We know the beginning; Paris seduces Helen and she returns with him to Troy. One thing led to another, and the situation deteriorates into an all-out war between Troy and Greece. After ten long years of battle, Greece is victorious, Troy is razed to the ground, and the Greeks go home to celebrate. Good story, but it leaves out a key detail. What befell the woman who started it all? Whatever happened to Helen of Troy?
There are different versions of the story. In one narrative, Helen and Menelaus were reunited, and together they sailed back to Sparta where Helen was made queen. A different account claims that Menelaus forced Helen to come back with him to Greece, where she was kept locked in a cage for the rest of her life.1
One account even goes so far as to say that Helen became immortal after the war. This version claims that Helen went back with Menelaus to Greece. When Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, was on trial for murdering his mother and her lover Aegisthus, Orestes begged Menelaus to help him. When Orestes was denied help from Menelaus, Orestes attempted to murder Helen. Apollo rescued her and took her with him to heaven, saying, “Helen I will conduct to the mansion of Zeus; there men shall adore her, a goddess enthroned beside Hera and Hebe… There she…shall be worshipped for ever with wine outpoured.”2 This is a more fanciful interpretation of what likely happened, but it still provides an interesting story.
Another tale says that Helen and Menelaus were reunited after the war and left for Sparta. The trip was delayed because, according to the tale, the gods were angry at Helen for causing the war and caused their ship to be blown off course so that their arrival at Sparta was delayed by a few years.3 This narrative matches up with the account from Aeschylus which also claims that Menelaus was delayed in his arrival by a storm.
One thing these accounts all seem to have in common is that Menelaus and Helen may have reunited after the war was over. Whether they were on good terms or not is hard to determine because the stories are all different. According to the movie Troy, Menelaus was slain, therefore matching none of the above narratives. Since there are more accounts that Menelaus was alive, and Hollywood film writers do not always check their facts, it is likely that Menelaus did indeed survive the war, and also plausible that Helen and Menelaus at the very least saw each other at the end of the war. What really happened is lost to history, but since there are many different versions and none can be factually proven, the reader may choose their own version of the tale.
1http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/imageswomen/papers/hamiltonhelen/helenoftroy.html
2http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Helen.html (Apollo. Euripides, Orestes 1685)3http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Go-Hi/Helen-of-Troy.html
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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Well done, Kellsie! I'm glad you were able to learn more about Helen. I, for one, like the heavenly interpretation of the story!
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Thanks for researching Helen’s whereabouts after the war Kellsie! I was wondering what happened to Helen after the war was finished. I think the most fitting version is the one in which Helen and Menelaus are reunited and return to Greece but encounter obstacles sent by the gods along the journey home. I think it is ironic that Helen’s affair with Paris kindled the entire Trojan War, yet she seems to reap no serious repercussions for her actions. In two of those ideas she was almost rewarded for her actions. I mean in one case she became queen and in another account she was thought to have been immortalized! I also think it is funny that Helen and Menelaus were most likely reunited after the war in each account that you mentioned. I don’t know why Menelaus would want to take back a woman who was clearly not in love with him. I guess beauty was more important to him than true love.
ReplyDeleteMy jaw literally dropped when I read that Menelaus kept Helen in a cage in one version of the story! After all the fighting, bloodshed, and broken families over Helen you would think that Menelaus would prize her more. I definitely prefer the plotline in which Helen becomes a goddess. After so many years of frustrating war and being passed from mortal man to mortal man, Helen may finally be able to control her own fate. In one version the gods threw Helen's boat off track because they were angry at her for being the cause of the war. Helen was not at fault! I think the war could have been spurred on largely because the men wanted fame and glory, and fighting for a woman is just a reason for a war. The relationships between men and woman are definitely interesting in The Iliad.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting so many versions of what happened to Helen after the war. All of them are really interesting! Personally,I especially like the fancy version that Helen became an immortal. I feel sorry for the Helen in the version that Menelaus kept her in a cage. I'm kinda still wondering what Helen's life is like when she got back to Greece. Is she happy to be back? I double the Greek citizens would trade her nicely, since many people lost their lives in the war. How is it like between reunion of Menelaus and Helen? I would imagine there will be a lot of problems Menelaus and Helen to solve. But lets just go with the fancy ending that Helen became an immortal. I guess that's the beauty of an unknown ending, so we can assume the one we like the best as the ending of the story!
ReplyDeleteI found it very interesting that all accounts seem to point towards a reuniting between Menelaus and Helen, whether it was a forced reuniting or not. In The Iliad, Helen seemed a lot more willing to go back to Menelaus and Greece, so this reuniting would make some sense on Helen’s part. In her scene with Priam, there was almost a sense of longing to take back what she did, in running away with Paris. I also find the version interesting where Helen was made a goddess. Because of the division of the gods as to whether they support the Greeks or Trojans, this would have been a controversial version. After all the bloodshed that occurred partly on Helen’s behalf, the gods made her a goddess. This definitely shows that the gods had flaws, that they stirred up commotion when they should not have. I really enjoyed the research Kellsie, there were definitely some versions of the story that I would never have guessed on my own.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many stories of what happened to Helen after the war, no one will ever be able to tell what happened to her for certain! I also researched the outcome of Helen, and I found so many different accounts. There was a version where Polyxo sent her handmaids to hang Helen on a tree. And another version where Helen hung herself. I also found a version that said that after Achilles died in battle, he was said to live on the island of Leuke, where he was married to Helen! The versions go on and on, it would be impossible to fit them all on a blog! But, I seemed to have missed the version where Menelaus locked her in a cage! That sounds like a dumb thing to do after fighting for her for so long. However, I wouldn't expect Menelaus to forgive Helen so easily after being unfaithful to him. Whatever the case, I did enjoy the version where Helen was made into a goddess. It seems like that is the only place she belongs since the mortal world couldn't handle her beauty.
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