EPISODE 6 “HELEN OF SPARTA”

You are listening to Trojan War, the podcast, history's most awesome epic. This is episode number six in the series. Today's episode is titled Helen of Sparta. So welcome back to Trojan War, the podcast. This, of course, is episode number six, an episode titled Helen of Sparta. Now, if you recall back to episode number five in our ongoing serialized telling of the entire Trojan War epic, you'll remember that I rather cruelly left the episode hanging on a cliffhanger. Aphrodite had just instructed her son Eros, the magic little boy with the erotic arrows and his little bow, to release one of those erotic arrows directly into Helen of Sparta. Helen had been hit by the arrow and looked up, and there in front of her was the young, devastatingly gorgeous, 18-year-old Paris, Prince of Troy. A guest of her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta, and now, for all intents and purposes, King Menelaus of Sparta's brother. Well, the arrow hit Helen, and that's where I'd left things at the end of the preceding episode, and I'd apologized for the cliffhanger, but I told you there was an awful lot of story to cover, and so we'll pick up that story right now. But to pick up the story, I have to, again, hang on to the edge of that cliff for just a little wee bit longer, because what I need to do is take you back and ask the question about whether Helen really was that stunningly gorgeous. Aphrodite assured Paris that Helen was the most beautiful, sexy, desirable woman who'd ever walked the face of the earth, and Paris thought she was, but, well, you know how stories can grow with the telling over the centuries, and of course, now we refer to Helen, well, we quote Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan poet, and say, Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships, and all of those things, but was Helen really, really that beautiful, or was that just us storytellers getting a little bit carried away, and over the centuries, applying more and more silicone and airbrush to the poor girl? Well, to answer the question of whether Helen really was history's most beautiful, stunningly radiant, hot, gorgeous, sexy woman, I need to take you back 20 years. I'd like to introduce you to Helen's mother. Helen's mother was a woman named Leda, a Greek queen, and she was married to a minor Greek warlord, a king named Tindaris. Now, by all accounts, Leda was the most ravishingly, stunningly beautiful woman who had ever walked the face of the planet, well, up till that moment in time, and the evidence that we have, that Leda was as good-looking as the poets and the storytellers claimed her to be, was that that ultimate connoisseur of all things female, Zeus, king of the gods, had taken a personal interest in Leda. The story goes like this, and it's a kinky, twisted little story. It's not mine. It's well-documented down through the ages. Here's what happened. Zeus, king of the gods, master of the thunderbolt, lord of the universe, had woken up one morning, and, well, Zeus had had a little bit of an itch to scratch, so to speak. Now, Zeus was a particularly amorous god and woke up most mornings with an itch of a sort to scratch, and so Zeus had decided that what he would do is he'd do what he usually did, which was to tour over the heavens and the earth and look for some female to help him scratch said itch. Now, Zeus wasn't particular. Zeus was happy with human women, demigods, semi-gods, quasi-gods, or goddesses themselves. Zeus was fairly ecumenical in his tastes, so long as it was female and available to him, and as king of the gods and master of the universe, everything was necessarily available to him. So Zeus had gone cruising the heavens on that particular day, looking for the girlfriend du jour, so to speak, and, well, Zeus, when he cruised, well, he was an anthropomorphic god, and I've already talked to you about anthropomorphic gods and how all the Greek gods are anthropomorphic, so Zeus, of course, could morph into any shape he wanted, and most of the time Zeus liked to hang around in anthro or human form, but when he was cruising around the heavens looking for women, the form that Zeus found actually the most convenient and leisurely for the said task was to morph into the form of a giant white trumpeter swan. I guess the trumpeter swan you could think of as sort of the luxury Cadillac of cruising birds, and you could just see Zeus sort of tooling along there in his trumpeter swan form, sort of grazing over creation and checking out all the available women and deciding which one he wanted that particular day. Well, as Zeus cruised through the heavens in morphed trumpeter swan form, he spotted Leta, this beautiful, beautiful queen. Now, where he spotted Leta is open to an awful lot of debate, and we really don't know. Artists have thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of this because Leta has been painted in fields, by seasides, in forest dells and glades, and high on the battlements of palaces, so you can put Leta, this beautiful woman, wherever you want. It really doesn't matter to the story. What matters is that Zeus, king of the gods, saw Leta and was overwhelmed by sexual desire and passion to have this woman right away. So, so Zeus had flown down and summarily raped Leta. Now, kings of the gods in Greek mythology seem to get off the moral hook for their countless rapes, and so we're not going to worry about that end of the story. The thing about the rape which makes it particularly unique and disturbing inside of Zeus's countless and multiple visitations to women was that in Zeus's enthusiasm on this particular occasion, Zeus forgot one minor detail before he, well, raped Leta, and the detail Zeus forgot was to morph back into human form first. So, Leta was raped by a giant white trumpeter swan. Yes, that's what happened. Now, the minute that Zeus had got what he had done come for, Zeus did what he always did, which was to get out of dodge as quickly as possible. Zeus was very much the loving him and leave him sort of god. He never stuck around to talk to the women afterwards, and of course, every time that Zeus impregnated any female of any particular persuasion of goddess, demigod, semi-god, or human, that female ended up pregnant with child, and the entire creation was littered and populated with Zeus's illegitimate kids. So, poor Leta was left while having been possessed by a god, I suppose would be the most elegant and gracious way of putting it, and how Leta felt about this is a mystery. We don't know how Leta felt, and that's provided rich, rich territory for the artists, the painters, and the theologians. And of course, in the history of myth and legend, countless women have been possessed and left pregnant by deities, and how the women feel is always a matter of conjecture. It likely depends on what the storyteller wants to do with the plot from that point forward. So, Leta found herself pregnant. She went back to the palace. She had that awkward conversation with her husband Tindaris about this pregnancy, which he was clearly not a part of. And again, the stories never tell us how the men feel when their wives arrive and explain, well, I've got a bun in the oven, dear, and it's not yours. No, honestly, it's from a god. Again, it depends on what you want to do with the story from that point forward. But Tindaris was confronted with this reality that Leta had been visited by Zeus, master of the thunderbolt, father of gods and men. Well, Leta endured the pregnancy, and she got bigger and bigger and bigger as her pregnancy went on. Remarkably big, in fact. But then the day came when Leta went into labor, and Leta gave birth to, well, Leta gave birth to two very large round eggs. Yes, eggs. Not knowing quite what to do, Leta, I suppose, hatched the eggs. I don't know how long she had to sit on them, but the eggs broke open, and out of the eggs emerged four babies. Now, three of the babies turned out to be, don't worry, they weren't like swan, bird, human, monster creatures. The babies were all 100% fully human, and three of the babies turned out to be very normal kids, two guys and a girl. But the youngest of the children born, a little girl, well, it was very clear from the moment that she was hatched, I suppose, that she was a remarkable, stunning beauty. Leta looked at her and realized she was special. Leta gave her a name. Leta called her Helen. So our Helen, our Helen of Sparta, the most stunningly radiant, gorgeous woman on the planet, according to Aphrodite, and in Paris's full agreement, came by her good looks quite, I was going to say legitimately, but let's say naturally instead. Helen was the daughter of a ravishing human beauty, Leta, and the daughter of Zeus, king of the gods. Not bad DNA if you could get it. Well, we don't know how Tindaris responded to this, but we do know that Tindaris made the best of the situation as stepdad, I suppose, and I suppose sometime around Helen's 13th birthday, when word of her beauty had spread far and wide across the entire Greek world, Tindaris decided to cash in on this mixed blessing of what he had. So Tindaris, in the fashion of all good Bronze Age fathers and men everywhere, decided that he would turn his daughter Helen into an economic opportunity. So Tindaris sent messages out across the Bronze Age world to all the who's who of the warlords and announced that Helen, his daughter, would soon be turning 14, and on her 14th birthday, Tindaris was going to put Helen up for auction to the highest bidder. Some lucky Greek warlord was going to get to go home to his palace with history's first trophy bride and history's most stunningly gorgeous woman with history's most remarkable pedigree. Well, the Greek warlords flocked to Tindaris' estate that summer with their bids, their offers for Helen. Like any scarce resource, demand far exceeds supply, and it led to a bidding frenzy. And, well, by the end of August, Tindaris, when he looked out on his front lawn, there were 50 warlords assembled all trying to bid to become Helen's husband. And these warlords had all brought along valuable gifts and bribes and presents and trophies to give Tindaris in exchange for Helen, and they'd all brought along a very powerful contingent of private soldiers or guards to ensure that their treasure was protected along the way. And it suddenly occurred to Tindaris as he looked out on his lawn one late August day that this could end very, very badly indeed. The warlords were all behaving themselves at the moment because Tindaris hadn't made his decision, but Tindaris knew that these warlords, by inclination, spent most of their time fighting and brawling with each other and attacking each other and raiding each other's flocks and women and territories, and there was no love lost between these warlords. And Tindaris realized he had a problem in his hands. It was essentially, curiously, a mirror of the Judgment of Paris golden apple of discord problem. Tindaris had one valuable prize, Helen, and he knew that at the end of the bidding he would have one happy suitor and 49 very, very angry and dejected suitors all sitting on this front lawn with armies. Well, in a panic, Tindaris went looking for advice on how to save his neck and keep this thing from going terribly off the rails, and Tindaris went to a Greek warlord, a guy that had come for the bidding, the cleverest, the wisest, the most brilliant of the warlords, a guy named Odysseus. Odysseus ran a minor island kingdom named Ithaca. It wasn't very powerful. It wasn't very rich, but Odysseus was universally acknowledged among the warlords that Odysseus was just ridiculously bright and clever, and when there were problems to solve, everybody turned and called on Odysseus because he was the guy that could solve a problem for you. Well, Tindaris had confided his worries about the 49 upset warlords who would lose the contest, and Odysseus had thought on it a bit and then turned to Tindaris and said, yeah, I can solve your problem for you. I know how to do it. I can get you out of this mess, Tindaris, but there's going to be a price for me. Now, I don't want Helen. I'm not interested in bidding on Helen. I know I don't have the money to support Helen, and furthermore, I'm a minor warlord. I know I don't have a chance of winning the bidding contest, but what Odysseus wanted actually was Tindaris's help in hooking up Odysseus with another woman he wanted to marry, a distant relative of Tindaris's, a woman named Penelope. So Tindaris said, okay, I'll work the strings. I have contacts there. I can get you Penelope, and nobody else particularly wants or accepts you, Odysseus. So Odysseus got his bride and then provided Tindaris with the advice he needed to keep the warlords from tearing each other and tearing Tindaris apart after the final decision on who got Helen had been rendered. And what Odysseus proposed is that Tindaris should force all 50 suitors into a mutual collective security oath. The way Odysseus explained it, the suitors should all be brought together in a central location and compelled to swear an oath that whichever man amongst them eventually was awarded Helen, the 49 warlords who were not awarded Helen would swear from that time forward for the rest of their natural lives to protect Helen's marriage to her husband and to use force to help protect that marriage if necessary. So it really was a form of collective security. And Odysseus said, no, Tindaris, you want to make sure that none of the warlords try to sort of loophole their way out of this. There were ways of cheating on oath. So Odysseus proposed that Tindaris actually engage in a serious non-negotiable oath ceremony which would frighten the warlords to the point where they wouldn't dare afterwards go back and violate the oath and try to woo Helen or steal her away from whoever won her. So Tindaris following Odysseus instructions assembled the warlords. He announced that any warlord who wanted to be considered eligible to bid on Helen had to swear this oath. The warlords grumbled. A lot of them obviously had plans that if they lost the contest they were going to try to steal Helen or win her by force at some later date and they knew that the oath was going to be a problem for them. But the warlords really grumbled when they realized what Tindaris was planning by way of an oath. Tindaris assembled the warlords that night and in a small quiet little secluded section of the forest he brought along his best priests and Tindaris brought along his prize stallion. Horses in the ancient bronze age world were valuable valuable possessions and a prize stallion was the most valuable possession that any warlord could ever possibly conceive of owning. And Tindaris brought the stallion into the glade with the priests. He summoned all 50 of the bidders and then Tindaris nodded to the priests and the priests proceeded to sacrifice the stallion to the god Zeus. They killed the horse. An incredibly valuable rich sacrifice. Then the priests cut the horse up into four corners spread it out and insisted that each of the warlords step forward bathe his hands in the blood of the quartered horse and then shake hands with the other warlords. They essentially bonded themselves into an indissolvable oath of collective security to protect Helen's marriage to whoever was awarded Helen. It was a bloody ceremony but it was a ceremony that those warlords were so frightened about violating afterwards that this oath well it was non-negotiable. The warlords were in this oath for life. Well the day after the oath of the quartered horse Tindaris knew that he could comfortably then appraise the bids and make his decision and and as Tindaris was musing over which of the warlords to give Helen to in which of the bids he liked the most a messenger arrived. The messenger was from King Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. I know I mentioned him in the previous episode. Agamemnon owned the most powerful kingdom in the bronze age world, had the most powerful army. Agamemnon was a warlord that nobody messed with and the messenger from Agamemnon took Tindaris aside and said I need to speak to you in private. I have a direct message from King Agamemnon and the gist of the message was this. Agamemnon told Tindaris that Tindaris was going to award Helen to Agamemnon's little brother Menelaus of Sparta. It was, the messenger said, non-negotiable. Now Agamemnon didn't want Helen for himself. Curiously Agamemnon had already married and the woman he had married had been one of those other girls that had hatched out of the egg who was nowhere nearly as radiant or glorious as Helen and I think Agamemnon's reasoning in having Menelaus marry Helen was, you know, you keep the family close, you keep everybody together and this way the two brothers would have married the two sisters and Agamemnon would have a better control over his extension and his reach over all things Greek and political. Well whatever the case, Tindaris had no choice at that point. You didn't mess with Agamemnon. So Tindaris stepped in front of the assembled 50 warlords and announced that he had made his decision and he had decided that the best bid belonged to Menelaus of Sparta. Well 49 warlords were completely shocked. This was clearly a rigged contest. Menelaus was not wealthy. Sparta was not wealthy. Menelaus wasn't very bright. He wasn't a great soldier. He wasn't even particularly good looking. There was no way at all that anybody, even Helen, if gods forbid she had been given a choice in this, there was no money on Menelaus. He was not a natural candidate for this job and the warlords realized that they had been played and the warlords, the bride of the warlords realized that they had been played by Agamemnon, Menelaus's big brother. But there was not a thing they could do about it. Their hands were still covered in the blood from the oath of the quartered horse. They didn't dare do anything but protect Menelaus and Helen's marriage. So 49 warlords headed back to their kingdoms and got on with their lives and Menelaus took his 14 year old bride back to the kingdom of Sparta, shoulder the ladies quarters and the two of them settled into a domestic routine. About a year later, Helen produced a daughter for Menelaus and you JK Rowling fans will have a hoot here. The daughter's name was Hermione and then well we know very little about Helen and Menelaus's life for the next five years. Until Helen turned 20 and on a particular day when Helen was sitting in the ladies quarters doing the things that she did in the ladies quarters, she was suddenly summoned to the banquet hall very unexpectedly by her husband Menelaus and introduced to a young and devastatingly good-looking Trojan prince named Paris. Well Helen had looked at the prince and thought, well he's a nice looking guy, but thought nothing of it until a moment later when this strange sensation flooded Helen's body. Of course that was a moment when Eros's erotic arrow had hit Helen full on. Now a lot of time and energy and worry has been devoted to what happened to Helen at the moment that Eros let that arrow fly and and how Helen was going to act post being hit by the arrow and I think we need to clarify a little bit of what was going on here because our temptation listening into the 21st century is to reduce all sexual attraction down to endorphins, pheromones, dopamine receptors and brain chemistry. So you know I've read post-modern versions of this story which remove all inklings or traces of a deity from the plot and they essentially say well you know Paris walked in and he was likely smelling a certain way and Helen happened to be in a particular mood or part of her cycle at that particular time in the month and as a consequence when the two of them met each other there was there's this chemical attraction and this is a way that these things work and so Helen essentially her brain was flooded with pleasure receptors and she linked it all to Paris who was sitting in front of her so it's very tempting for us as a 21st century audience to get a little bit jaded and cynical about these things. The other thing that we often are tempted to do when we hear this part of the story is we tend to well we all want to graft on our own personal experience. Most of us are fortunate enough that we can sympathize and if we're really fortunate can empathize with what we think Helen is going through. I mean how many of us haven't at least once in our life well seen somebody and suddenly been well completely overwhelmed by a very powerful desire to possess that person and be possessed by that person as quickly as possible. We've all been there and yay it's a wonderful powerful feeling but to suggest that that's what Helen was experiencing in this moment I think deeply deeply cheapens Helen's experience because well Helen of Sparta was possessed by a god and most of us haven't been. Aphrodite wasn't a very nice goddess, she wasn't very pleasant, she wasn't kind, she wasn't loving, she wasn't just. Aphrodite was certainly not the type of deity which those of us in the later 20th and 21st century like to worship or believe in but Aphrodite was a deity all the same and well when human beings are possessed by gods human beings lose their will and that's what happened to Helen. She was minding her business, she looked up, she saw Paris, an arrow an erotic arrow from a deity hit Helen and Helen was overcome. Now I told you that Aphrodite was a goddess of everything south of the waist so those arrows didn't hit your brain, they didn't hit your heart, they just hit south of the waist and Helen had no choice. She looked up, she saw that boy Paris in front of her and Helen's needs were of a form that the rest of us cannot possibly understand. Now there was a problem of course and the problem was that well Helen would have loved to have jumped up onto the table and had Paris right then and there. They were only eight inches away from each other but eight inches the other side of Paris of course was Helen's husband Menelaus so nothing could really happen. Now of course when this kind of nothing could really happen happens inside of stories there's always convenient solutions and the standard most common literary archetype solution arrived about 30 seconds later. There was suddenly a loud banging on the back door of the great hall and in stumbled this character who well I haven't told you about because the character doesn't exist in the story and after his one speech won't exist in the story ever again but the character stumbled into the room charged to the front of the room and delivered a message to Menelaus and the message was something to the gist of Menelaus some crisis or emergencies come up Menelaus you must leave Sparta right now and then of course the messenger had departed never to be seen in the story again and and why Menelaus had to suddenly leave Sparta is entirely irrelevant. We know how this device works Shakespeare uses it lots of lesser storytellers in Shakespeare use it when you need to move the plot forward you bring one of these little deus ex machina messengers in and and they take the central character and move the central character out of the proceedings long enough so that your plot can carry on. So whether Menelaus was off on a funeral as some storytellers have it or off putting down a some sort of a rebellion as other tellers would have it is really really irrelevant the critical thing is that Menelaus received the message he leapt up from the head table and he realized that he had to leave Sparta right away so in a booming voice he announced to the assembled hall guests he said I have to leave Sparta right away and then Menelaus had taken a huge gold chain he wore around his neck it it had two keys on it and very ceremonially he had placed the gold chain over the neck of Paris he had turned to Paris and he'd said Paris brother I am going to leave you in charge of the palace in my absence and Menelaus had proceeded to explain what doors the two keys unlocked the first of the keys was to the Spartan royal treasury Menelaus asked Paris will you take care of the treasury and Paris had assented that he would and the second key of course you know exactly what that keys to that key was to Helen's bedchamber and Menelaus had turned around in a rather unfortunate turn of phrase with no irony at all Menelaus had turned to Paris and said Paris will you take care of Helen for me when I'm gone and Paris had assured Menelaus that he would take care of Helen and then in a flash Menelaus was temporarily out of the story and 30 minutes later well Paris and Helen had looted the entire Spartan treasury and the two of them hand in hand were on a fast boat back to the city of Troy well Menelaus re-entered the story at a convenient time about three days later he returned to his palace and he appraised the situation realized that the treasury was looted and that his most valuable treasure Helen was missing he questioned if the servants he ascertained what had happened that Helen and Paris had left together hand in hand and he knew that Helen had left voluntarily well Menelaus was at a loss as to what to do so after a day of pacing back and forth in his palace Menelaus did what he always did and what he'd been doing since he was a little boy when he was at a loss Menelaus packed up and he headed to Mycenae and he he arrived at the home of his big brother Agamemnon he burst into Agamemnon's study he closed the door and he burst into tears and he said Helen's left me for another man what do I do brother what do I do well Agamemnon had listened patiently to his little brother's story for a few moments and then stopped Menelaus he he had a critical question Agamemnon of course was a brilliant politician and had a great analytical mind he turned around and he said Menelaus you say that Helen left voluntarily are you sure of that and Menelaus had explained that yes all the servants had assured him that Helen and Paris had left hand in hand on the boat Helen had been smiling and Agamemnon asked a supplementary question he said does anybody outside of the palace know the story yet and Menelaus said no I'm not telling anybody I thought I should come to you first for advice and Agamemnon sighed a huge sigh of relief and he said wonderful okay Menelaus you're wrong and what happened to Menelaus let me tell you what really happened in your absence and as Menelaus sat there confused not quite following where his brother was going Agamemnon painted a picture and the picture that Agamemnon painted was a picture of Helen who had demurely and modestly retired to the ladies quarters of the palace and then of an evil conniving and vicious prince Paris who had violently broken down the door of Helen's bedchamber throwing Helen forcibly over his shoulder and with an evil sort of black hat comic book villain laugh and said something like, ha ha ha, and now I will take you back to the dungeons of Troy, where I will ravish you day and night, ha ha ha. In short, Agamemnon painted a picture of a kidnapped, abducted, and forcibly raped Helen. Well, Menelaus corrected Agamemnon. He said, that's not what happened. And Agamemnon corrected Menelaus and said, if you want this to end well, that is precisely what happened. Now, those are your talking points. Have you got it, Menelaus? You go back to Sparta and you explained to everybody that's precisely what happened. Helen was abducted against her will. Well, Menelaus had inquired of Agamemnon, well, what about the servants that saw something different, that know the truth? And Agamemnon motioned first with his one hand to his money belt and then with his other hand to his sword. And he said, you'll use the standard solution. You'll pay off the people that are willing to accept a bribe and the rest of the Menelaus, you'll just have to kill. We can't let any message get out, but that Helen was abducted. Now go. Well, Menelaus still not quite understanding where his big brother was coming from, headed back to Sparta to rehearse and deliver his talking points and follow his big brother's advice. And in the meantime, Agamemnon set his politics into action. He called in the heralds. He called in the keepers of records. He said, I need the name of every man who swore that oath on the quartered horse back six years ago. Once he had the name of every one of those men, he sent a messenger out to each of those warlords across the Greek world. And he said, report to Mycenae, report to my palace immediately. Helen has been abducted. More details to follow in person upon your arrival. Well, over the next few weeks, the Greek warlords trickled into the palace at Mycenae. Some of them were happy to come. Some of them came rather reluctantly, but nobody dared mess with Agamemnon, and nobody even more dared mess with a violation of the oath of the quartered horse. So eventually, all the warlords had arrived at the palace, and Agamemnon appraised the warlords individually and decided how much of the story in the plane to let them in on, depending on their inclinations, their temperaments, and their politics. But the brighter of the warlords or the more clever and conniving of the warlords, Agamemnon took into a quiet room and explained that this was the opportunity that the Greek world had been looking for and praying to the gods for for a very long time. Because now Agamemnon explained that the Greek world had a pretext for war against Troy. Agamemnon had done the math. He knew that Troy had 75,000 soldiers, and Agamemnon knew that if each of the warlords who had sworn the oath of the quartered horse anted up the soldiers that they had, that Agamemnon would have an army, a coalition army of 100,000 Greeks, more than enough to take down Troy's 75,000 soldiers. Now there was a reason why Agamemnon wanted to take down Troy, and that was not because of Helen. Agamemnon, in an aside to a few of the warlords, said that he was willing to launch a thousand ships in a war, but certainly not just for a pretty face. The reason why Agamemnon was proposing a coalition invasion of Troy had to do with something much more practical and mundane, and something that we in the 21st century can understand. It was all about trade, and it was all about valuable goods in the Middle and the Far East that the Western world needed. Now in the case of Agamemnon and the Greeks, it wasn't oil. What the Greeks needed, which Troy wasn't giving them sufficient access to, were two metals, tin and copper. Both of those metals were mined in large quantities on the other side of the Dardanelles Straits in the eastern part of the world, and Troy was putting incredible tariffs on the import of copper and tin. So the Greeks were running into the point where they could not buy copper and tin, and you're wondering, well why does that really matter? And it's because if you take copper and you take tin, and you melt them together in the right ratios, and you get bronze. And ladies and gentlemen, this is a freaking bronze age. Bronze was the magic metal of choice. It made armor, and it made weapons. The Greeks needed it. Everybody who was going to be able to defend themselves needed it, and the Trojans have been gradually, gradually, gradually choking off Greek access to copper and tin. Greeks was in trouble, and Troy was getting stinking rich. So here suddenly was an opportunity, Agamemnon told the warlords, for us to go and take Troy down. We can take over Troy. We can get control of the trade routes ourselves, Agamemnon said. We can get all the bronze we need, and we can become the dominant player in the entire Mediterranean. Now the warlords worried. The warlords said, you know, we're not going to be able to get our public behind us for a war which is about trade and economic opportunity. And Agamemnon started to laugh and said, of course you can't, but you can always get the public behind you for a war about a fairy tale princess, and a just cause, and things like honor, and things like that. So what Agamemnon did is he said, look, the story that's going out that Menelaus is already spreading is that Helen was abducted by an evil man, an evil prince Paris, and Paris not only violated Zinnia, but Paris, if we allow this kind of thing to do, Paris has essentially violated the manhood and the masculinity of every man inside of Greece, from the most important king down to the lowliest of farmers. We need to go. We need to go rescue poor Helen. She's languishing in a dungeon. And Agamemnon called in the storytellers, and he paid the storytellers well, and he said, move out across the Greek peninsula, go to the tavernas, go to the marketplaces, go to the Acropolis, and spread the story of poor Helen, and whip the public into a frenzy of war. Well, it worked. And within six months, Agamemnon and the other warlords could stand on a podium and declare, with the full enthusiasm and support of the Greek public, the genesis and the onset of Operation Trojan Storm. Within another six months, Agamemnon had assembled the largest coalition army that the world had ever seen, 100,000 men-at-arms. They went to work building boats. They built a thousand ships. And then Agamemnon realized that there was one little glitch in the plans. Two of the warlords, the absolutely two most critical and important warlords to the success of Operation Trojan Storm, had not made an appearance. In fact, both of these warlords had, well, vanished. And Agamemnon and the other warlords knew that without these two men, whatever kind of a mission that they launched against Troy was doomed to failure. The missing warlords? Well, the cleverest of the warlords, the author of the Oath of the Quartered Horse himself, Odysseus, who was in no show, and even more critically, the greatest, most gorgeous killing machine in the history of Greece, Achilles, was nowhere to be found. And that, folks, is a pretty good place to leave this episode, episode number six, Helen of Sparta. So you have a couple of options at this point, the usual options. If you want to graciously say goodbye, then you can leave the storytelling now and keep a very close eye on my website, trojanwarpodcast.com, where the next episode will be posted any day now and you'll just be able to continue on with the great fun of the story. For those of you who want to hang around for the post-story commentary, I'm going to spend the entire post-story commentary talking about Helen of Sparta and looking at the different ways that storytellers have told that story and explained, blamed, understood, cursed, worshipped, hated Helen down through the centuries. She's a very, very complex character and I think you'll have an awful lot of fun if you stick around for that post-story commentary, if you're at all interested in Helen. So the choice is yours. I'm going to stop for a few moments so those of you leaving can hit pause and graciously take off and then we'll pick up with the commentary. And so welcome back to the post-story commentary. Now, Helen of Sparta, soon to be known as Helen of Troy, just might be one of the most fascinating female characters in all of story and all of literature. So fascinating, in fact, that poets, playwrights, artists, authors, and cinematographers have been telling Helen stories pretty much continuously for the past 3,000 years. But folks, the truth is, for such a famous and remarkably well-known character, we actually know very little about Helen of Troy. Oh, we know some of the externalities, if you will, the biographical details of what she did or what she was said to have done, but what we are missing in both the oral storytelling tradition and in Homer's stories about Helen is any clear and consistent impression of, well, what I like to call internal Helen. Put another way, of what it was like for Helen to be the most famous, storied, and celebrated face in all of history. Folks, Helen of Sparta, later of Troy, is a remarkably blank canvas. Now, this has led to something really fascinating over the past 3,000 years. Because there is no clear and consistent Helen voice, well, it has opened up the door to conflicting opinions and even some rather heated and fierce debates down through the centuries on exactly what it was that made Helen of Troy tick. And the primary debate has centered on one particular defining moment inside of Helen's life. Precisely what happened to Helen on that fateful night when Helen of Sparta first became Helen of Troy. So, I thought what we might do in this post-story commentary is have a little wee bit of fun by reviewing what I'm calling the Big Five Takes on Helen. And what these are, folks, are the five most commonly held versions of the story to explain what happened on that night when Paris, Prince of Troy, arrived in the home of Menelaus, King of Sparta. Now, just before we dive into take number one, if you'd permit me a few little observations. First off, the very reason that we have so many competing versions of what happened to Helen on that particular night is that the written surviving accounts are remarkably thin on details. And that, of course, has created lots of latitude for storytellers to flesh out the details that they want to tell. Next off, I think you'll realize pretty quickly that when you listen to these competing takes on Helen, well, each of the competing takes actually reveals as much about the storyteller, about the storyteller's values, preoccupations, and concerns as it does about Helen of Troy. To put this into contemporary 21st century language, folks, all stories of Helen are, of course, culturally implicated. And just, I suppose, full disclosure here, of course, your faithful podcasting storyteller, well, I am at least as culturally implicated in the stories that I tell and the ways that I try to tell them as is any other teller over the past 3,000 years. Now, finally, as far as I can see, none of the five competing takes on Helen that I'm going to review with you has proven to be so compelling, so convincing, and so overwhelmingly satisfying that it has trumped out the other four. Put another way, 3,000 years after the day that Paris Prince of Troy came a-calling, we still aren't entirely sure what happened that fateful night inside of Menelaus's palace. Okay, so let's dive in right away to take number one, a take which I am calling Helen the Homewrecker. Now, in this telling of the story, here's what happens. Helen is a married woman. She's leading a comfortable and a happy domestic life inside of Sparta. She has a wonderful providing husband named Menelaus, and Helen has been provided with the following. Good food, good shelter, lovely clothing, and obedient slaves. All that a woman could ask for. And further, Menelaus has even gifted Helen with a daughter. And then? Well, then on one fateful day, a charming and devastatingly handsome Trojan prince shows up at Menelaus's palace. And in an instant, in this version of the story, Helen abandons everything. Home, hearth, husband, even her very own child. And what for? Well, for a quick sexual romp with a pretty boy prince. So the moral of the story? Shame on Helen. Bad Helen. She had everything that a woman could ever have hoped for, and she traded it away, dishonored her husband, and shamed herself. And so that, folks, is the basic plot line of the Helen as Homewrecker version of the story. Now, a couple of things I want you to notice about this version. First of all, in this telling of the tale, Helen is granted agency over her actions. She chooses, by her own volition, to run away with Paris, Prince of Troy. And in this telling of the story? Well, Helen's motivations for running away with Paris are reduced to simple, unadulterated, I suppose you'll have to forgive the pun there, lust. Helen simply cannot control her rampant sexual libido. So maybe we need a little bit of historical context now. Folks, the Helen as Homewrecker version of the story has remained consistently popular right from Homer's time through classical Greece, where it reached its zenith of popularity, and right on up to our very own century. And it really is no surprise that this version of the story has been most eagerly embraced by storytellers and by their cultures that are deeply preoccupied by worries about the fidelity of their women. And in such cultures? Well, the story of Helen of Sparta becomes a cautionary tale, a warning that women are faithless, that women have insatiable libidos, and that if a man is foolish enough to trust his woman or to grant her too much latitude and freedom, that man will come to rue the day. The story makes it clear. Menelaus let down his guard just for a moment, and his slot of a wife, Helen, caused the Trojan War. And so that's the Helen as Homewrecker version of the story. Now let's move on to take number two, Helen as a damsel in distress. Now in this telling of the tale, here is how events go down. An evil and conniving Prince Paris of Troy arrives as a guest at the home of Menelaus, the good, noble, and virtuous King of Sparta. And then, the very moment that Menelaus' back is turned, Paris abducts Menelaus' wife, a sweet, innocent, lovely princess named Helen. And he forcibly drags poor Helen back to his city of Troy. And there, trapped behind Troy's high walls, poor, sweet, innocent Helen languishes, her days consumed with tears for her dear lost husband, and her nights consumed with terrors as the evil Prince Paris ravishes her. Now folks, as you can well imagine, the damsel in distress version of the Helen story has been a consistent crowd-pleaser for the past 3,000 years. Because it turns out that every culture in world history absolutely adores a fairy tale. A story with the simplicity of uncomplicated, stock characters, and an instantly recognizable plot. Now inside of the context of our Trojan War epic story, well the damsel in distress version of the Helen story was popular with Menelaus and also popular with his politically savvy big brother Agamemnon. Now why Agamemnon liked the story is pretty obvious. Fairy tales, folks, as we know up until our own century, make for absolutely wonderful political propaganda. If you have a good guy, if you have a bad guy, and particularly if you have a damsel in distress, well a political leader, ancient or modern, who is bent on conquest, is quite capable of whipping up an eager army of volunteer soldiers. And so the Helen as damsel in distress version of the tale was of course the version of what happened to that fateful night in Sparta that Agamemnon made sure was spread far and wide across the Greek world as he was assembling his operation Trojan Storm. Now as to why Menelaus preferred the story, well if you think about it from Menelaus's perspective, if Helen was abducted as opposed to Helen voluntarily leaving with Paris, then Menelaus comes off as somewhat less emasculated in the telling of the tale. And further, if Menelaus tells himself the damsel in distress version of the story enough times, well eventually he might actually convince himself that it's what really happened. Okay, so now let's move on to take number three. Helen as temptress or femme fatale. Now in this version of the story, what we get is the identical hyper-sexualized out-of-control libido Helen of the homewrecker story, but with one rather significant twist. Instead of a Helen who simply cannot control her rampant impulses, in the temptress Helen version of the story, Helen is entirely aware of and in control of her sexuality. And then she uses that sexuality as a trap to corrupt and to destroy good men. And so in this telling of the tale, it is not Paris who seduces Helen, but rather it is Helen who seduces Paris. And in this telling of the tale further, Paris is usually cast as a good, noble, and virtuous man who under no circumstances at all would ever have violated the rules of hospitality and slept with his host's wife. Save for the problem that Helen, the temptress, took one look at Paris and then used her seductive sexual ways to corrupt the poor young boy. And poor Paris, once Helen turned on those temptress charms, well he found himself absolutely incapable of resisting Helen's siren song. So perhaps we need more than a little wee bit of context for the temptress or the femme fatale telling of the tale. And folks, let me start by telling you that the temptress or the femme fatale has got to be one of the oldest and most tired archetypes in the entire history of story. And as an archetype in all the stories, it is traditionally grounded in two underlying beliefs. Number one, that sex is somehow dirty and shameful. And number two, that whenever a man falls prey to sinful sexuality, inevitably it is some shameless woman who caused that good man's fall. Now as I told you, the archetype is a familiar one, and you could even make a serious case that the story first appears inside of the Adam and Eve story. And that, of course, is a story that emerged out of the oral storytelling traditions of the Bronze Age, and then later was included in the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Islamic written traditions. So allow me to summarize the basic plot of the Adam and Eve story for you. God created Adam and Eve. Then God dropped Adam and Eve into paradise, where the two of them remained happily innocent, wholly naked, and entirely unaware of their sexuality. That is until Eve, the woman, succumbed to temptation and ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Now according to this telling of the tale, the very moment that Eve ate that fruit, she lost her innocence. She gained knowledge and immediately became aware of her nudity and of her sexuality. And then what was Eve's first independent autonomous act as a self-aware sexual woman? Well, in this temptress tradition, Eve's first act was to drag poor innocent Adam right down into sin along with her. Oh, uh, Adam, big boy. Eve licks her lips and wiggles her hips. Uh, come on over here and, uh, get a taste of this. Now folks, I hasten to add that the Adam and Eve story, much like the Helen story, is composed of highly malleable clay. And readers and listeners for the past 3,000 years have been molding and shaping that clay to suit their own particular values and preoccupations. And if there are 5 takes on the Helen of Troy story, then there are at least double that number of takes on the story of Adam and Eve. And some of those takes, just so you know, feature absolutely no temptress archetypes at all. Now, one final note. Homer's Odyssey, the sequel to Homer's Iliad, well, Homer's Odyssey, if you read it, is absolutely chock full of temptresses, of femme fatales, and even, get this, of literature's very first sirens. And hanging over all of Homer's Odyssey is a dark cautionary story of a woman, a decidedly evil woman, one part homewrecker and one part femme fatale. Now, I can't tell you her name now for fear of plot spoilers, but if you ever choose to dive into Homer's Odyssey, you will recognize the archetype right away. So, let's move on now to take number four, a take I am labeling Helen the Survivor. Now, in this telling of the story, the storyteller usually begins the story by offering up some contextual backstory, reminding readers or listeners of Helen's violent origins, reminding readers and listeners that Helen's mom, Leda, was raped by Zeus, king of the gods. You'll recall that Zeus is history's first serial rapist and deadbeat dad. And then the backstory will go on to remind us that Helen, on about her 14th birthday, was auctioned off to the highest bidder by her money grubber of a stepfather of a dad, a guy named Tindaris. And then we're reminded that Helen was purchased by a warlord king named Menelaus of Sparta, a man at 40 years old, nearly three times Helen's age. And finally, we're reminded that Helen was then summarily shut up in the ladies' quarters of Menelaus's palace and only dragged out into public when old Menelaus wanted to show off his trophy bride, who he treated on most occasions like a prize piece of meat. And then, with all of that backstory context in place, the Helen-as-survivor telling of the tale picks up in Helen's 20th year when a Trojan prince arrives as a house guest at Menelaus's palace. Well, Helen immediately realizes that Paris is a prince and the possible heir to the city of Troy, the most powerful, wonderful, glorious, and cosmopolitan city in the entire Mediterranean. And Helen further realizes that, at least compared to the bronze-age warlord patriarchal kingdoms of Greece, Troy is not a particularly bad place to be a woman. And so, on that fateful night, Helen decides to emancipate herself, to escape the backwaters of patriarchal Sparta and her tired old husband, in exchange for the luxuries, the freedom, and the vastly better living conditions for a woman of Troy. Now folks, at this point in the Helen-as-survivor accounts of the story, well, the plot lines rather diverge into a couple of variants, so let me share them with you. Variant number one of the story is always played for romance, and it's actually a particularly popular 20th and 21st century telling of the tale in movies and film and television series. Now in this variant on the story, Paris, when he arrives in Sparta, is cast as a good guy. And when Paris arrives, he meets Helen, and what he sees is a beautiful woman, but what Paris truly sees is an unhappy and oppressed woman in a terrible patriarchal marriage. So Paris falls in love with Helen, but even more importantly, in this telling of the tale, Paris respects and appreciates Helen as an equal. And so, together, they romantically and joyously plan Helen's escape to the city of Troy. And as I said, there aren't many versions of the Helen story that have made it to the silver or to smaller screens, which have not told the particular tale in this fashion. But there is a second contemporary 20th and 21st century variant on the tale, a much darker variant, and it goes something like this. Helen, the moment that Paris steps into the room in Sparta, realizes in no time at all that Paris is a clueless, a vacuous, and a self-absorbed pretty boy prince. He's dumb as a brick, and Helen knows that right away. But then Helen clinically weighs her options. She realizes that she's a woman trapped inside of the Bronze Age, and so her options are limited. And on the whole, after a day of thinking about it, Helen finally decides that a life which includes Paris and the city of Troy is still preferable to a life that includes Menelaus and the backwater of Sparta. So, in this telling of the tale, Helen, vastly more intelligent than Paris could ever be, then manipulates the Trojan Prince into thinking it was all his idea to bring Helen back to Troy with him. Now folks, both of those contemporary variants on the Helen as Survivor tale do have one thing in common, and that is that both versions of the story actually celebrate and applaud Helen as a hero for managing her act of self-emancipation against overwhelming cultural odds. But it is worth noting that there is a third version of the Helen as Survivor story, and some scholars argue that that version actually shows up inside of Homer's telling of the tale, in his Iliad, and especially inside of his Odyssey. Now this version of the Helen as Survivor goes like this. Helen has no fidelities at all to either Menelaus and Sparta or to Paris and Troy. In fact, Helen's only fidelities are to herself. In short, she's a scheming, manipulative, and duplicitous geopolitical player, and she has no guiding principles at all except for ending up on the winning side when the war is over. Now it is worth noting that there is currently, and by currently I mean in the last few years, a considerable debate, especially among translators of Homer, as to whether Homer, especially in his Odyssey, actually offers up that particular thesis on Helen. Now I wish I could tell you more about that debate, but to do so now would be to, well, basically have to give you a whole host of plot spoilers, which I promised I won't do. So those are the three possible variants on Helen as Survivor, and with that, let's move on to our final take. Helen as pawn of the gods. And there's no way around it. This has got to be the grimmest, and in a way, the least satisfying take on Helen of them all. Because inside of this telling of the Helen of Troy story, poor Helen is stripped of even the tiniest shred of agency or autonomy. And in this telling of the story, Helen simply becomes a pawn, a puppet, and a plaything of the Olympian gods. And anytime that Helen so much as attempts to assert her free will, well, one of those Olympian gods, or often a human favourite of that Olympian god, summarily shuts poor Helen down. So let's review the plot. An apple of discord is dropped into Zeus's great hall. A bunch of goddesses argue about who is most worthy of receiving that apple. Zeus decrees a beauty contest, then further decrees that said contest will be judged by a human. Aphrodite, one of the goddesses, wins the contest. She does so by bribing the judge. The bribe she offers the judge? The insatiable lust of history's smokin' hottest babe. And then in very short order, Aphrodite hooks up Paris with Helen, Aphrodite shoots a lust arrow into poor Helen's loins, and Helen falls head over heels uncontrollably, magically and insatiably in lust with Paris, Prince of Troy. End of story. Now folks, I will immediately concede that Helen as pawn of the gods is a particularly bleak take on the telling of the Helen story. But I do think it is the take most in keeping with Bronze Age attitudes and beliefs about things like fate, free will, and deadly destiny. But ultimately, I'm going to leave you, the listener, to decide which take you prefer, or better yet, to listen to the balance of Trojan War the Podcast and formulate takes on the Helen story of your very own. And that's as good a place as any to leave this post-story commentary. So, in upcoming episode number seven of Trojan War the Podcast, Agamemnon, King of Kings, is going to find himself facing a rather awkward problem. His invasion fleet is ready to sail for Troy, but two rather significant Greek warlords, rather critical to the success of the invasion you might say, well those two warlords have somehow and somewhere gone missing. And how Agamemnon goes about finding those missing warlords, well, all I can promise you is it's going to be a great deal of podcast fun. So in the meantime, have an awesome day, thank you so much for listening, and we will talk again real soon. Bye for now.