tion in the Iliad, while, on the other hand, he gave to their temporary defeat I.

Problems of the Homeric Helen

such validity that thereafter it was considered as one of the main elements of
the history of the Trojan war - so much so, that later scholars were led to be-
lieve that they had to do with a very old motif of the myth. 37

Is the author the best critic of his work? I cannot tell. I believe, however, that
a scholar who has dedicated the better part of his life to the study of Homer A. Helen in the Iliad
,: may be allowed to Myov 8to6vat for his work. Whether or not in his striving
1
·11
.., for a better understanding of Homer's work he succeeded in throwing light on
. !
certain problems of the Homeric epics, is a matter for future research to judge. After reading the Iliad the impression we generally have of the state of Helen's
ii Perhaps Kirk (I) p. VIII is right in maintaining that, "in Homeric studies one mind, confined as she is for at' least ten whole years in Troy, is that the heroine
Ii,,'I can be grateful even if a single new and valid point is made in many pages of has in the meanwhile deeply repented of her former conduct. She calls herself a
writing." shameless creature er 180; Z 344; 356) for having deserted her home, her daugh-
er
ter, and her kinsfolk in order to follow Paris 173ff.); she wishes she had perish-
37 See chapt. II of this book pp. 64 ff. ed in misery before she came away from Sparta er
173; n 764), or that, on the
day she was born, a storm had swept her off into the mountains or the sea
(Z 345 ff.); she feels she is a hated stranger among the Trojans, especially after
the death of Hector who used to protect her (Q 774 f.). Moved by the same
sentiment of shame and repentance,1 she begins to feel an aversion for herlover
(r 428 ff.; Z 350 ff.), as well as for Aphrodite, the goddess who involved her in
this adventure (r 399 ff.).
All these manifestations of repentance lead us to the assumption that Helen
! willingly followed the Trojan prince, in other words, that it was a case of
I wilful elopement and not of violent abduction. Yet there are other passages in
the Iliad which appear to contradict this conception. In B 354 ff., Nestor, in
his attempt to encourage the Achaeans, advises them to be in no hurry to
return home,
· 1tpiv nva mip Tprorov aMxcp KataKoiµ110fjvai,
ticracr0at o' 'EMv11i; 6pµiJµata 't'E crtovaxai; 't'E.

Nestor could not have spoken in such a way about the Helen we saw in the
above passages, for, if the Greek lady had followed Paris out of her own free
will and afterwards wept in repentance, how could the Trojans reasonably be to
blame for the abduction? For the revenge to be justifiable, it was necessary that
the violence later to be exercised by the Achaeans against Trojan women should
be in repayment for the violence that Paris exercised on the Greek lady by
abducting her. 2
1
Cf. what she says in r 241 f.: It seems that my brothers are unwilling to take part in the
:fighting atcrx;m OEtoi6tE,;Kai 6vEiom rc6'AJ.,'a µoi fonv. Cf. also 139 ff., where, however,
the longing of Helen for her former husband, her homeland, and her parents appears to be
roused at this moment by Iris.
z Willcock 23.-Eustathius (237, 25 f., in B 356) tries in vain to avoid the contradiction by

24 25
 The above reasoning is even more valid for B 589 f., where it is stated about
Menelaus himself that µa11.tcrm(oE) ie-ro 0uµcp / ncracr0m 'E11.tv11c; 6pµ1)µai-u
-rs crwvaxac; -rs - of the innocent Helen abducted, of course, not of the adul-
teress. Can it be that in this stereotyped verse lies a latent variant of the myth,
where Paris was presented as abducting Menelaus' wife unwillingly?
There is still another observation to be made: In r the Achaeans and the
Trojans agree that Menelaus and Paris will fight a duel, and whoever is the
winner gets Helen (136 ff.):
Au-rap 'A/1.e~avopoc;Kai ap11icpt11.oc;
Msve11.aoc;
µaKpijc; erxshJcrt µax1)crovi-m nspi crsio,
-rip ot KB vtK1)cravn cpt11.11 aKomc;.
KBK"-110"1J
It is with these words that Iris brings the news of the decision taken by the
two armies to Helen personally. (Cf. also 69 ff.; 90 ff.; 253 ff.; 281 ff.). But
nobody asks Helen if she accepts this agreement. There is no doubt that such
an arrangement ignores Helen's rights as a human being. She is a precious but
lifeless object, and it is the outcome of the duel that will settle the question as to
whom she will belong; there is no asking what her sympathies are and whom she
prefers.
There is yet another point: If Menelaus accepts Paris' challenge to a duel with-
out any objection, this means that he lays no blame on his wife for the whole
adventure; in other words, the presumption of the duel is that Helen was carried
off. It is this very expression that Paris uses when speaking to Helen in r 443 f. :
ouo' O't"BO"B 1tpmwv AaKBOUtµovoc;E~ Epai-sivf\c;
ap1ta~ac;EV1tOV't01t6potcrtVEBO"crt.
E1tll.BOV
That is why Menelaus has but to settle matters with the abductor; Helen herself
remains beyond blame.
A third observation: Paris did not only abduct Helen from the palace of
Menelaus; he also carried away a large part of his wealth. That is what Mene-
laus accuses the Trojans of in N 626 f.:
resorting to a compromise solution: 6pµ11µma µev MyEt ti'Jv e~ apxfli;; tJCoucr(ave~ ap1myfji;;
e;\.Eumv m'itfji;;Eli; Tpo{av, crtovaxai;; oetov em toutoti;; µEtaµEA.ov.-Other ancient critics
preferred to overcome the difficulty by upholding, against all probability, that Nestor speaks
of the worries of the Achaeans and their sufferings because of Helen: Schol. ABT in B 356.
For modern critics see bibliography in Groten, Jr. 33 n. 1. Groten also tries to reconcile the
various passages of the Iliad. See also Reckford 5 ff. (with sound observations).-Ryan
l15 ff. also finds Helen's character consistent: "Helen is wanton, self-centered, deceitful,
bewitching and beguiling in both poems." Comments are unnecessary.-Tronquart's paper
does not solve the problems concerned here either.-Scheliha 96 ff. gives a general picture of
the heroine.-! have not been able to avail myself the work of E. Voglar, Die Helenasage in
der griechischen Dichtung (1914).
26
oi'. µsu Koup1ot11vu11.oxovKai Kn'lµai-a 1to11.M
µ<'t\Jfoixscr3' &vayovi-sc;,ensi cptMscr3s nap' aui-fj.3
Consequently, we are not dealing with a lover who seduces a woman but with a
robber who carries away the woman who gave him hospitality, taking with him
other valuable things from the palace too.
It is not only in the Iliad that we find this stated; in other ancient sources of
the Trojan myth too, there are data which support the suspicion that Helen is
kept without her consent at the disposition of the men. After Paris is killed, it is
said, and during the period between his death and the actual fall of Troy, Helen
is given to his brother Deiphobus, according to a decision taken by the Trojans,
because Helen us also desired her: wuwu (' All.s~avo pou) OE&no3av6vwc; sic;
ilpiv ilpxovi-m "E11.svoc; Kai A,iicpo~oc;fmEp i-mv 'EMv,ic; yaµrov· npoKpt3evwc;
OEwB A,itcp6~ou "E11.svoc;&1to11.1mbv 4 This story is
Tpoiav EV '101J 01ei-e11.st.
alluded to in the Odyssey (o 276; 3 517 ff.), but it is first mentioned explicitly in
the Little Iliad: Msi-a OEi-aBi-a(that is: Paris' death) A,iicpo~oc;'E11.evrivyaµsi. 5
But how could Helen, who is presented in the Iliad as an integral personality
and who thinks of her husband with such anguish, accept unprotestingly to be
handed from one Trojan prince to another?
The innocence of Helen is also suggested in the information that, after the
sack of Troy, Menelaus takes her back without hesitation: Mave11.aoc;OE
&vauprov'E11.ev11v eni i-ac;vaBc;Kai-ayai, Ariicpo~ov cpovaucrac;.That is what the
lliou Persis tells, 6 and that explains the amicable relations of the couple in the
Odyssey. Later on, of course, other variations came into being, one that the
heroine was compelled to marry Deiphobus against her will, the other that
Menelaus, when after so many years he first encountered her during the sack of
Troy in Deiphobus' house, dashed at her, sword in hand, to kill the adulteress,
but she artfully disarmed him by laying bare her bosom. 7
Anyhow, even if we put the other tradition aside, there is evidence in the
Iliad which prevents us from forming a consistent conception of Helen's
behaviour and mental state. Contrary to the general picture of the repentant
guilty woman, as she characterizes herself, there are other passages where she is
spoken of as an innocent woman who weeps in distress because she was taken
away from her kinsfolk, and finally there are other passages which present her
as a res, without feelings whatever.
3
Cf. r 70; 72; 91; 93; 255; 282; 285; 458; H 350; 362 f.; 389 f.; X 114 ff. Excepting H 362 ff.
(and 389 ff.), where Paris separates the goods he has seized, the woman and the JCtT]µata
always appear, syntactically at least, to be of equal value. According to Cypria (11 K.
101 f. S.) ta 1tA.EicrtalCtT]µata ev3eµEVOl(Paris and his men) VUJCtoi;;0:1to1tMoucrt.
4
Apolld. Epit. 5, 9.
5
Procl. Chrestom. 75 K. (=216 S.).
6
Procl. Chrestom. 92 K. ( = 259 f. S.).
7
Tzetzes Posthom. 601 (0:EJCoucraveM:iv).-Eurip. Androm. 627 ff.; Aristoph. Lys. 155 f.
27
 We shall not make use of these discrepancies in order to assist the Separatists
in decomposing the Iliad; nor can we agree with the recent theory of Van der
Valle, namely, that Homer presents Helen as having been abducted, instigated
by his desire, as a Greek, to relieve Helen of the responsibility, and throw it all
on Paris, s because, as we have seen, in the Iliad the concept of a guilty Helen
prevails, even in r, where Paris uses the expression apmi~ac; (444).
At a time when the myth has not yet acquired its final form and every story
circulates in a number of variants, it is no wonder that a poet finds it difficult to
keep absolutely firmly to the pattern of the myth he originally has chosen to
base his work on, especially when the latter is so long. We shall go a step further:
he is indifferent to absolute congruity-if we accept that he himself at times
becomes aware of the inconsistencies-when in this way he can serve the special
poetic purposes of each scene. Thus, a few years ago the Belgian scholar Seve-
ryns proved that Homer presents Thetis on one occasion as living continually
with Peleus in Phthia (L 59 f.) and on another as having returned to her father
in the depths of the sea (e.g. A 357 f.), according to the poetic requirements of
his story. In other words, she appears in the epic sometimes as the 'chatelaine
epique', and at other times as the 'ondine du conte', who manages to get away
from her mortal husband. 9
The poet feels not only that he has the right to follow old variants of the same
legend but also that he can himself invent new variations, when impelled by
poetic requirements. Thus in the Odyssey, on one occasion, he tries as best he
can to free K.lytaimestra from the responsibility for the murder of her husband
-cppwi yap KEXPTJ'tuyaSijcn, y 266--, while elsewhere he presents her as an
accomplice, if not the chief author of the slaughter (1 453, mipoc; OEµi, 1tEcpVE
Kai aut6v). 10
We shall presently see if the recurrent inconsistencies in Helen's character, as
presented in the Iliad, can be justified each time by the poetic plan. But before
we do that, I should like to examine another matter: Can the three pictures of
the heroine, as they are given in the Iliad-guilty but repentant, grieved and
innocent, a lifeless captured object-be naturally interwoven in the develop-
ment of the myth? Let us put the question in another way: Are all the variants
free inventions of Homer, or had the pre-Homeric tradition in its various stages
of development already given them these forms, from which Homer had but to
choose every time the one that suited him best?
How does the narrative of Helen's coming to Troy begin? Three goddesses
compete as to who is the most beautiful. The judgment will be pronounced by a
s v. d. Valk (II)16 ff. See chapter II of this book.
9 Severyns (II) 940 ff. See also Lesky {IV) 401 ff.
10 See Bethe 2, 272 ff.; A. Lesky, Wiener Studien 1 (80) 1967, 10 ff.-Cf. in the Iliad the pas-
sages referring to the future fate of Achilles: In A 352 and 416 ff. his early death appears as an
absolutely certain fact; in I 410 ff., however, the hero is still in control of his fate. Cf. :E95 ff.
28
prince, Paris, who is grazing his flocks on the mountainside. One of the goddess-
es, Aphrodite, approaches him first and secretly promises to help him win the
most beautiful woman in the world, if he gives her the preference. Paris accepts
the proposition, and as a result Aphrodite gets the apple, the symbol of beauty.
In accordance with her promise, she later helps Paris abduct Helen.
The woman thus abducted cannot be considered as answerable for the deed.
Certainly she is extremely beautiful; but when the goddess and the young man
concluded the agreement, neither thought of asking her opinion first, whether
she would be willing to leave her native land and kinsfollc in order to follow a
lover.
This picture of Helen seems to be in agreement with the terms set forth by
her father Tyndareos to the suitors who competed for her hand: that they all
help the future husband of his daughter, whoever he might be, in case anybody
should carry her away-by force, of course, and not of her own accord. Cf.
what is said in this connection by Hesiod in Helen's Suitors (fr. 204, 81 ff.
M.-W.):
oc; OEKEVuvo prov
Pt1J, VEµEcr(v,:' un[o]Sei,:o Kai ai8&,
au,:oc;E/vOt'l:O
1:ovµfaa navtac; avroyi,v (scil. Tyndareos) ao1v11.foc;6pµ11Sfjva[t
7tOtVl]V1:EtcroµEVOUt;.
We are still in the epoch when woman is a K1:fjµa, exceptionally precious,
when she is beautiful. Aphrodite promises Helen to Paris, as she might have
promised other Kt11µata, golden jewelry, valuable vases, finely wrought arms,
steeds etc. Helen is nothing more than a beautiful lifeless doll.
This doll was named Helen by some ancient epic poet; why he chose for his
heroine the name of an old vegetation goddess, I am afraid we shall never know,
in spite of all efforts to this end. u At all events, he could not even imagine what
would follow, when this lifeless being would one day come alive-like the statues
in Rhodes which suddenly began to wallc, delivered from the bonds of immobi-
lity, epya OE1,;rooicnvtpn6v1:1,crcrl,9.' 6µoia KE1wSot cpEpov·/ i'jv OEK1foc;
pa,9.6;12 in other words, what the consequences would be, when in later years
poets would attempt to make of Helen an integral personality with a will and
desires of her own; when they would make her react, in some way or other,
against her passing from one man to another; or, what is more, when they would
try to change the externally motivated act of abduction to an act of willing
elopement.
Habent sua fata fabulae! The truth is that the myth itself demanded the
transformation of the apathetic creature, that Helen originally was, to a respon-
u See Nilsson (II) 1, 315 and 475; Focke 392 ff.; E. A. S. Butterworth, Some Traces of the
Pre-Olympian World in Greek Literature and Myth (1966) 174 ff. Cf. Lesky (V) 71, 18 ff.
12
Pind. 0/. 7, 52 f.
29
 sible personality. This woman was compelled to desert her husband and her
daughter, and to follow a stranger. Her abduction caused a long disastrous war.
When her husband won her back, wealthy Troy, the fatherland of the abductor,
was laid waste. Amidst so many adventures, Helen, the cause of it all, could not
remain apathetic and irresponsible to the end. The doll had to be turned to a
living being. The poets, therefore, make her react, and also make others react
to her.
What were her feelings when she deserted her husband and her daughter,
her home and her fatherland, and found herself in a strange town among
people who spoke a language unknown to her? And what were her sentiments
as she contemplated her distant homeland, which she had not seen those long
13
years ? How did she feel in Troy, a lonesome Greek woman in a strange pal-
ace, in the presence of the revered parents of her lover, and his brothers and
their wedded wives? And when the Achaeans came and surrounded Troy, and
so much blood was shed, Trojan as well as Achaean, because of her, what might
her feelings be? And what were the sentiments of Priam and Hecuba, when they
saw her daily among them, often as they wept for the loss of a son? And what
did the other Trojans think of her? And what the Greeks outside the walls?
And when the war came to an end, with what feelings did Helen follow her
first husband back to Lacedaemon? And how did she gaze at her daughter who
had grown up in the meantime? And how did she face her friends? And how did
she spend the rest of her life in Greece after an absence of twenty years?
It was the myth itself which had involved Helen in a high adventure so full of
passion and tumult-so much that the poets could not possibly let her remain
lifeless amidst all this bustling crowd of fighters, impervious to all human sen-
timents. It was not only that her beauty was beyond words; she was fated to
become both the cause and the prize of the greatest mythical war. Her abduc-
tion excited so much passion, while, on the other hand, it made all human vir-
tues shine on the bloody plain of Troy, above all bravery, then self-sacrifice,
patriotism, pride and self-respect, loyalty to family and to friends.
And the woman, who was the cause of all this, is inside Troy, in the centre
of the struggle, besieged among the besieged; the Trojans see her daily as they
set out to fight or as they return from battle. From her place on the high walls
she watches the crowds of her countrymen on the plain below, who have for her
sake surrounded the citadel, in which she is being kept a prisoner for ten long
years.
No one can ignore the opportunities presented by the myth to the epic poets'
18
Helen had been absent from Greece for twenty years, as she herself asserts (n 765 f.). The
first ten years, even if they were not covered by her wanderings with Paris, before they reached
Troy, were devised in order to account for the period between Helen's abduction and the
disembarkation of the Achaeans on the shores of Troy.
30
imagination to chisel on the raw marble given to them, in full detail, a form full
of life and energy-i'jv oi:tlfoc; ~aB-u.
The contradictory elements in Helen's character which we first verified in
the Iliad-a lifeless doll, the grieved innocent woman, 14 the repentant guilty
wife-readily fall into place as the myth evolves. Most probably it was Homer
who first integrated the image of the heroine by giving her such a strong perso-
nality. But it seems that even the last stage of the myth-that of the guilty
woman-had already been formulated in pre-Homeric poetry. Homer used the
two first stages every time he needed a more innocent Helen. Thus, when in B
Nestor wants to rouse the Greeks, he speaks of innocent Helen weeping with
sorrow. When again in the nlad the heroine is presented as a lifeless object of
transaction between men, or when we hear in the Little Iliad that Dei'phobus
succeeds Paris in her bed, we know that we have to do with elements borrowed
from older versions of the myth. 16 On the other hand none of the later poets
could deviate much from the old type, however responsible they presented
their heroine to be, since the original core of the myth, Paris' judgment, con- \
tinually suggested an innocent Helen.
2
There have been many sound statements made as to the poetic aims which are
served by Menelaus' and Paris' duel and its consequences (in r and in the
beginning of Ll): the defeat of Paris, the love scene in Helen's chamber, the
wounding of Menelaus. 16 In the scenes of r the causes of the war are given, the
central figures of the myth are characterized-Aphrodite, Helen, Menelaus,
Paris-and light is thrown on the inside of the besieged city of Troy. (The same
is done in Z too, but from another perspective.) The wrong Paris has done, his
illegal marriage with Helen, is summarized in this book and concentrated in the
love scene (437 ff.), where the Greek woman again unwillingly becomes the
love booty of the alien abductor, in spite of the fact that according to the
14 Willcock 23 assumes that 6pµ,;µa'ta 'tE movaxac;; 'tE was a formula applied to abducted
princesses and, therefore, takes B 356 ( = 590) to be originated in a typical theme.
16
Severyns (I) 3, 56 argues that Helen's marriage to Deiphobus is a later addition, when poets
gave Helen more husbands (Theseus, Achilles), an indication, he believes, of an epoch where
religious sentiment had weakened. I would like to discuss the opinions of the eminent Belgian
scholar, who refers to other myths as well, at a more appropriate time. My opinion is that
Helen's marriage with Deiphobus belongs to a pre-Homeric stage of the legend. Her abduction
by Theseus must also be pre-Homeric (cf. r 144). Also Severyns I.e. 16 does not seem to accept
the development of Helen's myth by stages; he believes that the heroine appeared from the
very beginning to have fallen in love with Paris, impelled by Aphrodite. When later on the
goddess's influence weakened, Helen regained her independent judgment and repented.
16
Most recent bibliography: Schadewaldt (I) 151; Krarup (II) 45 ff.; Kullmann (III) 20 ff;
Frankel (II) 74.
31
agreement sworn at the duel (276 ff.), she ought to have been returned to Mene-
laus. The oaths are broken, and they will be broken again later on (A 104 ff.)
in a more violent way, when Pandarus' arrow will wound Menelaus. After this
last violation, the weight of responsibility falls on the shoulders of all the
Trojans. As a result, the continuation of the war to the complete annihilation of
Troy is justified.-The characters of the central figures, who had woven the
plot of this long story in Sparta twenty years before, are not merely described,
but are presented in striking contrasts-typical of Homeric technique: Paris-
Menelaus, Aphrodite-Helen, Helen-Paris.
Everything proves that the duel between Paris and Menelaus, with its con-
sequences, is not just an ordinary event of no special significance; by reviving
the old wrong done by Paris, and by considering all the Trojans as participants
to it, it takes such a perspective and it is so organically bound to the whole,
that we could not possibly extract it from the Iliad, as the Separatists have so
often tried to do. Logically, there is no doubt that it would have been best to
have placed this duel at the beginning of the war, as soon as the Achaeans reach-
ed the Trojan coast in their ships, and before so much blood was shed on both
sides. But our poet intentionally placed it at the beginning of his work, explicitly
referred to as the tenth year of the war, in order to suggest to the listeners,
along with other episodes (such as the Catalogue of the Ships in B, the 'Ayaµt-
µvovoi;;emnci>AT]crti;;
in A), the feeling that we are in the beginning of the war, and
thus give in his poem the entire picture of the ten years expedition. 17
Our attention has often been even more specifically called to the poetic
function of the famous scene in r 146-244, where the Elders at the Scaean
Gate admire Helen's beauty, as introduced to justify the war waged for the
abduction of a woman (156 f.):
Ou vtµscni;; Tpli'.Jai;;
Kai EUKVfJµioai;;
'Axmoui;;
-roiijo' aµcpi yuvm1einoMv xp6vov li11.ysamicrxsiv.
The dialogue of the heroine with Priam is intended to show the character of the
king of Troy and of Helen, 18 also to praise some of the heroes in the Achaean
army; the fact that their qualities are recognized by the king of the opposing
army enhances them even more. For all those who wonder how Priam could
possibly wait ten years before he asked to know the chieftains of the Achaean
army, or that Helen only now is aware of the absence of her brothers (236 ff.),
let us stress once again the point that poetic truth and reality are two different
things. 19
17
See Schmid 97; Bjorck 8 f.; Bowra (Il) 311; Kullmann (III) 17 ff.; Lesky (V) 85, 31 ff.
18
See below p. 39 f. Recent analysis of the Tf:txocncoma: A. Parzy 197 ff.
19
Severyns (I) 3, 10 believes that the Te1xocnco1tiawas an old work of Homer's and that it
referred to the first years of the war. When at a later date the poet decided to compose the
Iliad, he could not bring himself to sacrifice his previous work, and so he inserted it in the
32
That the scenes in r are a creation of Homer-as generally the scenes within
the besieged town are: the scenes in Z and the funeral dirge in Q-there is,
in my opinion, no doubt. One would only like to ask: Is the duel between
Menelaus and Paris a totally free creation of the poet's imagination, or was he
led to it by certain prototypes? When· we speak of prototypes, we do not mean
older poems on the same subject, for then the duel could not be considered as a
creation of Homer's. We mean other myths which excited Homer's imagination
to conceive the general scheme of the scenes in r, and then renew it and orche-
strate it in such an admirable way.
What is the framework of the myth in I'? Two men fight a duel about a
woman, and this woman, the prize of this combat, stands there above them. This
general framework does not sound so very new to us. Let us call to mind the
second stasimon in Sophocles' Women of Trachis (497 ff.); there the chorus
describe the struggle of Heracles with the river Acheloiis appearing in the form
of a bull. The prize is the beautiful Deianeira, the daughter of Oineus, from
Pleuron in Aetolia. Dei'aneira is there, watching the duel fought by the two men,
who want her for a wife (514 ieµsvoi 11.sxtrov):
a o· su&mi;;a~pa
-rT]11.auysinap' ox~hp
525 i'jcr-ro,-rov ov npocrµtvoucr· a1eohav.20
Marpessa is also present, when Idas fights a duel with Apollo for her sake.21
And so is Penelope, when her suitors (and Odysseus) compete as to who will be
winner by skillfully stretching the bow and shooting through the fixed axes.
If Telemachus later asks her to withdraw, he does it so that she may not be
\
present at the hour of the killing of the suitors, and in order that she may later
beginning of the Iliad, but failed in his attempt to adapt it thoroughly to the new circumstances.
-The difference between such a solution and that of the old-line Analysts is not very great;
for if in fact the scene on the walls was not composed especially for the Iliad, where we find it,
but it was an independent older epic, it is of no great importance whether it was composed
by the same poet or by somebody else. The fundamental objection to such compromise solu-
tions, for the only reason of avoiding the clash between poetry and reality, remains always one
and the same: What Priam as a living man could not do he might very well do as a poetic
character.
20 In Heracles' strife with Achelotis Deianeira was represented in the K'.eopou~cpota XPUcrqi
01rivl}1crµeva,which were dedicated to the Treasure of Megarians in Olympia (Paus. 6, 19, 12).
Deianeira appears also in a black-figured hydria (London B 313, CV pl. 79, 2 and 80, 3. Beazley
ABV 360).
21 Represented in two Attic red-figured vases, an amphora (London 95. 10-31, 1. Beazley
ARV2 583) and a stamnos (LouvreC 10834+ Florence 19B 41, CV pl. 19, B 41. Beazley ARV2
361. See Beazley, Charites Langlotz [1957] 136 ff. and pl.18). Represented also in an Etruscan
mirror (E. Gerhard, Etruskische Spiegel [1863] 3, 82, 80).-Homer, who knows the duel be-
tween Idas and Apollo (I 558 ff.), does not mention the presence of Marpessa.
3-Kakridis 33
 recognize her husband in a separate scene.22 We also meet the same theme,
slightly varied, in Hippodameia's legend; here the bride's father, Oenomaus,
competes with each suitor who appears. The suitor drives forth in his chariot,
and Oenomaus pursues him frqm behind in his own chariot; if he overtakes
him, he kills him, according to the terms of the contest. Hippodameia, the prize,
is seated at the side of the suitor in the chariot: -rov µVT}crn:u6µavovll8at
avaA.a/36v-raniv 'ImtoM.µaiav aii; -ro oi'.Kaiovdpµa cpauyaiv.23-In the legend
of Iole too, the suitor, Heracles, competes with Eurytus her father and with
her brothers in archery, and the prize, Iole, is again present. 24
In the Greek myth, everytime the prize is a woman, the woman concerned
is present and watches the contest. 25 What is the meaning of her presence?
1
In old times the prize, whatever object it was-and a woman was considered
an object, as we said-had to be visible to the contestants. This fact responds
1 to a primeval necessity of man that the thing for whose sake he is going to
. strive, often at the peril of his life, should be visible to him, so that he might
)
estimate its value, 26 and then strive to win it. It is for this reason that he who
sets a prize exposes it to the view of the contestants; he does not merely declare
what the prize is, but he also presents it. Thus, in the 'A,9,Aaihti ITa-rp6KAcp in
'I', Achilles brings out of his tent the objects he intends to offer, before any
contest begins (tripods, copper, slaves, horses etc.) and places them before the
contestants, for all to see.27
22 (Jl63 ff. and 350 ff.
29
Apolld. Epit. 2, 5.-Represented in a red-figured amphora (Arezzo 1460. Beazley ARV2
1157).
24
Apolld. 2, 128.-Represented in a black-figured amphora (Nat. Mus. of Madrid 10916
[L. 65], CV pl. 21, 3 and 22. Beazley ABV 508.)*
25
Duels over a woman are mentioned in other old legends as well: Sikelus and Heketorus (or
Skellis and Cassamenus) fight for Pankrato (Diod. 5, 50; Parthen. 19); Dryas and CJeitus
:fight~or Pallene (Parthen. 6); the Dioskuri and the sons of Aphareus fight for the daughters of
Leuc1ppus (Theocr. 22, 137 ff.; Tzetz. Chi/. 2, 48; Ov. Fast. 5, 699 ff.; Hyg. 80). In this last
exam~le, th~ maidens must have been present at the duel between Castor and Lynceus, since
the D10skun had abducted the two women in their chariot and were overtaken on the way by
the Aphareus' sons. In the other cases the brief sources do not mention the presence of the
woman who is contended for.
26
Cf. q, 702 ff.: Achilles sets a tripod for the winner of the wrestling and a female slave for the
loser; at that very moment the Achaeans estimate the value of the prizes, twelve oxen for the
former and four for the latter.-On the other hand, it is not an unusual thing for the man who
offers the prizes to extol their value: q, 832 ff. Thus, I believe, we can explain the hardly proper
praises Telemachus utters in honour of his mother before the Suitors ((Jl107 ff.)· since Pene-
lope's par~nts are absent, it_is her son who presents the iieS1ov (106), extolling i;, in order to
rouse the mterest of the Smtors.-Cf. Germain (I) 24.
27
Fixed terms for the man who arranges a contest: iieS1a EK(Jlepet(\}' 259) and 'tiST]cn
(\}' 263; 265; 269; 270; 631; 653; 656; 740; 748; 750; 751; [796]; 799; 826; 850); 'tiST]cnver;
• I would very much like to thank Miss Franzeska Voudouroglou for her kind assistance in
finding the paintings on the vases which were of interest to me.
34
For the same reason, when the contest is for the sake of a woman, her
presence is necessary. It is not by chance that Sophocles in the _Women of
Trachis, in the stasimon referred above, speaking about the aµcptvBfKT}TOV oµ- '"I
µa vuµcpai;(527), 28 the prize of the contes;, first stresses ~er. beauty (au&mi;),
then also the enticing element of a womans presence (a./3pa)m contrast to the
terrible men contesting for her sake, and finally that she sits TT}Aauyai1tap'
ox,9,cp,in order to be visible by the fighting men, waiting for the outcome of
the duel, or, to repeat the tragedian's words, awaiting -rov ov aKoi-rav,her hus-
band, the one whom the outcome will offer to her (523 ff.).
After this necessary digression let us return to Helen in r. I believe that the
motif of the presence of the 'woman contended for, well-known from other
myths, inspired Homer to bring Helen to the walls, whence she watched the duel
that would determine for her to which of the two men she would finally belong.
I do not minimize the differences between the cases of Dei'.aneiraand Helen. In
Deianeira's case the contest is between men who want to win a woman for the
first time, while in Helen's it is between two husbands, a legal and an illegal one.
Besides, there is another more significant difference to be stressed: Helen is not
visible to the two rivals; at least there is not a word in Homer's text to indicate
that Menelaus and Paris lift their eyes and look at the tower before they begin
their duel. Yet, as we have seen, in the myths which we recognized as preserving
the primeval belief, it is not so important that the woman, who is the object of
the contest, should watch it, as it is that she should be visible to the contestants,
so as to excite their desire for victory and for her possession.-There is yet a
third difficulty which may be put forward: The presence of the maiden during
the duel of the men is found in sources later than Homer; how do we dare take
for a source of inspiration to Homer a motif, the evidence of which belongs to a
later date?
Let us begin with the two first objections: My opinion is that it is in these
very differences that Homer's personality is most strikingly felt, for even when
he resorts to traditional motifs he does not use them as they are, but tries to
renew them by effecting some alteration or other. And this is not the first time
that we find Homer doing this with his sources. Our researches have often led us
to the same conclusion: Homer does not appear as copying integral episodes or
scenes from older epics, as the Analysts insistently maintain; whatever he takes
he first transforms, assimilating it to its new environment, and in this way it
finally becomes his own personal creation. 29
µfocrov (\}' 704); Ka'ta'tiST]cnv(\}' 267; 700; 799; 851; 884 ff.). The prizes KEi'tat (\}' 273).
Cf. Demosth. 1 Phil. 5 eIBe wtrro Ktlc'lir;;eJCetvor;;
on 'ta!l'ta µev ecrnv li1tavm 'ta xrop!' aS1a
'tOCl1to1tµou KE{µev'8Vµfocp.
28
The hypal/age is provoked by the poet's desire to stress the particularly significant epithet by
raising it to the nominative (to oµµa) instead of keeping it in the genitive case.
g See J. Kakridis (III) 9 i.
2
35
 There is nothing so very inconceivable in the fact that Homer takes the motif
of the suitors and transfers it to the two husbands of Helen, considering that the
myth itself which he is handling, formulated many years before, necessitated
this change. And it is at this point that the intervention of the poet begins the
renewal: The figure of the young girl who is the precious prize, for which reason
. she is visible to the contestants, is replaced in Homer by the woman who now
I wat~hes the rivals without being visibl~ to them. By ~eans ~f this alteration the
motif takes on a new and deeper mearung; the poet 1snow mterested not in the
/ reaction of the two men but in how the woman will react psychologically, as she
l watches a duel that is taking place for her sake. This woman one day followed
her _lover of her own accord, yet now repentant she feels her desires turning
agam towards her legal husband and her distant homeland. Such a scene as was
conceived by Sophocles in the choral song of the Women of Trachis, where
Dei"a~eirasits, lonesome and miserable, like a calf taken from its mother (528 ff.
EAElV~V- dµµsv~t-Kd1toµa-rpoi;c'.icpap f3sf3aKEV,
ffiO"'tE
1t6pni; spiJµa), helpless and
subrmss1ve,wa1tmg to be given to the winner, not able to foresee who he might
be-such a scene Homer could not possibly think of for his Helen with her rich
psychological experience. Therefore, Helen is elevated from the site of the duel
where she would be visible to the rivals, to the tall tower so that she may se:
them unseen. By this physical elevation the poet effects her moral elevation
~h~ ~s no longer the pitiable passive creature, but the still beautiful yet no;
mv1S1blewoman, torn by remorse, and aware of her responsibility.
We cert~inly have no pre-Homeric evidence about the motif of the presence
of the maiden for whom men contend, since we have nothing previous to the
Iliad; but only the analysis of parallel motifs, such as that of Deianeira, who is
seen by the contestants, and of Helen, who sees the contestants unseen can
determine their chronological relation, not the oldness of the evidence, ;hich
may depend on chance alone. 30 In our particular case we need not waste much
thought to understand that the motif of Deianeira presupposes an epoch where
the fate of a woman is determined by men alone; she herself has but to wait and
see what arrangement her father will make for her marriage, or what fate has in
store for her, or, as in this case, the outcome of a contest. There is no interest
shown,. as yet, in ~er own feelings. On the contrary, the parallel motif, as pre-
sented m r, reqmres a Helen with a free will, and it must therefore be more
recent.
If the opinion that Homer applies to the circumstances of r the motif
kn~wn ~rom previous myths, of the bride as the prize of a contest is right, as
believe 1t to be, then, by rereading the sixth book of the Iliad, prepared as we
now are, we can point to a detail which proves that the borrowed motif has
so It has ~h~s been proved that in the myth of Meleagros the motif of the stick, in spite of the
fact that 1t 1satt~sted for the first time in the beginning of the 5th. cent. B.C., is older than that
of the curse, which we find already mentioned in Homer. See J. Kakridis (III) 11 ff.
36
affected the Homeric narrative even more strongly. What does Iris say to Helen,
when she announces to her the duel? Paris and Menelaus will fight, -rq'>oa KE
VtKiJcravncpiht KEKATJO"lJ c'.iKomi;(138). The expression KEtliJcrlJ c'.iKomi;fits
Deianeira perfectly, and so it would any other maiden about whom a contest is
set; but it can on no account be considered as fit for Helen, for she has already
been wife to both men. In order to meet the particular circumstances of Helen,
the poet had recourse to another, considerably more complicated form of
expression, at the moment the oath, which requires absolute correctness of
wording (281 ff.), is taken:
El µav KEVMEVBAaoy 'AAal;avopoi; Ka-ra1tB<pV1J,
au-roi;87tE13°'E11,av11v
EX,B'tCO
Kai K-riJµa-ra1tav-ra...
El oa K' 'AA.al;avopovK-rsivu1;av&oi;Msva11,aoi;,
Tp&ai; e1ts1~t''EMv11vKai K-ritµa-ranav-r' anooouvm.
In the scene with Iris, however, the poet preferred to use the incorrect expres-
sion, as it was given to him in the borrowed motif.
If we give free rein to our imagination, we might discover in two more points
of the narrative in r an echoing of the original motif, in spite of its trans-
formation by Homer: We have stated above that the display of the woman for
whom men contend has its source in the primeval desire that the prize be seen
and its value estimated by the rivals. In the scene of r this estimation has been
transferred to the old men, to whom she suddenly appears on the tower and
who are past feeling love and desire (156 ff.). It is they who will now judge
if she is worthy of this combat.
It may also be that the love scene at the end of the book is a remote reminis-
cence of the union of the victorious contestant with the woman he won. This
union followed immediately after the duel; the winner ijpst avnna.11,ouf3iav
nap3avov -rs cruvwvov, to use the wording of Pindar (01.1, 88), who, by using
only one verb (e11,sv)for both the defeating of Oenomaus and the winning of
Hippodameia, suggests, I believe, the winner's immediate union with the
woman after the victory. If conditions are reversed in Homer, and it is defeated \
Paris who wins the prize of the duel, this is so because this reversion is necessi-
tated by the general plot of the Iliad.
I can understand how difficult it must be for the scholars who believe in the
creative genius of Homer to accept that the poet was affected by motifs and
I scenes, already formulated in older poetic works, in the composition of his
own scenes in the Iliad. We can not help but feel disconcerted at the idea that
Homer let himself be influenced, however slightly that might be, by older poets,
particularly in cases concerning scenes which bear the mark of the great poet's
genius. When in the past I tried to prove that the admirable scenes in Z, where
Hector meets Paris and Helen, and Andromache, have been formed on the
37
model of the *Meleagris, 31the critics almost unanimously disagreed with me. 32
ed material and he remoulds it into something new. Thus his ~~nius creates 1
II
e same time he remains tied to the age-old trad1t10n of Greek !I
I am afraid I will have to face a similar attitude to my statement that the scene free1y, whil e at th ri
in r, where Helen watches the duel, while she remains invisible to the contest- epic poetry. I
H
ants, is a variation of the motif of the display of the woman who is the prize of
3 I!
"
the contesting rivals.
Let me insist, if I may: In the Iliad there are no integral small epics inserted; r 161-180, for the first and last time in the lliad, Priam and ~elen face
nor was the whole of the Homeric world created freely by the poet in the way In h Oth and talk: the revered king and the adulteress; the father-m-law and
eac er f hi hi h ·f has to
the novelists of today create heroes and their adventures, each according to his the illegal daughter-in-law; Priam, who by virtue o s g post ton,.
own fancy. I, for one, believe that the influence on Homer of earlier material b besides the grief of the loss of so many sons of his own, also the gne~ and
must have been much greater than we can conceive. As none of the pre-Homeric b:~en of the loss of so many of his subjects, and the st~ange woman "'.ho 1sthe
works exists, we cannot possibly reach a definitive conclusion by comparing it cause of this terrible disaster; the man with all the ex~enence and the kin~ grace
with Homer's epics. Nevertheless, when we are fortunate enough to be able to of his white-haired old age, and the admirably beautiful young woman with her
throw some light on the darkness, I believe we should not be led astray by our deep remorse. . • ul 1
desire to give Homer all the credit at least for the creation of his most famous The nobility of feeling and the courtesy of the king of Troy ts part1c ar Y
scenes, and deny a priori that Homer was to a certain extent influenced by the emphasized in the very beginning, as soon as he sees Helen and calls her to
older epics. This fact can in no way throw a shadow on the greatness of Homer come near to him (162 ff.):
and the admirable scenes in r and Z, real masterpieces, even if we accept that .!l&tlpo1tapo1B-'eAB-otlcra,<pfAovi-e1eoc;,i~eu eµi;io,
he borrowed certain motifs from older works. For with his masterly touch he ocppa mu1tp6i-ep6v i-e 1t6mv m1ouc;i-e cpfAouc; i-e·
succeeded in exploiting them to the utmost, and therein lies his great merit. ou i-{µot ahfTJ ecrcri,B-e0{vu µot ainof &imv,
"Ancient poets and epic poets especially did not think that the greatest possible oi µot ecpmpµ11crav 1t6A&µov1t0Au8a1epuv'Axm&v.
independence of previous writers increases a poet's glory" (Martin P. Nilsson
[I] 33). Although I do not accept the pessimistic standpoint of Combellack <l>iAOV i-e1eoc;:'dear child', which means that he acknowled~es her legally _ashis
337 ff. as to how far we can distinguish between the poetical inventions of daughter-in-law, putting very tactfully aside the abnormality of h:r relat10n to
Homer and those of his predecessors, I believe that he is right when he criticizes Paris.-"Ocppa mu1tp6i-ep6v't'e1t6mv 1tTJ06c; 't'e cpfAouc;
't'e: he surmises w~a~ ~as
the modem Unitarians for their faith that what is poetically good, must, by brought Helen to the tower (cf. 139 f.). Finally he frees her of,all res~ons1bility,
definition, be a free invention of Homer. throwing the blame on the gods: ou tl µot ahiTJ focr{, ~i;?{ vu µot amo{ eimv.
Behind the poet of the lliad there exists in the background the old epic tradi- Then he asks her wlio the man is who stands out so stnkingly among the other
tion, and it is from this tradition that Homer draws the legend of the Trojan Achaeans (166 ff.).
expedition; but he draws motifs and scenes not only from the epics of the Trojan Helen's answer is (172 ff.):
cycle, but also from epics and myths outside the Trojan legend. Great poet that
Aiooi6c; i-e µo{ fom, cpiAet1eupe, Si;tv6c;i-i;·
he is, he has the skill to give a new form and meaning to the material he borrows, roe;o<peAeVB-avai-6c;µot Meiv 1ea1e6c;,61t1t6i-eSetlpo
and to create works that bear the seal of his genius.
u{fa m'.pt1t6µ11v,B-aAaµov"fVCO't'OUc;
't'e At1totlcra
I would like to close this section with an observation I have expressed else-
1taioa 't'e 't'TJAUYB't'TJV
1eai 6µTJAt1Ch]V
epa't'etVTIV.
where :33Homer, as he has been revealed by recent neo-analytical researches, is 'AAM i-a y' ou1esyevovw· i-o 1eal 1eAaioucrai-ti-111ea.
exactly what one would expect a classical Greek poet to be: He does not reject
the old tradition, neither does he imitate it in a servile way; he takes the inherit- She returns Priam's compliment, who has acknowledged her as a legal daughter-
in-law, by adressing him as cpiAe81Cupe.But while he plainly tries to deny her
s1 J. Kakridis (Ill) 46 ff. all blame, she knows her responsibility and before the revered _old'man f~els
32 Schadewaldt (I) 142 n. 3; M. H. A. L. H. van der Valk, Museum 54, 1949, 132; H. North, aio& and ofoc;, and curses herself.34Then (177 ff.) she answers Pnam s quest10n
The Classical Weekly 43, 1950, 238; P. Chantraine, Revue de Philologie 25, 1951, 264; Lesky
(I) 4, 1951, 208 and (V) 72, 68 ff.; V. Pisani, Paideia 8, 1953, 209; St. Kyriakidis, 'EA.A.TtVllca about the Achaean king.
13, 1954, 383. Cf. Webster (I) 250; Dodds 34 n. 45; Heitsch (I) 231 ff. 34 See Schonberger 197 ff.; Lesky (II) 39 f.
33 J. Kakridis (Ill) 10.
39
38

i;
 In Helen's reply one can hear the cry of loneliness of a Greek woman among
strangers, who naturally feel no sympathy for her. "I have deserted my kinsfolk"
(yvonoui;): she could not possibly have kinsfolk among the Trojans. "I have
deserted my daughter": with Paris she had no children. 35 "I have deserted the
friends of my own age": there was not a woman to stand by her and share her
friendship in that palace those ten long years. As she later also says, when she
laments Hector's death (Q 774f.):
ou yap -cfi;µot s-c' liAA.oi;svi TpohJ 1,upef1J
711tioi;oME cpiAoi;,nav-ci,i;oe µ1, ni,cppfKacnv.
Her lover's brothers, their wives, her mother-in-law insulted her (768 ff.).
After Hector's death, who was her protector, except for Priam, who behaves
like a father to her (770), there is not one human being in Troy who treats her
in a friendly way or shows kindness to her. They all shudder as she goes by. 36
Of course Helen found in Troy too a conjugal chamber, but as an illegal wife of
Paris, so this could not be compared to the one she had in Sparta.
If Priam and Helen were living individuals, they would certainly have met and
talked often enough within the fifty-one days of the incidents in the Iliad. As char-
acters in a poem, however, they meet only once in r. Likewise Hector appears as
talking to Andromache only in Z. 37 In r we are given a picture of the relations
between Helen and Paris as they converse in one single scene in the Iliad. 38
In Z we :find Hector talking to his mother (264 ff.) and to Helen (360 ff.); in n
we :findPriam talking to Hecuba (194 ff.) and to his sons (239 ff.). In each case
there is only one scene. Does not this single occurrence of conversation between
so many characters in Troy prove that there is a carefully studied scheme from
the beginning to the end of the poem? In other words, is this not yet another
proof, among so many others, of the unity of the Iliad?
B. Helen in the Odyssey
1 older tradition about the last events of the Trojan war. In the summary of the
We are in Menelaus' palace; it is the moment when Telemachus and Peisistratus
the son of Nestor, are dining with the king of Sparta and Helen on the :firs~
night after their arrival (o 6_0ff.). The atmosphere is depressing, the company
feels sad at the memory of the lost Odysseus (183 ff.), but their humour changes
36 See below, p. 49 f.
88
The feeling of loneliness is also stressed in r 236 ff., where Helen looks in vain for her
brothers among the Achaean warriors.
a7 See J. K.akridis (III) 55.
88
In Z 313 ff. Paris and Helen are together in their chamber but they do not exchange words.
40
abruptly after Helen dissolves in their bowl of wine a magic drug (219_ff.).
Now they can all enjoy the meal and their friendly conversation.
I
I
The topic of their conversation is again-who else?-Telemachus' father; !
but they no longer discuss what he must have suffered on the high seas, and on tl
land, still unable to return to his native Ithaca, if he ever will. Now they speak
of his successful exploits during the siege of Troy, thanks to his sharp wits.
Helen, in answer to Peisistratus' request (193 f. nWot6 µoi· ou yap syro yi,/
-cepnoµ' ooup6µ1,voi; µ1,-cao6p1ttoi;),declares that the conversation which will
follow will be pleasant and proper for dinner time (238 f.):
'H 't'OtVlJVoaivucr,(k Ka3iJµi,vot EVµ1,yapotcrt
SotK6-cayap Ka-caA-el;co.
Kai µ63oii; -cepni,crl}i,·
Of the many feats of Odysseus in Troy only two are mentioned, and these
belong to the last weeks of the siege. The first is told by Helen (242 ff.): Odysseus,
she says, after maltreating his own body and dressing in rags, entered the
besieged city in the guise of a beggar. No Trojan knew him; only Helen guessed
who he was, but when she tried to question him, he cleverly evaded her ques-
tions. When, however, Helen bathed him and gave him new clothes and solemn-
ly swore she would not disclose his identity to the Trojans before he returned
to the Achaean camp, Odysseus told her all the plans of the Achaeans (256
nav-cav6ov Ka't'BA.cl;cv 'Axm«>v). Then, before he left the town, he killed many
Trojans and returned to the Achaean camp, Ka-caOE cpp6vtv t]yayi, 1tOAA.lJV
(258). Meantime the women in Troy raised loud lament for their dead (259 ff.),
au-cap Sµov Kfjp
260 xaip', S1td TJOTI
µot Kpaoi11't'B't'pa1t't'O
vei,cr3at
ll'lf ofK6vo', U't'TIV
OEµc't'SO''t'tVOV,
ftv 'Acppooi't'11
ocox', cl't't µ' fJyayi,Kcicrt cp{A.Tti;
«17to1ta-cpfooi;ai11i;,
naioa -c'eµitv vocrcptcrcraµev11v MAaµ6v -ci,1t6cnv -ci,
oi5 -cw 01,u6µ1,vov,oi5-c'lip cppevai;oi5-ci,n dooi;.
This narrative is not a casual improvisation; it belongs unquestionably to the
Little Iliad, as it is given by Proclus, we are informed that shortly before the
enterprise of the Wooden Horse, Odysseus had secretly entered Troy twice,
the second time with Diomedes in order to steal the Palladium, the ancient
wooden statue of Athene kept in her temple. As long as the Palladium remained :
in the citadel, it favoured the town with its protection and wou!d not let the
Achaeans invade it. His :first entrance, however, Odysseus decided to make
alone, in order to prepare the second, and above all in order to get well aquaint-
ed with the city ofTroy. 39 It is to the :first entrance that Helen now refers.
39
'OoucrcrEui;;
1:EabacraµEvoi;;foui:ov Ka1:acnco1toi;; Eli; '111,10v
1tapay{vEtat, Kai. dvayvmp1cr8Ei.i;;
uq>' 'EMVT}i;;1tEpl.'tfji;; llM))O"E@i;; cruvi:{0Ei:at, Ki:E{vai;;i:e nvai;; i:lov Tpromv eitl. i:ai;;
i:fji;; 1t611,Emi;;
41
 To her objective narrative about the great courage shown by Telemachus' Nmt µEv c'iµcpotEpmµeveftvaµev 6pµT)3Evte
father, when he went among the Trojans alone and unarmed, at the risk of i'( Sse13Eµevm t'tEV003ev aI\jl' 01ta1CoiJcrm,
being recognized at any moment, Helen adds a personal note (259 ff.): she &11' 'Ooucreu£ 1eatEpu1eeKai foxe3ev faµsvm 1tep.
speaks of how, when she heard the lamentations of the women of Troy, she 285 ''Ev3' c'i11i.otµEv 1tavte£ c'i1e11v
foav ufo£ 'Axmmv,
secretly rejoiced because she now longed to return to Greece, deeply regretting ''Avnuo£ OEcrEy' ofo~ c'iµei\j/acr3at S1tEecrmv
that Aphrodite had blinded her, when she decided to follow Paris and forsake i13eA.eV'c'i1i.1i.'
'OoucreU£ sm µacrtaJCa xepcri 1t[ese
her daughter, her home, and a husband who was as good-looking and as wise vm1i.eµEm~ 1epatepijcn, cramcre oE 1tavta£ 'Axaio6£,
as any man could be. -c6cppao' i:x', 5cppacre v6crcptvc'inftyaye IIa1i.M£'A3ftvri. I

It is quite clear that Helen wants to be free, as far as possible, of blame for her
, escape from Sparta in the eyes of the two young men, who are now listening to I should like to make clear one point at the beginning: Many scholars believe I
I,

her and who naturally lay the responsibility of the war on her, the war which, that in the double intervention of Odysseus we have an unallowable repetition
among other things, has deprived Telemachus of his father and Peisistratus of of motif in the same part of the narrative; originally the hero checked either
his brother. (Cf. 185 ff.)40 And her compliment for Menelaus' brains and looks both kings-which is more probable-or Anticlus only. That is why the critics
decided to reject lines 285-289. 41 The same five lines were rejected by Aristar-
has no other objective than to relieve her deceived husband of the difficult
position in which he now is in the presence of his guests. chus too, but for other reasons: 'Apicr-rapxo£ WU£ e' c'i3etel, S1tei sv '!Ataot
Menelaus, on the other hand, senses his wife's wish, and so he tries, as best ou µvriµove6et 'Av-riuou 6 1tOtT)tTJ~.42
he can, not to offend her, when telling about the second feat _ofOdysseus, for in In my opinion, Aristarchus' argument proves nothing; nor is it a question
this episode too Helen played a significant part. The Wooden Horse was now of parallel themes, so that one could say that the one excludes the other, for it
inside Ilium, and the Argives hidden in its belly were waiting for nightfall and is clearly a matter of progressive intensification: In the beginning, as soon as
the signal to rush out and begin the massacre (266 ff.): Helen's voice is heard, both Menelaus and Diomedes are tempted to jump out of
the Horse or give an answer to her from within the Horse. But Odysseus, who is
Nai 011-raiJ-raye nav-ca,y6vm, Kata µotpav i:et1tB£' seated next to them (280 f.), holds them back-let's say, with a push, for he
ftori µev no1Emv soariv ~ou1iJv te v6ov te
cannot possibly talk, lest he be heard by Deiphobus and Helen-and he man-
c'ivopmvfipcomv, 1t0AATIV o' S1tBATJAU3a yarav, ages to make them keep still. The other heroes, with whom Odysseus also finds
&11,11,'
OU1t(O't'OtoiJ't'OVsycov ioov ocp3a1µoicnv,
a means to communicate, do not react. Only Anticlus, who does not suspect the
270 ofov 'Ooucrcrfjo£ -ca1acricppovo£ EO'!Ce cp{1ov!Cfjp.
danger, insists on crying out. So Odysseus has to resort to more drastic meas-
Oiov 1eai-r6o' i:pe~e 1eaii:tATJ1eaptepo£ c'ivrip
ures; clapping his hand on Anti clus' mouth he stops him, until Athene leads the
i'.1t1tq>
EVt secrt{p, iv' svftµe3a 1tllV't'e£c'iptcr't'Ot
Trojan pair away. It is, I believe, clear that all the passage is genuine and there
'Apyeimv Tpcoecrcn cp6vov 1eai1efjpa cpEpovte£.
is no need of any surgical intervention .
...H13e£ i:1tetta cmKeicre, KeAeUcrEµevmOEcr' i:µe11e
Nevertheless, Menelaus' narrative contains many difficulties. Helen, who
275 oa{µmv, 0£ Tpcoecrcnv S~OUAe't'O JCiJOO£ OPESat,
knew of the Achaean ambuscade-for Odysseus had told her their plans (256)-
Kai tot .6.T)icpo~o£3eoe{JCeAO£fo1tet' to6cr1J.
now shows, by the way she acts, that she desires the destruction of the Greeks.
Tpi~ OE1tepicrtetsa£ 1eoi11,ov Mxov c'iµcpacp6mcra,
In the meantime Paris has been killed, and Helen has been married to Deipho-
SICo' ovoµalCATJOT)V .6.avamvov6µase£ c'ipicrtoU£,
bus, 43 who seems now to be an accomplice in her treacherous act. And yet she
nav-rmv 'Apyefmv cpmvftvicr1Coucr'c'i16xoicnv.
herself declared (259 ff.) that towards the end of the war she deeply repented
280 Afrra.p sycb 1eai TuoeioT)£ 1eaiofo£ 'Ooucrcrell£
and longed to return; she had, moreover, conspired with Odysseus. The episode
'fiµevot sv µfocrotcnv c'i1eo6craµevCO£tP6ricra£.
of the Wooden Horse, to which Menelaus refers, is of a more recent date than
the incident related by Helen. Why should she now want to destroy the most
Kai µe,a,ail,a cruv ~toµT]BEt,6 IIMMBtov SICICOµi~Et
Vaile;ll(j)llCVEi't-at. SIC'ti'lc;
'Ii,.iou (82 f.
K. = 224 ff. S.). For more evidence see Bethe 2, 174 f. 41 Ameis-Hentze, Anh. Od. 1, 107; Schwartz (II) 309 (he rejects 285-288); Wilamowitz (II)
40 Lesky (II) 34 stresses rightly that Helen emphatically claims the merit for her change of
116; v. d. Miihll (I) 708, 13 ff. (an addition by'poet B').
feelings and her longing to be back in Greece again, while for her infatuation she declares that 42 Schol. in B 285.
Aphrodite was responsible (260 ff.). 43 Cf. the summary of the Little Iliad 75 K. ( = 216 S.).

42 43
 valiant of the Greeks, and among them Menelaus himself? Why was she again
on the side of the Trojans? Menelaus interprets Helen's behaviour as being
prompted by some god; yet, the vague way in which he speaks (274 f. KEAEU-
ii crEµsvm OEcr' sµsUs / oaiµrov, oc; TpmscrcrtvspouAsto Kuooc;0pE~at) betrays
(1 such uncertainty and embarrassment, that we are convinced that we have to do
l'i
• I
with a momentary inspiration of Menelaus, who tries to find a way of justifying
H Answer to the first point: Inconsistent Helen, now on the side of the Greeks
f' to his guests the inconsistent conduct of his wife.44 Apart from this excuse, the
tradition must be pre-Odyssean, 45 and therefore the contradiction remains
',I
inexplicable.
Second point of doubt: When Helen comes near the Horse, she walks around
it three times, feeling with her hand the outside of it, and she at the same time
calls by name the various fighters, who she suspects or knows from Odysseus
I
are hiding inside; she calls them by name, mimicking the voice of the wife of
I' each one of them.
I,, Helen's going round the Horse three times &µcpmp6rocra (277) clearly has a
magical significance. It is as if she wove an unseen web around those imprisoned
in the Horse, so as to subject their will-power to her spell. What follows in the
narrative, however, provokes strong sceptical feelings: How could a person
possibly mimic the voice of so many women ?46 And how could Helen have
known the wives of all these warriors? How could she remember after t~e~ty
whole years of life away from home the voice of each one of them? An old
Scholiast declares outright: Ilavu ot yEAotoc;ft tmv cprovmvµiµ11mc;Kai &ouva-
toc;. Following his opinion, some modern critics also characterize this story as
'foolish'. 4 7
Third point of doubt: The way Helen tries to dupe the Achaeans shows that
she lacks seriousness, for how could the Greek warriors possibly believe that
their wives could be inside the citadel of Troy? How could the Greek women
have left Greece and got inside the opponents' town, which for ten years now
had been under siege by their husbands? The point is that it is not only Helen
who sounds foolish when she tries to outwit the Achaeans by such ridiculous
44
Cf. C. Robert (II) 1248 n. 1; Bethe 2, 259.
46
See below p. 45.-C. Robert (II) 1247 considers it a free invention of the 'poet of the Tele-
macheia', for the mere reason that it is in contradiction to the preceding narrative ofHelen.-
Riemschneider 67 doubts that we have to do with an old traditional element: "Niemand wird
annehmen konnen, dass hier eine alte Sage zugrunde liegt. Helena versucht ohne Zweck und
Ziel, nur aus Lust am Necken, die in dem Pferd vermuteten Heiden zu reizen." Who can agree
with her?
46
According to the testimony of the Little Iliad (fr. 10 B. =Apol!d. Epit. 5, 14), there were
three thousand Achaeans inside the Horse! The number seems to be corrupt. Stesichorus
(fr. 22 P.) makes them a hundred. Even so, could we say that they were few? Apollodorus I.e.
reduces them to fifty.
47
Schol. in 8 279.-E. Wilst, RE 34 (1937) 1944, 6 ff., s.v. Odysseus; Wilamowitz (II) 116 n. 1.
Cf. v. d. Muhl! (I) 708, 21.
44
means; the Achaeans themselves sound equally foolish, for they fall into the
trap. Not only the light-headed insignificant Anticlus but Diomedes and Mene-
laus as well would have been caught, had not Odysseus intervened. Therefore,
I
t
we have the right to ask how a great poet resorts to an artifice which anybody
would consider naive.
It is time that we tried to answer the doubts we have pointed out above:
and then on the side of their enemies.-For him who meditates on the history
of this woman and follows closely how she gradually takes her form in the
tradition, this is a minor difficulty. For, as we have seen in the first part of this
chapter, Helen as a character must have gone through several stages before she
became the personality that we have in the Iliad. The contradiction we have
stated between Helen standing before the Wooden Horse and Helen in company
with disguised Odysseus is created by the fact that the two stories do not belong
to the same stage in the development of the myth. In Helen who thinks longing-
ly of Greece and to whom Odysseus confides the plans of the Achaeans, we
find the repenting woman, conscious of her guilt, as she generally appears in the
Iliad. On the other hand, we must combine the episode by the Wooden Horse
with a previous stage in the development of the myth, in which Helen was a toy
in the hands of men. And it is Deiphobus who, after succeeding Paris, must
have brought her to the Horse and given her instructions to exercise her art;
she obeys without any objection. The poet of the Odyssey, who borrowed the
episodes from two older epic narratives, 48 was certainly aware of the difficulties
their proximity would cause, so he tried to justify the contradiction somewhat
by adding Menelaus' remark (274 f.).
If we are agreed that Helen's inconsistent character can be explained by the
special conditions of her myth, we can proceed to the second point of doubt:
How could Helen know and mimic the voice of so many women? Here the
critics are very severe: It is unbelievable that a great poet should have allowed
such nonsense. The passage telling of this mimicry must be athetized.
We cannot agree with this condemnation; there is nothing easier than our
inventing a more recent, foolish poet, for the mere reason that we wish to charge
him with what we cannot understand in the text. But such a nai've solution,
which neutralizes any real or hypothetical irregularity by athetizing it, cannot
be accepted. But is there any solution for the case in question?
In order to be able to proceed, we have to elevate Helen's ability in mimicry
to a superlative degree: For a woman who is able to mimic the voices of so
48 According to Proclus' summary, the second episode must be located in the Iliou Persis at
the time when the Trojans eocoxoOvtat ciJ~llltTJA.A.ayµevot wo 1toMµo6u (8 K. = 264 f. S.).
The former belongs, as we have seen, to the Little Iliad. This does not necessarily mean that the
Odyssey is a later work than the two Cyclic poems. Its poet might have drawn from the epics
which later provided the material for the composition of the Cyclus.
45
 many women should be able to do so with the voices of all the women in the
world. 'Of all the women in the world': this reminds us of the man in the folk-
tale who knew the voices and the tongues of all the birds and the animals, and
could converse with them. 49 In other words: We have to do with a motif from a
folk-tale, applied to the particular circumstances of the myth.
In relation to Helen's mimicry Eustathius (1496, 26 ff. in o 279) narrates: ·o oe ye: µ08oi;
(Jl@v6µiµov napaoiococn 'TTJV'EMVT]v, o8c:v Kai 'Hxro (Jlacnv Ktlc:icr8ai aim'jv· Kai o&pov
ai:n:o }..a~eiv £~ 'A(jlpOO{TI]i;,
O'te Eli; yaµov £~eo68ri -r{{lMEVeAU(il, roi;liv, er 7tO'tEnpoi; UAAT]V
6 civ!)p cinovc:ucrc:i,il~EMrxeiv 1:xu airrov -rQ'>-rfji;(Jl@vfji;e!Kacrµ{{l,onoKptvoµeVTJ-r!)v tpcoµe-
ir.
,.'
I.
I
I
vriv, This myth, with its intentional sophisticated character, bears the mark of a Hellenistic
I:! ,I
I,!· concept. Helen appears, from the day of her marriage, armed with this skill, in order to take
Ii,
I, I her husband by surprise in case he would neglect her for another woman, while in fact it
I'
was she who was going to commit adultery. In any case, it proves that the ancient Greeks too
saw in Helen's glossolalia an unlimited skill.
In the Iliad we often find motifs from folk-tales, and even more in the Odyssey, 50
so that we are not surprised at meeting another. It is fundamentally a mistake
to reject the relevant lines with the excuse that in reality there exists no human
being who can mimic the voices of so many people. Why should we be looking
for reality in such tales? It is, however, worth our noting that the poet has
somehow attenuated the strong fairy-tale touch by making Helen mimic human
voices, not those of animals.
In the present case we can also compare our narrative with another narrative
which is not a creation of poetic imagination but the description of a real event. 5~
In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (7th cent. B.C.) the blind bard from Chios
\ describes, among other things, the feast at Delos, where every four years the
Ionians gather with their families to celebrate the god. This feast, one of the
roost important in archaic times, is presented in all its bustle and liveliness
(146ff.). Special emphasis is laid on the song of the virgins of the island, be-
longing to the ritual part of the feast (156 ff.):
Ilpoi; OEi-6os µeya 3ai:lµa, oou tlfoi; ou noi-' 61i.sii-m,
KOi:lpmdl]At<iosi; 'EKCl'tl]~tAB'tClO 3spa1tvm·
ai i-' snsi lip nplowv µEv 'A1t61i.1i.rov' uµvricrrocnv,
aoni; o' Cl0Ai]'tffi 'tt Kai ''Api-sµiv ioxempav,
160 µvl']miµsvm &voplovi-s 1ta1i.mlovfioi;yuvmKlov
uµvov &s{ooucnv,3e1i.youcnOEcpi:l1i.' av3pronrov.
,uSee e.g. N. Politis, Ilapao6creti; (1904) 2, 1136 f.
w See Stella 132 ff. and my article 'Miirchen' in Lexikon der alten Welt (1965) 1808.
51 In 1958 Professor W. Schadewa!dt, on our meeting in Freiburg i. B., informed me that he
too bad noticed the passage in the Homeric Hymn in relation·with Helen's glossolalia, but that
he bad written nothing about it. Cf. T. W. Allen-W. R. Halliday-E, E. Sikes, The Homeric
Hymns {21936)225.
46
Ilavmv o' &v3pronrovcprovai;Kai ~aµ~a1i.iacri-uv52
µtµsicr3' i'.cracnv·cpa{lJoe KEVaui-oi; EKacrwi;
cp3eyyscr3'•OU'tO) crcptvKClA'll
O'UVllpi]pSV&01ori.
The bard speaks in such an explicit way that there can be no misunderstanding.
At the feast of the Ionians, the Delian maidens know how to mimic the voices
of all human beings. What cult lies hidden behind this mimicry is a matter of no
interest to us here; besides we know nothing about it. Meya 3ai:lµa, oou tlfoi;
ou noi-' 61i.sii-m,that is how the poet characterizes it, and it is in this light that
he approaches the fairy-tale world. 53 But if this miracle is presented as taking
place every four years in Delos in the 7th cent., why should we not allow it to
take place in the Odyssey, which, after all, abounds in imaginary elements?
Since the historical Ionians could be deceived that they themselves were the
utterers (163 f.), why should not the mythical Achaeans also be deceived, hidden
as they were inside the Wooden Horse? And if the scholars are right when,
with respect to the Hymn, they maintain that we must imagine the Delian maid-
ens as imitating the various dialects of the pilgrims, 54 why can we not accept
that the poet of the Odyssey imagines something similar in the case of Helen,
calling to each warrior in his local dialect?-Anyhow, whether we accept
Helen's mimicry of voices as altogether imaginary or as a feat somehow attain-
able by a human being, as in the case of the Delian virgins, we have no right to
reject the relevant passage in the Odyssey.
Third and last point of doubt: How was it that the Greeks did not suspect
the trap that was set for them, since their wives could not possibly be inside the
city ofTroy?-Let us try to understand how the mind of the poet of the Odyssey
worked, so that we may surmise how he accepted such a tall story. What excuse
would he give if he were asked by a pedantic listener in the audience: What
made you think of such a thing, since apart from Menelaus no Greek hero
could expect his wife to be within the citadel?
I believe the poet would answer in approximately the following way: The
incident of the coming of Helen and Deiphobus to the Horse I found in the epic
which told of the last events of the war before the Sack. How this epic was related
to the cyclic Jliou Persis is a puzzle which we must let Homeric scholars of the
20th century solve-if they can! The whole story caught my fancy, especially
52
v.l. Kpeµ!JtltaITTUV.
53 In fact it is the Delian maidens that are characterized as 8a0µa, but for no other reason (e.g.
their beauty) than just their song.
54
T. W. Allen-W. R. Halliday-E. E. Sikes I.e.; J. Humbert, Homere, Hymnes (1936)
86 n. 1.; T. B. L. Webster (I) 270 f. and Greek Art and Literature 700-530 B.C. (1959) 9.-
Humbert goes so far as to maintain that the word ~aµ~tltaITTUV refers to the Delian virgins'
mimicry of the tongues of barbarians.
47
 the motif of putting the Achaeans to the test by making Helen mimic the voices
of their wives. Let us not forget they were in an extremely critical situation.
The warriors hiding inside the Horse, all picked for their courage (272 f.
1ta.v·rnc;aptcrwt 'Apye{rov),55waited for hours, sitting in the dark till nightfall.
These hours were among the most excruciating in their lives. The Horse was in
the citadel next to Priam's palace, 66 and they ran the danger of being found out
at any moment by the Trojans, in which case they would be destroyed in the
most ignoble way, defenceless as they were; the Trojans had but to set the
Horse on fire or precipitate it down from their high walls. 6 7
At such difficult moments, there is nothing more appropriate in poetry than
putting the characters involved to the test. In the case of the Achaeans, this
test takes the form of their being called, supposedly by their wives; for this
turns their mind back to their fatherland, to their homes and their families. In
their agony at this critical moment, the voices bring to their minds a vision of
peace and safety. Through the mouth of their women, it is the voice of tempta-
tion that speaks to them; it makes these bold men lose heart at the very moment
their duty calls for the greatest courage.-Such, I believe, would be the poet's
reply.
As we shall see in chapter III of this book, the chief mission of women in the
Homeric epic is to put men to the test; women strive hard to curb men's impetus
for action. The epic poet, who makes the Achaeans suffer the torment of their
wives calling to them at a critical hour, must have had the same thought. This
was for them "the last external force they had to struggle against, from which,
however"-with the help of Odysseus-"they would come out free."58
-Yes, but the wives of the Achaeans could not possibly be inside Ilium!-
Right ! But this is an argument that only a prosaic man would put forward, a
man who weighs the products of imagination on the balance of reality. What
does the poet care if what his mind fancies has no place in the real world? Why,
then, should those who insist on seeing only nonsense in what in reality is an
excellent poetic concept, not charge it against the poet of the Odyssey himself?
In this way we might at least avoid the ghost of the later destroyer of Homeric
poetry.
65
In J..523 ff., when Odysseus speaks to Achilles in the Underworld about the gallantry of his
son in Troy, he contrasts him to all the other warriors who wept and shuddered with fear inside
the Wooden Horse. Undoubtedly the fear of the rest of the t'ipunot is a momentary invention
of Odysseus (that is, of the poet of the Odyssey) in order to extol before Achilles the fearless-
ness of Neoptolemus.
50
Apolld. Epit. 5, 16: (o{ Tp&Ec;Tov tmrov) napa wtc; IIpuiµou f:lacnJ..E{otc; crTf]o-aVTEc;...
67
Cf. Iliou Persis 86 K. ( = 241 ff. S.): rue;
Tct1tEpiTov tnnov o{ Tp&Ec;u1t61moc;sxovTEc;1tEpt-
cSn XPTJ7tOlEiV'Kai wic; µEv (>OKEiKa'taKpl]µvic;m au't6V, wtc; (>E
crTaVTEc;f:louA.EIJOV'tat
KaTacpMyEtv... Cf. Apolld. Epit. 5, 17; Virg. Aen. 2, 36 f.-See also Bowra (II) 101.
68
Dionysios Solomos, ot 'EJ..EuSEpotIIoJ..topKT]µevot, B fr. 11 (IIotfJµaTa, ed. Linos Politis
[1948] 1, 229). Seep. 71 of this book.
48
We have come to the end of our argumentation, and we hope that we have
explained, in a way satisfactory to all, the irregularities appearing in Menelaus'
narrative in 6 266 ff. First, the inconsistency of his wife's behaviour has been
proved to be a regular characteristic of this poetic person. Then, Helen's skill
in mimicking voices has been explained as a varied version of a fairy-tale motif.
Finally, the calling of the warriors' names by their wives has been proved to be
absolutely justified as a poetic device.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to make a few complementary observations:
The contradiction in Helen's conduct is very strongly felt in the scenes of 6, for
the one episode follows the other after only a few lines. It is certain that the
poet of the Odyssey draws for 'the two episodes on two different sources, which
we could by no means expect to agree between them. 69 At all events, these
episodes cannot possibly be inventions of one and the same poet, since each
tale presupposes a different conception of Helen's personality.
Whatever the case may be, it is certain that the poet of the Odyssey has inten-
tionally chosen these two episodes, in spite of the fact that they present two
different attitudes of Helen, for both episodes deal with two exceptionally
intelligent persons, a man and a woman. In the former it is the woman who
senses the cunning of the man; in the latter it is the man who senses the cunning
of the woman. But while in the former case the woman does not hinder the plan
of the man, but, on the contrary, contributes to its success, for the benefit of the
Achaeans, in the latter case the man hinders the woman's plan, again. to the
benefit of the Achaeans. Thus the two episodes are internally bound together so
that we have an admirable balance.
2
In r 173 ff. Helen curses herself for having forsaken in Sparta, among others,
her daughter, naioa 'tTJAUyt·n1v. If we knew the meaning of the epithet 'tl]Mye-
'tO<;,we would perhaps be able to help in solving the problem we are to consider
presently. Unfortunately, neither is its etymology known nor do the interpreta-
tions of the old Scholia throw any light on it. Many varied explanations are
given for the word 'tl]AUyew<;:beloved, or pampered, or only child, or last
born, or child born in foreign land, or born to parents of an advanced age, or an
adolescent child. We are here dealing with a very old epithet, which in the
meantime lost its original meaning, 60 and every poet who used it-for we come
59
See above, n. 48.
60
Milman Parry (235 ff.) was the first to observe that among Homeric words, those whose
meanings remain obscure are limited almost entirely to the category of ornamental epithets.
This phenomenon is easily explained: The epic poets could not use words fundamentally neces-
sary for the meaning (whether substantives, verbs or adjectives as predicates), which could not
be well understood by others, while the typical epithet, borrowed from older epics, was more
4-Kakr/d/s 49
F'''
l'I ~. :
across it in later years too-used it according to the derivation he gave to this In Hesiod we have two testimonies of Hermione's birth. The first follows i!
'!

epithet, or as it best suited him. immediately after the List of Suitors and Menelaus' victory (fr. 204, 94 ff. ii I

Anyhow, there is a problem which arises with Hermione, Helen's daughter. M.-W.): 1
: I
In the beginning of o, Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive in Sparta at the time 93 'AA-1,,'lipa i:l)v npiv r' foxsv apriicpt1,,oi;Msvs1,,aoi;· 1
'.1,,:I

when Menelaus is celebrating the marriage of his two children: Hermione,
whom he is sending to Phthia to be the wife of Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, ac-
cording to a promise given him during the years of the war (5 ff.), and Mega-
penthes, whom a slave bore to him after Helen's escape, and who is now to
,'
! marry Alector's daughter (10 ff.). In the end the poet adds (12 ff.):
'EMvu OE3soi y6vov ouKsi:' ilcpmvov,
E7tEi61) 'tO 7tp&wv E"{EiVa'tO
1taio' tpa'tEtVT]V,
'Epµt6vriv, t) dooi; EXExpucrsrii; 'Acppooi'trii;.
This addition plainly shows that Helen had no child after Hermione, either by
Paris or by Menelaus, neither before nor after the twenty years of her absence.
The ancient Scholia are clear as to the reason why Helen had only one child (in
o 11): .1.ta.,;{ 'EMvri µ6vriv i:l)v 'Epµt6vriv E'tEKE;6t6n 1:0 1toA-MKti;'tEKEiv
111,,1,,otoi1:0 KUA.A-oi; ,yap aui:fji; µscro1,,a~fjcrm sii;
i:fji; yuvmK6i;· µ1,1,,1,,oucrrii;
'tOV7t0A-Eµov'tIDVTprorov Kai 'tIDV'EA-A.T]VffiV 01.JKETI
EOioouv aui;'ij 'tEKVOV o{
3soi, 'lva 'tO KllA.A.Oi;
cpUA.U't'tlJ,cf>'AM~avopoi; ftouv3fjvat EµEA.A.E. To OE1taV'tE-
A,O)i;dvat U'tEKVOV rjv Mcromµov Kai KaK6v, 'tO OE'tEKEiVEIJOatµovKai µaKapt-
ov . .1.ta.i;o(ho E'tEKEVllv, iva µaKapia 1,,oyil;;rii:mKai i'.va 1:0 1ea1,,1,,oi; EXTJ,-
'Emcpspst OEKai 6 1totri1:l)i;'"E1,,svu OEy6vov ouKfa' ilcpmvov" 1tt3av&i;, iva
Em 7tA.Eicr'tOV UKµacru, T) iva E~ 'AA.s~a.vopouy6vov µ1) crx'ij.61
The way the first Scholion is expressed shows that we do not have before us an
invention of the Grammarians, in an attempt to explain the Homeric lines. In
the sentence µ1,1,,1,,oucrrii; aui:fji; µscro1,,a~fjcrm di; i:ov 1t61,,sµov... ouKETI
toioouv aui:'ij 'tEKvov o{ 3soi, iva 1:0 Ka:1,,1,,oi;cpu1,,a1:1:u,
there must be latent an
] old legend, known also to the poet of the Odyssey: the gods forbid Helen to bear
· children, because they want to keep her exclusively an instrument of volup-
1 tuous love. On the other hand, the second interpretation of the Scholia, iva E~
'A1,,s~avopou y6vov µ1) crxij, shows that it is a conclusion later Scholiasts drew,
which, however, is perfectly correct; for if the epic poets gave children to Helen
and Paris, what would their fate have been after the sack of Troy? Would they
have the Achaeans kill them, or Menelaus take them away with him to Sparta?
It is quite clear that the myth itself excluded Helen's having children with
Paris. 62
ft 'tEKEV'Epµt6vriv Ka1,,1,,{crcpup(o]v
tv µsyapotmv
UEA.7t'tOV. 11
I
Ii
The second (fr. 175 M.-W.) gives Hermione a brother: I
nH 'tEKE3' 'Epµt6vriv ooupttlsmp MEVEA.Uql,
07tA.O'ta'tOVo' E'tEKEV NtKOO''tpa,;ov, cll;;ov"Aprioi;.
It is no wonder that the first tes'timony caused great confusion among the critics.
Why should Hermione's birth be unexpected? In order to reconcile it with the
second, Th. Reinach 63 proposed that we accept that between 94 and 95 there is
a missing verse which spoke of Nicostratus; about him it could be said that he
was born liE1,,n1:oi;,
if we call to mind that Helen bore him to Menelaus after the
victory of the Achaeans-as his expressive name signifies-, when the heroine
was rather old and could not very well hope to have children.
Merkelbach 64 contradicted this theory by observing rightly that Hesiod's
verses refer to the eve of the Trojan war, so there could be no question of
Helen's giving birth to a child after the war, especially as in the next line the poet
speaks of the dissension among the gods after the competition of the three
goddesses and the determination of Zeus to destroy by war a great portion of the
human race. That is the reason why Merkelbach suspects that line 94 is a later
addition and the word liEA-1t'tOV refers to Helen who was given to Menelaus:
93 a.1,,1,,'lipa i:l)v npiv r' foxsv apriicpt1,,oi;Msve1,,aoi;
95 UEA.7t'tOV.
I am afraid that the difficulties raised by such a solution are equally great as
those raised by Reinach's. What can be the meaning of the remark that Mene-
laus married Helen although he had no hopes he would? Firstly, he had offered
more llova than any. of the other suitors (204, 85 ff. M.-W. 111,,1,,' li[pa navi:ai;]/
'Ai:ps[io]rii; v[iKricrs]v apriicpt1,,oi;Msve1,,aoi; / 1tA-Ei[cr1:]a
noprov. Cf. also fr.
198, 5 f. and 204, 41 f. M.-W.); secondly, it was Agamemnon who had submit-
ted his brother's candidature, for he was already married to Klytaimestra, who
was also Tyndareos' daughter (fr. 197, 4 f. M.-W.), so that he exercised some
influence on his father-in-law; in addition, Agamemnon was the powerful king
of Mycenae. There is nothing in the List of Suitors which proves that Menelaus

easily used by them, even if it remained obscure (or misunderstood) since its presence in no wonder. See C. Robert (II) 984 n. 2.-Paris' reasoning in the sophistic 'EAEVT} by Isocrates (43) I,
way affected the meaning of the clause. See also P. Chantraine, Rev. Et. Gr. 45, 1932, 137; is ofno significance: (voµ{~rov)ouoev llv 1e'tflµa KUAA.tov toic; naicrlv fl napamCEua-
JCCL'tCLA.UtEiv !I
!I
J. Kakridis (III) 124 n. 37 (where examples are given from modem Greek folk-songs). crac;CLtrtoic;,onroc;µT)µ6vov npoc; 7tCLtp6c;,
oJ.M. ICCLt
7tpoc;µrrrpoc; Ct7t0Atoe; foovtm ysyov6tEc;.
61 Cf. Eustathius 1479, 3 ff. (in o 3). 68
Rev. Et. Gr. 21, 1908, 90.
62 64
That later poets and mythologists invent children as being born to Helen and Paris is no Die Hesiodfragmente auf Papyrus (1957) 27 ( = Archiv f. Papyrusforschung 16).

50 51
 .'
·~·
determination of the gods was known to both Menelaus and his wife: their l
had no hopes to win. On the other hand, any of the other suitors might also marriage would, then, be childless. And if Helen, duly instructed by Aphrodite,
!
I

have nourished hopes of securing Helen (fr. 204, 84 f. M.-W.). A solution which had, in all likelihood, no objection to remaining childless, since she would in that
has recourse to rejecting lines is certainly convenient-whatever we do not case be able to preserve her beauty intact, Menelaus must have felt differently.
understand we cast off as an interpolation-but is not always plausible. What For him it must have been hard to remain childless. Therefore Zeus, in his
bard could be so foolish as to add later on line 94, which changes completely the mercy, consented to the birth of one daughter only, and so Hermione was born
meaning of the clause, and for what reason?
quite unexpectedly.
Going a step further than M~rkelbach, Klaus Stiewe, Philologus 107, 1963, 12 f., maintained One last observation: Fr. 175 M.-W. of Hesiod proves that the poet had the
that line 94 was added later Ill order to replace the genuine Hesioclian verse which was · th chance to tell of Helen elsewhere and mention both her children, Hermione in a
meantime lost, and which must have referred to Helen's abduction, in order t~ transfer us~o; varied expression (ft tEJCEV ~
'Epµ16vriv JCaUicrcpupovtv µsyapotcrtV ft -rsJCs3'
the marriage (up to 93) to the Trojan war, related in the lines that follow (95b ff.):
'Epµt6VTJV 6oupt1CA.Et't<P MsVEAll{f)),and Nicostratus, who was born after
93 a),:;,:lipa tiJv np{v y' llcrxev <ip11iqiv.oi;;MevtJ..aoi;;·
the war, 61tA.6ta-ro~.Homer, on the other hand, knew nothing about Nicostra-
(i'J IIuptOl ~UVE(!IEUYE
ICaJCOV
Tproecrcnqiepoucra)
aEAn'tOV" 1tUV-.Ei;;
OE8eoi o{xa auµov E8EV-.O tus, or, if he did, left him out intentionally.
t~ fptooi;; •.•
The supplement is of course given exempli gratia, but Stiewe has no doubts about the meaning
of the verse. I am ~orD:'to say that I cannot agree. Had the Hesioclic text given us a verse such
as the one approx!Illatmgly ~omposed by Stiewe, there would have been no questioning of the
matter. The fact, however,
· h 1s that. the papyrus gives another verse• one m· perfiect h examet er,
which refers to the b1rt of Henmone and not to the abduction of her mother. The conjecture
that the passage has undergone two consecutive damages-first the loss of the genuine 94 and
later its arbitrary replacement by a later bard, who supposedly misunderstood what Hesiod
meant in the context, surpasses, I am afraid, the limits of the plausible.

Let us begin by accepting that the tradition of the Hesiodic text is genuine• now
if we en~ in somewhat daring ~onjectu~es, I hope that we at least revive ; pro~
blem which has not yet found its solut10n. I believe that Hesiod's statement as
to the unexpected birth of Hermione must in some way be connected with the
state~ent in the Odysse_yabout the determination of the gods not to let Helen
give birth to another child-another child or no child at all? There is no doubt
that Hermione's birth is not absolutely compatible with the decision of the gods
to keep H~l~n free from the labours of maternity. It would be natural to suppose
such a dec1s10na~ take~ at the very beginning of a woman's marriage, not after
she has already given birth to her first child. I am of the opinion that Hesiod's
statement ~ompletes that of Homer: After Hermione the gods did not give
another child to Helen; but Hermione's birth was also unexpected.
In the evidences of the two poets I see an attempt at reconciliation. At one
time an epic poet devised the decision of the gods that Helen should be abso-
lutely childless. But Hermione had long been known to be the daughter of Me-
nelaus and Hel_en.So now t~e ~oets ~ad to recognize her as such, but they
took care to think of a solut10n m which her birth should appear unexpected
after the contrary determination of the gods. '
Though I am perfectly aware that I rely on my imagination alone I dare
express my opinion as to what this solution could be: Hermione is born
asA-1tto~-to whom? To whom else if not to her parents? Which means that the
53
52
 Homer Revisited
by
JohannesTh. Kakridis

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