TFBT: More Random Notes on Euripides' Helen

As mentioned previously I am preparing for Hour 25’s Book Club | October 2016: Euripides’ Helen  to be held on Tuesday, October 25, at 11 a.m. EDT.  Here are second and final set of comments. 

First thanks to Sarah for sharing the “name, name and epithet “ formula.  I will be on the lookout for it.  I think she is right, Euripides seems to avoid mentioning Athena’s name.  (As a writer I am always conscious to not have too many characters in the plot.)  On the other name the other “virgin daughter of Zeus”; Artemis is mentioned often, so maybe Euripides had his reasons for using the epithet formula.

“O maiden Callisto, blessed once in Arcadia, who climbed into the bed of Zeus on four paws, how much happier was your lot than my mother's, you who in the form of a shaggy-limbed beast—the bearing of a lioness with your fierce eye—changed your burden of sorrow; [380] and also the one whom Artemis once drove from her chorus, as a deer with horns of gold, the Titan girl, daughter of Merops, because of her loveliness; “

Does Euripides purposely screw up his Greek Mythology?  Callisto was turned into a bear, not a lioness.   According to William Allan in “Euripides: Helen” (Cambridge University Press, 2008) the playwright made up the whole thing about a Titaness-daughter of the unknown Titan Merops.  The deer with the horns of gold apparently refers to the harts that draw Artemis’ chariot. 

Menelaus prays to his grandfather Pelops, “if only, when you were persuaded to make a banquet for the gods, you had left your life then, inside the gods, [390].”  That's ugly!

Menelaus’ description of his shipwreck at 410-25 sure reminds me of Odysseus’ travels. 

I thought Menelaus' prayer “ O torch-bearing Hekatē, send visions that are favorable! “  seemed a little out of character and out of place, until I read further and realized it foreshadowed.  “Theonoe enters, attended by hand-maidens carrying torches.”

Helen. [670] Ah, my husband! The son of Zeus (Hermes), of Zeus, brought me to the Nile." That's what Aphrodite said to Anchises!

Helen. Alas for those baths and springs, where the goddesses brightened the beauty from which the judgment [krisis] came.  Maybe Helen is referring to the  spring of Canathos, close to Nauplia, where Hera renewed her virginity annually, (Pausanias, 2.38.2-3.)

Famous line, “Messenger. What are you saying? We have had ordeals [ponoi] in vain for the sake of a cloud? “

 Helen: imitate the character of a just father; for this is the fairest glory for children". Same argument Priam used on Peleus’ son. 

 Theoklymenos  [1165] Greetings, tomb [mnēma] of my father! For I buried you, Proteus, in the passageway so that I could address you; and always as I leave and enter the house, I, your son .  (The priests at Delphi  buried the murdered (sacrificed) Neoptolemus on the temple threshold, making him the guardian of the threshold

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 Menelaus:  This is your duty, young woman; you must be content with the husband at your side, and let go the one that no longer exists; [1290] for this is best [arista] for you, according to what has happened. And if I come to Hellas and find safety, I will put to an end your former bad reputation, if you are such a wife as you ought to be to your husband.

Helen I will; my husband will never find fault with me; [1295] you yourself will be at hand to know it. Now go inside, unhappy man, and find the bath, and change your clothes. I will show my kindness to you without delay. For you will perform the due services with more kindly feeling for my most philos Menelaos, [1300] if you get from me what you ought to have. 

Love the irony here

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1340-1370. Musical interlude about Eleusinian mysteries while the actor playing Menelaus changes costumes?  Just like a Cher concert? 

1405] May the gods give to you the things I wish and also to this stranger [xenos] here,   Funny

Menelaus' prayer to Zeus doesn't meet the standard

I don't know Pontos' gray- green daughter, spirit of calm.  Allan says she is a daughter of Nereus.  Many of the Nereids represent waves or describe the sea.  Again Euripides getting his mythology wrong.    

The Dioscuri end the play. I always hate deux de machina endings

 

 

 

TFBT: Helen on Classical Inquires

A flood of articles on Helen flowed out of Classical Inquires lately!   I would highly recommend them and the website.  Of course, I have opinions to share! 

Darah Vann in Helen of Troy: Unwomanly in Her Sexuality scrutinizes Helen's womanliness.  Her promiscuity and lack of maternal instinct do not make her a candidate for ideal wife, mother, and woman.  But is it right to judge her based on the Ancient Greek notion of womanhood?  Modern womanhood? As a woman at all?  Most authors on the recent series of articles on Helen in Classical Inquires have given a nod to Helen's divinity, maybe this is a place to do it again.  From that light Helen makes a great doublet for the mighty Aphrodite.  The goddess of love came ashore and entered the mythic timeline accompanied by two her two sons Love (Eros) and Desire (Himeros).  (Possible sons of an obscure and minor sea-god Nerites.) She had a short, arranged, "unfruitfull" marriage with Hephaestus. (As Helen did in the marriage the gods arranged for her to Paris.) Aphrodite then proceeded to birth armfuls of erotes by various gods primarily Ares, whom she never wed.  As Helen left her mortal daughter Hermione with Menelaus, so Aphrodite left her mortal daughter Harmonia with Electra to raise (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3. 373 - 4. 292  ) and Aeneas with the "nymphs" (HH to Aphrodite 247)  Demeter never wed and bore children to two of her three brothers and also to the Titanic Iason.  The sisters Eos and Selene had a thing for mortal men.  Artemis, Athena, Hestia, and Persephone never had children.  Hera was a nightmarish wife.  In comparison Helen makes a pretty good divine mother and goddess.

Gary Smoot wrote “Helenus and the Polyphyletic Etymologies of Helen"; a very thorough and readable survey on the topic; with nine variation on the theme.   I’ve spoken to the ones I found most convincing; #1.   Helen ‘shine’, ‘blaze’  ‘torch’, and ‘shines’.  I like his argument for this meaning.  I think in the process he’s convinced me that all the Spartan goddesses descended from Perseus' daughter Gorgophone can claim epithets of Bright and Shining.  I love the notion that the 'Torch" Helen wed "Paris, the firebrand of Hekabe’s dream," #2. Helen as “Seer and Helen’s supernatural ability to see are well documented by Homer.  I think the fact the male version of the name; Helenus "is the seer among the Trojans" really does support this notion.  I love the fact that Helenus' twin sister Miss Alexandra (Cassandra) is a seeress just like their sister-in-law Mrs. Alexander (Helen as Paris' wife). I might point out that Helen's cousin, Lyncheus, brother of Idas, saw real well too.  Etymology 5 ‘seize’,   So, Marpessa wife of Helen's cousin Ida's got seized just like all the other of the women in that family.  Oh let’s not forget that Helen’s brothers were seizers too. Nagy argues that the names of a hero's sons are often seemly epithets of the hero.  Do the names of the children of Helen, Hillarie and the Phoebes support any of your etymological arguments? 

Lenny Muellner wrote  Helens Fatal Attraction and Its Inversion.  What a great piece demonstrating Helen's gifts as poetess, singer, lamenter and chorus leader.  My question is about the comment that his whole story started.  The seer Helenus sent his brother Hector into the city?  Why? To send their mother on a futile mission to Athena? So Hector could say goodbye to his wife and doomed son?  To have an aborted conversation with theoretically the most important of the women Helen? Was Helenus in the process of switching sides and wanted Hector off the battle field for the benefit of the Achaeans?  Is it a plot device by Homer to allow for one of the most moving scenes in history?

 

“The Homecoming Queen” a guest post by Timothy Banks at Hour 25 considering the character of Helen.  Banks worries about how much choice Helen has in obeying Aphrodite when she sends Helen to bed with Paris, “also her original voyage to Troy”  He concludes Helen was “a reluctant tool of the gods”. He describes a Helen with an “amazing power” of quick perception that can recognize a goddes in disguise, Telemachus’ paternity with just a glance and a Greek hero dressed in the rags of a beggar.  “Helen shows another amazing power, the ability to mimic voices.” And finally compares her to the goddesses Circe and Calypso who “possessed of dangerous sexual allure and mysterious knowledge.” 

Hmm, amazing powers, dangerous feminine sexual allure, and mysterious knowledge; sounds like we are talking about a goddess, not a woman.  I would argue that Helen is not a reluctant tool of the gods, but rather one of the gods, herself.  Too often we think of Helen as merely another mortal woman.  Clearly she is not.  We should not judge her in terms of the laws and limitations of mortals, but rather by the nature of the gods.  Can Ate not tempt men and gods to foolishness?  Can Aphrodite not inspire emotion in men and gods?  She can’t even stop being beautiful in disguise.  Likewise, Helen can not stop being who she is; Epic itself.  She is “the face that launched a thousand ships.” She is the Muse of god-like Homer.  If her words and deeds seem to contradict one another, all the better to maintain Homer’s famous neutrality.  All the better to play Achaean and Trojan against one another.  All the better to attain her destiny in the Isle of the Blest and in the pantheon of Sparta.

 

 

 

 

 

TFBT: Unwove the Tapestry of his LIfe

If you are a bibliophile, I am sure you know the following experience.    On a long flight or in a remote location you get stuck reading a book that is a piece of propaganda full of lies and half-truths.  In order to save someone else from getting sucked into this mess you toss it into the garbage rather recycling or donating it to the library.   Or is it badly written and has a lame ending.  Or it is full of illogic and bad science.  Or the author makes a state of general and universal application that this is an "obvious projection of..." If it is so obvious why must the authoress point it out?    I read one of these books recently.  (Walker 1983). I would have tossed it but I was on a five hour flight. In between the waves of nausea and disgust there were a few interesting if odd insights on Greek mythology.  This is the second in a series of blogs investigating these possible gems in the rubbish. 

“As long as Penelope refrained from cutting her thread, Odysseus couldn’t die.  So he survived many dangerous adventures while she wove and unwove the tapestry of his life.”  Walker 1983 

If you don’t know the story of Penelope and Odysseus, here it is in a nutshell.  The mortal Queen Penelope stayed home twenty years waiting for her wandering husband to return from Troy.  At some point suitors began to arrive; one hundred and eight of them.  She attempted to forestall choosing one by announcing that she could not wed until she finished weaving a shroud for her father-in-law.  Each night she unraveled that day’s work.   

Many societies sing of a group of goddesses who weave the destinies of the gods and men.  In Greek they are the Fates; Clotho the Spinner, Lachesis the Measurer and Atropos the Cutter.   

What’s interesting and ironic about the quote above is that seems real similar to Helen of Troy weaving in Book 3.121 of the Iliad;  

“Iris…found Helen in the hall, where she wove a great purple web of double fold, and thereon was broidering many battles of the horse-taming Trojans and the brazen-coated Achaeans, that for her sake they had endured at the hands of Ares.”

Many commentaries noted this moment.  (Of course I am on a jet at the moment and have no access to references.) What they note with this passage is that the goddess Iris is about to enter the room and order Helen to lay aside her works and come see the duel for her hand.  All the Greeks and Trojans have set aside their arms.  It is as if as long as Helen weaves about the war the armies rage.  When she stops weaving of battle scenes, they cease to exist.   

The problem with the statement that Odysseus "survived many dangerous adventures while she (Penelope) wove and unwove" is that he was in no danger-when she began to weave the shroud.  As a matter of fact for most of her weaving he was the well-kept lover of a powerful goddess.   

Still an interesting notion.

 

TFBT: Winged Furies and Snatched Girls, Part I

On July 7^th, at Hour 25 we begin the study of the “Oresteia”; a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus starting with “Agamemnon”.  In the Iliad, during the funeral games for Patroclus, (XXIII 326-343) Nestor famously and in beautiful detail advises his son on how to win a chariot race, specifically how to turn the post at the far end of the race.  Universally, scholars and researchers acknowledge that his advice has nothing to do with turning-posts.  I am coming to the conclusion that Aeschylus’ play “Agamemnon” has nothing to do with King Agamemnon. 

Rather the play is about; Furies, generally called Erinyes and children.  The Erinyes are more ancient gods than the Olympians, born of the divine ichor split when the primordial sky-god Uranus was ambushed and castrated by his own sons.  The Erinyes are fearsome, gorgon-like, winged goddesses clothed in black with serpent-entwined hair and arms.  The children we discuss here are young women, little boys and unborn baby bunnies.

 "… when Aphrodite went up to high Olympus to entreat Zeus to let these girls (Pandareus’ daughters) attain the moment of happy marriage ... the Harpies snatched them away and delivered them to the ministrations of the detested Erinyes." Homer, Odyssey 20. 68

Helen as Victim

The first reference to lost children is at line 49, starts with a pair of eagles screaming as they circle over their empty nest.  Screaming because they have lost their nestlings.  The winged wrathful creatures represent Agamemnon and Menelaus.  Though unnamed the fledgling snatched from their nest was Menelaus’ young wife Helen.  Aeschylus makes a habit of not naming characters in their “victim” role .  Iphigeneia herself is not named until line 1527 out of 1672.   Helen is snatched up by Paris and taken to Troy.  Helen was also snatched up by Theseus as a child and taken to Athens , snatched up by Menelaus at the end of the Trojan War and taken home, if we are to believe Stesichorus and Hilda Doolittle snatched by some deity (Hermes?) and taken to Egypt. Helen ever the handmaiden of the Erinyes is the tool Zeus’ uses to destroy Troy for the sins of Paris. She is called “a vengeful Eriny to be lamented by mourning brides.” (749)

Doe and Kits

Next reference to children is at line 119 where two eagles devour a rabbit bursting with a litter of kits ready to be born.  According to Calchas, the doe represents Troy and the atrocities that will be committed by the Achaeans on the night the city falls.  Oddly enough these two eagles (Agamemnon and Menelaus again) are the same eagles sent as Erinyes by Zeus to punish Paris' transgression of the laws of hospitality. (55)   

It is interesting to contrast the unborn bunnies with a litter of Argive beasts, (850) like lions  born from the belly of that wooden horse that leapt down and gorged themselves on royal blood.  Philip Vellacott in the Oresteian Trilogy (1956) points out that “locos” means both “litter” and “ambushers”.  He says that it is used here in reference to the Achaeans in the belly of the wooden beast.

The Unnamed Child

155 “It is a treacherous keeper of the household. It is an anger   that remembers, and it comes with punishment for whatever happened to a child. Such dire things did Calkhas proclaim,”  It struck me odd on first reading that Calchas didn’t say “Iphigenia”, but her name isn’t mentioned until line 1555.  Otherwise I would have expected “daughter”.  That not being said I wondered for moment if Aeschylus allowed for the death of the Broteides here.  The unnamed boy was the son of Clytemnestra’s first husband.  The child was son or grandson of Broteas, the ugliest man who ever lived.  As Clytemnestra avers in “Iphigeneia at Aulis” by Euripides “by force that thou didst take and wed me, after slaying Tantalus, my former husband, and dashing my babe on the ground alive, when thou hadst torn him from my breast with brutal violence.”  But the little boy, never named like the other victims in this play is never referenced. 

Thyestes Sons

At line 1095 Cassandra in fearsome trance points out “Behold those babies bewailing their own butchery and their roasted flesh eaten by their father!  The chorus doesn’t acknowledge that they know about “Thyestes' banquet” until several hundred lines later.  The boys, who the poet does name, but others have,  are Agamemnon’s cousins butchered and boiled up for a stew given to their father to eat.  Their father Thyestes suffered this vengeful deed in retaliation for sleeping with this brother’s wife.

Iphigeneia

And the finally we come to Iphigeneia taken up by her father’s ministers, her saffron robe falling from her,  and raised on the altar of Artemis and sacrificed in order to charm the Thracian winds.  (235 & 1414)  “Artemis, however, snatched her away and transported her to the Tauroi, making her immortal, and put a stag in place of the girl upon the altar." Stasinus of Cyprus or Hegesias of Aegina, Cypria Fragment 1 

Summary on Snatched Children

The snatched children in “Agamemnon” consist of Helen, the unborn bunnies, Thyestes' Sons and Iphigeneia.  Of the kits I can write no more, but continue to ponder and contrast them with the brood of the Wooden Horse. 

I find it interesting the both Helen and Iphigeneia became goddesses. Helen alongside her brothers and sisters-in-law were worshipped at Therapnae and she was divine patroness of sailors.  Iphigeneia was either one of the Artemis nymph-companions or confounded with Hecate.  Admittedly deification is a common destiny for the descendants of Gorgophone, but still one wonders at the coincidence. 

Likewise, I wonder at the lack of heroic honors for Thyestes’ sons.  Snake-bit baby Opheltes was given heroic honors and a PanHellenic game by the Seven Against Thebes.  Medea’s children got “solemn festival and rituals” according to Euripides (Medea 1377).  The boys' grandfather Pelops was reborn with physical perfection and later heroic honors at the Olympic Games.

Part II will concentrate on the appearance of the Erinyes in “Agamemnon” by Aeschylus

TFBT: Agamemnon's Refusal of Chryses' Ransom

At Hour 25, Harvard and the Center for Hellenic Studies' community-development project we are discussing Agamemnon's Refusal of Chryses' Ransom. 

If you don’t know the story you can read more about it in the Iliad.  Chryses, the priest of Apollo comes to the Achaean camp before the walls of Troy to ransom his daughter.  The Greeks called her Chryseis; that is Miss Chryses.  Agamemnon refused the ransom and sent the priest way with dire threats.  No too smart!  His decision and threats “brought countless woes upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes, and made them themselves spoil for dogs” (Iliad 1.2)  I would like to suggest that for Agamemnon, Chryseis was not  “a girl, just one girl”, but rather the latest in a series of “daughters” he’d lost.  He simply couldn’t lose one more. 

Loud rang the battle-cry they uttered in their rage, just as eagles scream which, in lonely grief for their brood, rowing with the oars of their wings, wheel high over their bed, because they have lost the toil of guarding their nurslings' nest. Aeschylus (Agamemnon 47) 

Helen was barely of marrying age when she married Agamemnon’s younger brother.  However, the most beautiful woman who ever lived was kidnapped by a prince from Troy.  At the discovery of her disappearance, the poet compares Agamemnon to an eagle that’d lost a fledgling, that is a father eagle that’d lost a child. 

Not long afterwards Agamemnon loses his own daughter Iphigenia at the Port of Aulis.  Regardless of the gory details, Agamemnon the father lost another daughter.   

In the opening scene of the Iliad Agamemnon is faced with the loss of Chryseis.  She is replaced with golden-haired Briseis, Miss Briseus.  But later Agamemnon makes a great “oath, that never went he up into her bed, neither had dalliance with her” (Iliad 9.278) Is it possible that he never touched Chryseis?  That for all his protestations of love it was actually fatherly love he felt for Chryseis.   

And that when her father came for her Agamemnon could not face the loss of one more daughter?

TFBT: The Experiences of Tiresias Part II of II

 Nicole Loraux subtitled her lovely book; The Feminine and the Greek Man  I reviewed the first half of the book previously.  Here is the second half.

Chapter Seven; The Contradictions of Heracles  

Heracles being the most popular of the Ancient Greek heroes it only follows that he would be the most sung and written about.  All those stories illustrate myriad different aspects of the ultimate male.  She warns us against discussing the characters of Greek myth Heracles as” an actual being endowed with actual childhoods” and suggests instead that,  “If myth is actually something like the collective equivalent of a dream.  Heracles is not the proper object of our analysis; rather we should be analyzing the workings of the Greek imagination…”

Among the contradictions Loraux discusses is Heracles servitude to Queen Omphale.  His mistress insists the mighty hero swamp clothes with her.  This allows Loraux to touch on the hero’s homosexuality and the topic of transvestism.  As an amusing aside, Casanova has a different perspective on mutual cross dressing,“The moment we entered she bolted the door, much to my surprise. "I wish you," she said, "to dress me up in your ecclesiastical clothes, and I will disguise you as a woman with my own things.”...“Our disguise being complete, we went together to the dancing-hall, where the enthusiastic applause of the guests soon restored our good temper. Everybody gave me credit for a piece of fortune which I had not enjoyed” 

Chapter Eight and Nine; The Immortality of Socrates

These two chapters on the immortality of Socrates are, of course, a discussion on the immortality of all men.  But, now unfettered by “actual beings” she seems to leave behind the fact that the Ancient Greeks were indeed actual beings with actual childhood and actual beliefs in the world to come.  A careful reading can follow the logic of her writing to its unsatisfactory conclusion.  But along the way a careless reader or one not schooled in the classics and mythology might get lost in the labyrinth of Platonic quotes. 

•         “…the wind literally blows  the soul to bits when it quits the body and scatters in all directions…”.  Which is contradicted by  “Socrates is leaving, going to some happy land of the blessed, the philosopher’s lot is that which Hesiod reserved for the elite of the heroes of the Trojan War and which Pindar in his second Olympian kept for the favorites of the gods”.
•         She talks about  “Plato’s innovative theory of the immortality of the soul.” as if Homer didn’t  present the options for an immortal soul in the Odyssey
•         She talks  of  “the imaginary journey that Socrates takes under the spell of  civic eloquence, believes himself to have made to the Island of the Blessed.”  and “Socrates, stronger than the (strength of Heracles) in the mythical accounts.”  Is she implying that the afterlife is imaginary and mythical? 
•    And concludes with  “We have tried to read Plato’s dialogue on immortality as an argument playing on two levels; the soul is immortal, but that immortality is upheld by the memorial that was Socrates’ unforgettable body.” 

I can’t make out here what Loraux believes.  Does she think the afterlife is a fable? Does she think the ancients thought the afterlife a fable?  Is her translator true to her intent? 

But maybe there is another issue at hand here.  Not too far from Athens was the town of  Eleusis.  The first great Athenian playwright, Aeschylus grew up there.  It was famous for the Eleusisian Mysteries.  These are two great ceremonies, that theoretically taught initiates the secret to immortality.  Hercules, in  Euripides play of the same name, states that he was able to escape Hades (Death) because he had been initiated into the he Eleusisian Mysteries . The catch was that you could not reveal what you saw or heard there.   The poet Aeschylus grew up in Eleusis.  Several accounts charge him with being indiscreet upon the stage.  The audience rose up and attempted to stone him to death on the spot.  (To quote Loraux “Philosophers desire death, declares the multitude, promptly offering them the fate to which they aspire. ) A trial ensued in which he was acquitted primarily because of his and his brother’s bravery in service to the state.  Maybe Plato wanted to avoid a similar fate and consequently wrote in conflicting terms about the immortality he and his teacher Socrates were sure of. 

 Chapter 10; Delphi Revisited

For those that don’t know the stories of Delphi, I will offer a summary here.  The first thing the twin gods Apollo and Artemis did after their remarkably short childhoods was to slay the serpent Python.  Python had chased their pregnant mother across the world when it came time for their births. In revenge the godlings quickly slew the semi-divine snake.  Then just as quickly Leto’s children went across the world seeking purification for the murder.  In those days, it meant finding a piglet and a king, but for some reason the ceremony didn’t ever stick and it took some time for Apollo to get on with his life.  The first thing Apollo did was found his famous oracle.  He chose Delphi.  It was guarded by Python’s snakish spouse Delphyne.  Quite often in Greek Myth a traveling prince rescues a princess from some asymmetrical monster and as a reward gets her hand in marriage and her father’s kingdom.  You wonder if these monsters are ravaging the king’s territory or protecting his ravishing daughter.  In point of fact, the oracle belonged first to Mother Earth, then Themis, then Apollo’s grandmother Phoebe who turned it over to him.  Most mythologists consider Phoebe no more than a place name on a family tree.  Loraux agrees with all that and uses it to demonstrate that “The feminine; the primitive, the obscure, the completed, the time that has passed and therefore I always pat or better that has been assimilated by what came after “ 

The thing that came after in this case is the rule of Zeus and submission of the feminine to the male rule.  And yet, the first book of the Iliad proves that the will of Thetis is greater than all the gods combined.  Can the Fates now be denied?  And wasn’t it a goddess who orchestrated every revolt among the gods?

 She then argues that ” the end of the story (Apollo presiding at the Oracle on Zeus’ behalf) gives meaning to the beginning.”  Well to use an Ancient Greek word; “dh!”  Clearly that is how a story teller shares his tale.  Still can we be sure the heavy handed Fates don’t do the same.  Conversely, maybe our Dreams (which Loraux belittles), our all-powerful self-regenerating Memories and the Stories we choose to tell, all slay the alternative destinies that lay before us and drives us head long into our own self-chosen fate.

She also has some great insights on menis; a famous Greek word for wrath with cosmic consequences.  It is the first word in the Iliad.  She says, “Menis: anger as memory, the most fearsome name for fury, an ill-omened word that even the gods and Zeus himself do not dare to call by its proper name, since perhaps only the

Erinyes do not hesitate to speak of their own menis…Memory that takes the form of wrath poses a danger for all others.  It is something to be feared and avoided.”  And ends with “Menis has been brought to an end.  It had to happen for the order of the world and myth has the task of telling this story.”

Chapter 11; The Contradictions of Helen

If you read about Helen, you know the wondrous mystery that is she.  If not, Loraux covers the topic wonderfully. 

 “So in the beginning there was Helen…If in the beginning there is war, at the beginning of the war there is always Helen and the painful lewdness that Paris chose on fine morning in a cool vale of Ida.”  All of which reminds me HR’s comment in Helen in Egypt, “The admitted first cause of all time and all history.”

She reminds us that “Helen first appears in the poem seated at her loom and the figures that she traces in to the purple of the cloth say it all in the silent language of her weaving: There she draws the trials the Trojans and Achaians have undergone for her and the blows of Ares”

Then after reciting all the contradictions that Helen can be she recalls that, “Stesichorus” speaking of Helen’s travel to Troy says, “No, it is not true that you have gone…No you didn’t got to Troy, only your double followed Paris.”  Helen was “far away in the land of elsewhere that for the Greeks is Egypt.”  And quotes Menelaus, “To have labored for a phantom made of mist, labored for wind, labored for nothing, this is more than Helen’s husband can bear after ten years of war and long wanders.  And when he cries out, the immensity of my trials here below alone convinces me and not you. “

Chapter 12: What Tiresias Saw

You would think that a book about the feminine and the Greek man would use the story of Tiresias living as a woman for seven years as a key concept, but Loraux says, “Tiresias did not see the coupling of two snakes.  It  follows that he was not transformed into a woman and did not have to become a man once more, before being blinded for incautiously intervening in a dispute between Hera and Zeus concerning the intensity  feminine pleasure.”  Loraux goes with the story that Tiresias’ blindness occurred when he saw Athena nude in her bath with his own mother and then hints about bisexuality.  She mentions several other rather possibilities, each more abstract than the last.  The most solid argument being, “Callimachus’ Athena…explains that she has nothing to with this punishment which is certainly horrible but is a result of the ancient law of Cronus: one cannot behold the gods against their will.”

In short let me recommend The Experiences of Tiresias. Loraux’s dense beautiful writing evenly covers the depth and breath of Ancient Greek literature in search of what it means to be a man sharing enlightenment.  

Try the quiz on the above at  http://gotoquiz.com/V4ZdG