Free Helen of Troy by Bettany Hughes Page A

matched with great punishments by the gods.’ 13 The Judaeo-Christian tradition is often blamed for making sex a woman’s problem. But Helen is easily Eve’s equal. As one scholar has put it, ‘clustered about her [Helen] are all the problems which men perceive about female sexuality, i.e. how their desire for women turns into a problem to be blamed on women’. 14 Helen’s culpability is quickly magnified. By telling Helen’s story, menmanage to make sex the root of evil, and to identify women as the source of both.
    A piece of curved, painted wood from the 16th century AD , also on display in the Louvre, encapsulates the situation perfectly. Paris and Helen are placed dead centre. The focus of attention, Helen has one hand to her head in a gesture of despair. Her hair waves but otherwise she and Paris seem frozen – the still centre of a seething storm, for around them, piled one on another in a monstrous, heaving, sweaty crush, are the Greek and Trojan armies. Everywhere is hate, fear, distress and cruelty. Helen and her selfish infidelity are central and primordial.
    Sex is powerful. This the ancients knew. In the
Iliad
, Homer writes a steamy passage about the goddess Hera preparing to seduce her husband Zeus. The goddess needs to distract Zeus’ attention from the battle down below to give her favourites of the moment, the Argives, a better chance of victory. Helen is never mentioned, but the message is clear – this is what women do to manipulate men, this is how they use love as a weapon. And as one reads, aware that the larger narrative here is the love affair between Paris and the Queen of Sparta, one immediately pictures not Hera, but Helen, preparing herself in her quarters for her guest Paris – as he scents her perfume and paces outside, up and down, up and down, in his chambers at the Spartan palace.
    The ambrosia first. Hera cleansed her enticing body of any blemish, then she applied a deep olive rub
,
the breath-taking, redolent oil she kept beside her … one stir of the scent in the bronze-floored halls of Zeus and a perfumed cloud would drift from heaven down to earth. Kneading her skin with this to a soft glow and combing her hair
,
she twisted her braids with expert hands, and sleek, luxurious
,
shining down from her deathless head they fell, cascading.
    … and into her earlobes
,
neatly pierced, she quickly looped her earrings
,
ripe mulberry-clusters dangling in triple drops and the silver glints they cast could catch the heart.
15
    That night, when Paris and Helen were left alone in the Spartan citadel and the nightjars called, as the palace slept, who, in fact, hovered at whosedoorway? Who made the first move? In the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
Helen is the subject of both blame and praise, so who stole whom?
    A host of ancient authors are very clear and articulate on the matter – and given that inventory of violent seductions imagined by latter-day artists, their opinion is perhaps a little surprising. Paris certainly did not have the upper hand. According to Homer, once Helen has teamed up with the Trojan prince, she is never described as his whore or sex-slave, not even as his enthralled bride – but only as his legitimate, equal partner. She is first Menelaus’ ‘
parakoitis
’ 16 and then Paris’ ‘
akoitis
’ 17 – words which translate as bedmate, spouse or wife. Both the Spartan king and the Trojan prince are described as her ‘
posis
’, her consort. 18 Helen is never given the title ‘
damar
’ – subservient wife. 19
    The fact that Helen is to be seen across the art galleries of Europe portrayed as a victim is a later manifestation of a rape fantasy. As far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, Helen, instructed by the goddess of sexual love, Aphrodite, made herself irresistible to Paris. The title of this chapter should in fact read
Helena Alexandrum rapuit
. 20

19
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES IS MORE DEADLY THAN THE MALE

    Some an army of horsemen, some an army on foot