienne Mayor,
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and
Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World
(New York: Overlook Press, 2003); Marjorie & C. H. B. Quennell,
Everyday Things in Homeric Greece
(London: B. T. Batsford, 1929); Emile Mireaux,
Daily Life in the Time of Homer
(Toronto: Macmillan, 1959); Hellmut Baumann,
The Greek Plant World in Myth, Art and
Literature
(Portland, OR.: Timber Press, 1993); Paul Bentley Kern,
Ancient
Siege Warfare
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); and Stephen G. Miller,
Ancient Greek Athletics
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
Greek mythology, being so extensive, requires its own heading. As a child I read Margaret Evans Price’s
Enchantment Tales for Children
(New York: Rand McNally, 1926) and
A Child’s Book of Myths
(New York: Rand McNally, 1924) at bedtime. Their magnificent artwork made the world of Greek myth very much a part of my childhood imagination. Later sources include Robert Graves,
The
Greek Myths, Vol. I and II
(London: Penguin Books, 1990); Michael Grant,
Myths
of the Greeks and Romans
(New York: Meridian, 1995); and Barry B. Powell,
Classical
Myth
(New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2004). In the tangled world of the Greek gods, geneaological charts were both helpful and essential. One is Vanessa James,
The Genealogy of Greek Mythology
(New York: Gotham Books, 2003), and there is also a truly monumental seventy-page compilation, Harold Newman and John O. Newman,
A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
