Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(19)

Helen then turns to the divine cause of the Trojan War, which again puts responsibility with Paris and with the goddess, Aphrodite, who assists him. She describes the judgement of Paris, in which he is asked to choose which goddess – Aphrodite, Athene or Hera – is prettiest and should therefore be the recipient of a golden apple inscribed ‘To the Most Beautiful’ (this cause of the war is barely mentioned by Homer and even then it isn’t until the final book of the Iliad).17 Helen mentions that the goddesses all tried to bribe him to get the result each desired: Athene offered him the power to destroy the Greeks in war, Hera offered him a kingdom encompassing Asia and Europe. But Aphrodite, Helen says, praising my appearance, offered me to him if he said she was most beautiful. In other words, Paris was responsible for choosing as he did, the goddesses were responsible for bribing him, and Aphrodite was the one who offered Helen to Paris with no thought for anyone else (the gods are often portrayed as thoughtless brats in Euripides’ plays). Helen is collateral damage. In fact, she goes further, suggesting that, if Paris had preferred one of the other goddesses, Menelaus might well have found himself conquered by a barbarian army or ruled by a barbarian king, namely Paris. Greece got lucky, Helen says. I was destroyed. Sold for my beauty. I’m reproached by you; you should put a crown on my head.18

Now, Helen continues, it is time to consider the main charge. At this point, it seems only fair to say that no version of Menelaus in any telling of their story conveys the intellectual capacity to argue with a woman of such considerable cleverness. Maybe Odysseus could have taken her on, but not Menelaus. Euripides loved to write clever women, he does it over and over again: it is one of a thousand wonderful things about him.

So, why did Helen sneak off from her marital home with Paris? Again, she cites Aphrodite as the cause: Paris was accompanied by not a minor god, she says. The Greeks often employed litotes – deliberate understatement – in their legal speeches. And Helen uses it perfectly here: Aphrodite is one of the most powerful gods there is, so describing her as ‘not minor’ reminds us just how fearsome she is. And Menelaus doesn’t dodge blame either. O kakiste, Helen says – you’re the absolute worst. You left him – Paris – in your Spartan home while you went off to Crete.19 This is another point which would have resonated with the play’s fifth-century BCE audience. Athenian wives (certainly the wives of wealthy Athenians) would never have been left alone in their homes with a strange man. Athenian laws revealed an almost neurotic fear that another man might somehow impregnate your wife. Although Helen’s point might not carry much weight with a modern audience, it certainly would have done with Euripides’ audience. A respectable male citizen would not leave his wife alone in the company of any man who wasn’t either her brother or her father.

Finally, Helen addresses her own weakness in falling for Paris. What led me to betray my fatherland for a stranger? she asks. Well, even Zeus can’t resist Aphrodite: he holds power over the other gods, but he’s a slave to her. So you should make allowances for me.20 And this is certainly the impression we get of Aphrodite from most sources: she is irresistible to gods, let alone mortals (or demi-gods).

One last charge to answer, Helen says: why didn’t I come back to you, Menelaus, after Paris died? Well, I tried. I was caught pollakis – ‘many times’ – trying to escape Troy and return to you. I was taken bia – ‘by force’ – as a wife by Deiphobos. The use of bia is unequivocal: Helen has been in a forced marriage since the death of Paris. She describes herself in this last relationship one more time: pikrōs edouleus – ‘bitterly enslaved’.

Isn’t our view of Helen changed by this extraordinary speech? The woman who is mute in Marlowe’s Dr Faustus is as clever and articulate as she is beautiful in Euripides’ The Trojan Women. The catalogue of wrongs done to her is remarkable. Perhaps we don’t agree with her interpretation of every event (Hecabe certainly doesn’t: she responds to Helen’s defence, since she is clearly better-equipped than Menelaus for a battle of wits). But Helen’s arguments are compelling: Aphrodite really is that powerful, Menelaus really did abandon her with Paris. Hecabe doesn’t answer Helen’s point about her repeated attempts to escape, she instead asks why Helen didn’t kill herself as she should have (she doesn’t suggest that Paris might have done the same, for shame at having brought war upon his home and family. Or indeed that she and Priam might have done so, having failed to act on the prophecy which had warned them that Paris would destroy their city if he was allowed to live). The final straw for Hecabe is that Helen has appeared – in the aftermath of the fall of Troy when everyone else is wearing rags – perfectly dressed.21

At the end of this extraordinary debate, Menelaus declares himself in agreement with Hecabe. And yet, rather than kill Helen, he orders his men to put her on his ship bound for Sparta. Euripides’ audience (who would surely have known her role in the Odyssey, which we’ll come to shortly) knows what Hecabe immediately realizes: there is no way Menelaus will kill Helen once they get home.

There is an interesting question raised by Helen’s speech which she doesn’t ask. Why was Paris chosen to judge between the goddesses? And did no one care about the catastrophic consequences of his choice? Paris was simply given the job of deciding which goddess should take home the coveted trophy: a golden apple, with the words tē kallistē – ‘for the most beautiful’ – engraved on it. The apple was dropped among the goddesses at the wedding of Thetis, a sea-nymph, who would go on to be the mother of Achilles. They squabbled over who it was for, but they never asked who dropped it. If they had, they might have discovered it was Eris, the goddess of strife and discord. In other words, the whole point of the apple was to cause trouble, and it does.