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Helena de Tróia: Deusa, princesa e prostituta
An erudite, lively search for the real Helen of Troy-–a chronicle combining historical inquiry & storytelling élan–-from one of Britain’s most widely acclaimed historians. As soon as men began writing they made Helen of Troy their subject. For close to 3000 years she's been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty & a reminder of the terrible power beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek king Menelaus & the Trojan prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for enmity between East & West. For millennia she's been viewed as an agent of extermination. But who was she? Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Heroic Age who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world; Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult that conflated the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess; the home-wrecker of the Iliad; the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy; the pin-up of Romantic artists. Focusing on the “real” Helen–-a flesh-&-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age–-Hughes reconstructs the life context of this prehistoric princess. Thru the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, she examines the physical, historical & cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, N. Africa & Asia Minor. This book unpacks the facts & myths surrounding one of the most enigmatic & notorious figures of all time.
462 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2005
154 people are currently reading
5718 people want to read
About the author
Bettany Hughes
17 books723 followersBettany Hughes is an English historian, author and broadcaster. Her speciality is classical history.
Bettany grew up in West London with her brother, the cricketer Simon Hughes. Her parents were in the theatre: she learnt early the importance and delight of sharing thoughts and ideas with a wider public. Bettany won a scholarship to read Ancient and Modern History at Oxford University and then continued her post-graduate research while travelling through the Balkans and Asia Minor. In recognition of her contribution to research, she has been awarded a Research Fellowship at King's London.
Bettany lectures throughout the world. She has been invited to universities in the US, Australia, Germany, Turkey and Holland to speak on subjects as diverse as Helen of Troy and the origins of female 'Sophia' to concepts of Time in the Islamic world. She considers her work in the lecture hall and seminar room amongst the most important, and rewarding she does.
Bettany grew up in West London with her brother, the cricketer Simon Hughes. Her parents were in the theatre: she learnt early the importance and delight of sharing thoughts and ideas with a wider public. Bettany won a scholarship to read Ancient and Modern History at Oxford University and then continued her post-graduate research while travelling through the Balkans and Asia Minor. In recognition of her contribution to research, she has been awarded a Research Fellowship at King's London.
Bettany lectures throughout the world. She has been invited to universities in the US, Australia, Germany, Turkey and Holland to speak on subjects as diverse as Helen of Troy and the origins of female 'Sophia' to concepts of Time in the Islamic world. She considers her work in the lecture hall and seminar room amongst the most important, and rewarding she does.
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January 24, 2022I found this a very likeable book, it is an easy going biography of Helen of Troy, and the approach that Hughes takes is both to consider what the life of an actual Mycenaean Princess might have been like - which is then a recapitulation of what was known from the archaeology (including a growing corpus of documentary evidence recovered from the Bronze Age world) and to lay out the myth as told by Homer and other sources such as lines by Sappho, Athenian plays, information recorded by Pausanias in his Guide to Greece about cult practises . All of this is intermixed by Hughes recollections of travelling and visiting sites in the Eastern Mediterranean, which gave me the impression that the issues raised and discussed had been on her mind for a long time, and that she was still grappling with them.
The first problem which you may have noticed is that if there was a Helen of Troy, she would have been a Mycenaean Princess - and indeed we can know all kinds of things about those women - the hairstyles they had, the fashions they wore , the perfumes they liked , the number of pregnancies they typically had, their average life-expectancy, their use of opiates; however we don't know of any Helen of Troy yet from any Bronze Age sources. In contrast everything we know about Helen of Troy as an individual comes from the Iron Age and one of the big differences is that the position of women seems to be radically different in the sense of being far more restricted and of lower status in the Iron Age than in the Bronze Age. The world that Homer sung about was more mysterious to him and his audience than it is to us.
The next problem, is that these are radically different types of evidence and like oil and water and for me they produce two complimentary images rather than one composite person. There is the archaeology and 'bureaucratic' writing from the Bronze age, then the myths and cults of the iron age.
As a child I believed implicitly and unreservedly in the historicity of the trojan war. I had The Mycenaeans and in that book it said something along the lines that one arrowhead had been found in the walls of Troy which made a ten year siege seem silly. Such was my faith in the Trojan war that aged around eight to ten I read that and decided that 'silly' must have a secondary meaning of sign of absolute veracity and certainty, fortunately for my faith I did not have a dictionary and like a good fundamentalist I did not look for one either. With the passage of years I have become agnostic with regard to the Trojan war - I am intrigued by the Hittite evidence , but I am still more inclined to imagine raiding and trading than ten years spent on the wind swept plains of Illium, Hughes appears still to believe, but she is not explicit about the articles of her faith.
The remainder of the book deals with how Helen was understood later, unfavourably by some, more positively by others. There has been an idea that Helen was, in some earlier part of her existence a fertility figure and therefore the Trojan war would have been something like the story of Persephone, a war to recover spring and regeneration. I liked the detail that the famous gate at Mycenae is a lioness gate rather than a lion gate and its is always interesting to read of the Helen cult that developed in iron age Sparta - not perhaps an obvious choice for a heroic idol.
Generally there is a reluctance to engage in theory, concepts and big ideas, which I get the impression is more common in Anglo-Saxon writing than elsewhere, she is comfortable to mention some ideas if in slightly dismissive terms, but not to explore them. So for instance she dismisses the idea that there was a She-God in prehistory only to go on to play with the notion of the centrality of women in religious life prior to be iron age - of course later she went on to make another TV series about Divine Women, the first episode of which was called 'when God was a girl'. But then for me that is the joy of reading Bettany Hughes, I have the sense of someone who is not right or wrong, but forever journeying and passionately engaged with the topics that interest her.
The first problem which you may have noticed is that if there was a Helen of Troy, she would have been a Mycenaean Princess - and indeed we can know all kinds of things about those women - the hairstyles they had, the fashions they wore , the perfumes they liked , the number of pregnancies they typically had, their average life-expectancy, their use of opiates; however we don't know of any Helen of Troy yet from any Bronze Age sources. In contrast everything we know about Helen of Troy as an individual comes from the Iron Age and one of the big differences is that the position of women seems to be radically different in the sense of being far more restricted and of lower status in the Iron Age than in the Bronze Age. The world that Homer sung about was more mysterious to him and his audience than it is to us.
The next problem, is that these are radically different types of evidence and like oil and water and for me they produce two complimentary images rather than one composite person. There is the archaeology and 'bureaucratic' writing from the Bronze age, then the myths and cults of the iron age.
As a child I believed implicitly and unreservedly in the historicity of the trojan war. I had The Mycenaeans and in that book it said something along the lines that one arrowhead had been found in the walls of Troy which made a ten year siege seem silly. Such was my faith in the Trojan war that aged around eight to ten I read that and decided that 'silly' must have a secondary meaning of sign of absolute veracity and certainty, fortunately for my faith I did not have a dictionary and like a good fundamentalist I did not look for one either. With the passage of years I have become agnostic with regard to the Trojan war - I am intrigued by the Hittite evidence , but I am still more inclined to imagine raiding and trading than ten years spent on the wind swept plains of Illium, Hughes appears still to believe, but she is not explicit about the articles of her faith.
The remainder of the book deals with how Helen was understood later, unfavourably by some, more positively by others. There has been an idea that Helen was, in some earlier part of her existence a fertility figure and therefore the Trojan war would have been something like the story of Persephone, a war to recover spring and regeneration. I liked the detail that the famous gate at Mycenae is a lioness gate rather than a lion gate and its is always interesting to read of the Helen cult that developed in iron age Sparta - not perhaps an obvious choice for a heroic idol.
Generally there is a reluctance to engage in theory, concepts and big ideas, which I get the impression is more common in Anglo-Saxon writing than elsewhere, she is comfortable to mention some ideas if in slightly dismissive terms, but not to explore them. So for instance she dismisses the idea that there was a She-God in prehistory only to go on to play with the notion of the centrality of women in religious life prior to be iron age - of course later she went on to make another TV series about Divine Women, the first episode of which was called 'when God was a girl'. But then for me that is the joy of reading Bettany Hughes, I have the sense of someone who is not right or wrong, but forever journeying and passionately engaged with the topics that interest her.
July 1, 2011
Bettany Hughes’ debut work is a magnum opus of truly astonishing proportions. Hughes has not only written a thoroughly detailed examination of the evidence for a real Bronze Age Helen, and produced an in depth portrait of the woman if she indeed existed, but she has delved even further, studying perceptions of Helen throughout history and exploring the big question of just why Helen of Troy has remained a subject of fascination, reverence and revilement for millennia. Meticulously researched, Helen of Troy weaves together thousands of strands of evidence to create a comprehensive picture of not only Helen, but also the vibrant world she moved in. Hughes is insightful, discerning and astutely pieces together the long scattered fragments of the Helen of Troy puzzle. At the same time, her work is interesting, engaging and clearly written, you won’t find a stuffy textbook here, Hughes writes in a very personable style which draws upon anecdotes and plain language to get her points across, and her voice shines through just as if I was watching one of her fantastic documentaries. Quite possibly the definitive biography of Helen of Troy.
May 20, 2018
If you're looking for a book on Helen of Troy, then look no further. This is a masterful book, despite the paucity of possible information available on Helen. How can anyone write a biography of a mythical figure, a woman who may or may not have even existed? Like this. Exactly like this. Bettany Hughes has written Helen as she may have been, as an historical figure; as people have wanted her to be, as a religious figure and quasi-goddess; as she was written to be, by Homer and Euripides and Aeschylus, right up to the present day. There are a multitude of Helens in this book - historical and fiction, real or imaginary, flesh-and-blood or goddess.
It focuses not just on Helen, but also the world she came from and the ages of history she has passed through up to the present. It is also a marvellous exploration of the world of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and how accurate Homer's story has been proven to be via archaeological discoveries and historical record. It's wonderfully written, eminently readable and absolutely fascinating - I'd highly recommend this.
It focuses not just on Helen, but also the world she came from and the ages of history she has passed through up to the present. It is also a marvellous exploration of the world of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and how accurate Homer's story has been proven to be via archaeological discoveries and historical record. It's wonderfully written, eminently readable and absolutely fascinating - I'd highly recommend this.
November 16, 2019
"Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore" is a scatter-gun, scatter-brained work that is nonetheless highly entertaining. Reading it is something like inviting your friends from your undergraduate years over for dinner, plying them generously with alcohol and letting them rant on about whatever literary or artistic idea comes into their minds. History students will express themselves on Beethoven. English lit graduates will give you their opinions on Rabelais while philosophy students will tell you what they think the Federal Reserve Board should do about interest rates. The cacophony is as joyous as it is incoherent. As Hughes herself notes at one point that she may be presenting "a mangle of literary and social references (with a sprinkling of fanstasy) rather than historical fact." (pp. 285- 286)
The whole messy farrago is the result of Hughes decision to examine both the historical Helen who probably never existed and the various myths that our culture has created about her. Hughes begins by providing a survey of the recent archeological digs at Hittite, Mycenae and Spartan sites to show that we know much more about the up-bringing of a Spartan princess which is what Helen was and the politics of Anatolia where she lived with Paris than we did fifty years ago. She explains that if we could actually find the body of Helen we would be able to dramatically define our conjectures about her. It the absence of such a lucky discovery, the mythologizing will likely continue to follow its bizarre path.
Having completed her survey of the relevent archeological findings, she then examines the mythology of Helen from the era of Homer through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Jacobean era and modern times. As the title indicates, Helen has been portrayed alternatively as a goddess, a princess and a whore when the real Helen if indeed there was would have been none of the three.
I feel churlish giving so dreadful a review to such a delightful book. However, on an intellectual level, it is truly shoddy.
The whole messy farrago is the result of Hughes decision to examine both the historical Helen who probably never existed and the various myths that our culture has created about her. Hughes begins by providing a survey of the recent archeological digs at Hittite, Mycenae and Spartan sites to show that we know much more about the up-bringing of a Spartan princess which is what Helen was and the politics of Anatolia where she lived with Paris than we did fifty years ago. She explains that if we could actually find the body of Helen we would be able to dramatically define our conjectures about her. It the absence of such a lucky discovery, the mythologizing will likely continue to follow its bizarre path.
Having completed her survey of the relevent archeological findings, she then examines the mythology of Helen from the era of Homer through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Jacobean era and modern times. As the title indicates, Helen has been portrayed alternatively as a goddess, a princess and a whore when the real Helen if indeed there was would have been none of the three.
I feel churlish giving so dreadful a review to such a delightful book. However, on an intellectual level, it is truly shoddy.
September 12, 2016
I absolutely loved this book!Best source out there if you are looking for info on Helen of Troy.I liked how the author brought her to life and put a face on her.I guess it was hard for me to imagine a face that launched a thousand ships before I read this.It also has amazing background information on Sparta.
April 14, 2024
Митът за Елена от Троя в истинската му смайваща дълбочина: https://knigolandia.info/elena-ot-troya/
Митът за Троянската война е неотделимо вплетен в общоевропейската митологична тъкан, а образът на Елена е същностна част от него. Образ, който обаче остава някак мъгляв, колкото и да се преекспонира в попкултурата – и тук идва „Елена от Троя“ на Бетани Хюз, едно впечатляващо мащабно, задълбочено и ерудитско изследване не просто на мита за най-красивата жена на света и нейната трагична участ, а изобщо на онзи свят, в който хиляди кораби е можело да бъдат пуснати по вода заради едно лице, или поне така е искал да ни убеди Омир. Още в началото Хюз заявява какво ще научим за Хубавата Елена: „Ще проследя еволюцията ѝ като човешки персонаж от късната бронзова епоха, като духовна сила и като икона на несравнима красота и еротична любов, и ще проследя стъпките ѝ в Източно Сред��земноморие.“ И изпълнява прещедро това си обещание, като пътем описва как самата тя е обикаляла в наши дни всяко място, на което се предполага, че Елена се е подвизавала, и как митът за нея прескача вековете и прелива в съвремието по често неподозирани начини.
Locus Publishing
https://knigolandia.info/elena-ot-troya/
Митът за Троянската война е неотделимо вплетен в общоевропейската митологична тъкан, а образът на Елена е същностна част от него. Образ, който обаче остава някак мъгляв, колкото и да се преекспонира в попкултурата – и тук идва „Елена от Троя“ на Бетани Хюз, едно впечатляващо мащабно, задълбочено и ерудитско изследване не просто на мита за най-красивата жена на света и нейната трагична участ, а изобщо на онзи свят, в който хиляди кораби е можело да бъдат пуснати по вода заради едно лице, или поне така е искал да ни убеди Омир. Още в началото Хюз заявява какво ще научим за Хубавата Елена: „Ще проследя еволюцията ѝ като човешки персонаж от късната бронзова епоха, като духовна сила и като икона на несравнима красота и еротична любов, и ще проследя стъпките ѝ в Източно Сред��земноморие.“ И изпълнява прещедро това си обещание, като пътем описва как самата тя е обикаляла в наши дни всяко място, на което се предполага, че Елена се е подвизавала, и как митът за нея прескача вековете и прелива в съвремието по често неподозирани начини.
Locus Publishing
https://knigolandia.info/elena-ot-troya/
October 12, 2012
Bettany Hughes was made an honorary Fellow of my university in the same ceremony as I became a graduate, so I've been planning to read this ever since. That, and the story of Troy has always been fascinating to me. There's definitely something very compelling about Bettany Hughes' writing, which though very detailed isn't dry -- or maybe I just have a weakness for descriptions of "sumptuous palaces" and so on trained into me by my early love of a book describing the treasures of Tutankhamen's tomb. She makes the book colourful, anyway. And from whatever I know of Greek history and myths, she chooses her material well and does wonders in digging through the evidence of millennia to look at the idea of Helen of Troy, where she came from and what she has meant to generations of people.
I think my favourite section was actually the discussion of what the fabled Helen had to do with Eleanor of Aquitaine: the interaction of real queens with figures of legend like Helen of Troy, Queen Guinevere and female Christian saints fascinates me...
I'm not sure how well I think the information was organised, though. Admittedly, Helen is hard to pin down, but I'm not sure I can pinpoint how Hughes wanted to present her ideas. For me, reading cover to cover and for pleasure, it worked fine, but if I were to come back and try to refer to some specific point, I think I'd have trouble finding it.
There are extensive notes and a long list of references to other works, so all in all I think this book is very well organised and researched. And -- to me, more importantly -- I really enjoyed reading it.
I think my favourite section was actually the discussion of what the fabled Helen had to do with Eleanor of Aquitaine: the interaction of real queens with figures of legend like Helen of Troy, Queen Guinevere and female Christian saints fascinates me...
I'm not sure how well I think the information was organised, though. Admittedly, Helen is hard to pin down, but I'm not sure I can pinpoint how Hughes wanted to present her ideas. For me, reading cover to cover and for pleasure, it worked fine, but if I were to come back and try to refer to some specific point, I think I'd have trouble finding it.
There are extensive notes and a long list of references to other works, so all in all I think this book is very well organised and researched. And -- to me, more importantly -- I really enjoyed reading it.
December 14, 2017
Aside from my electric blanket and my Dickinson, I currently love nothing so much as this book.
May 2, 2016
The Trojan War was almost certainly a historic event; but it is uncertain, to say the least, that it was caused by the abduction of Menelaus' wife, Helen. I'm not sure after reading this book whether the author, a popular British historian, actually believes Homer's story or not; she does at least make it seem less implausible than it appears at first sight, by showing historical parallels from the same time and region where there were diplomatic (though not actually military) crises over royal marriages. At any event, she uses a "biography" of Helen as an organizing principle for a wide-ranging discussion of Mycenaean and Anatolian archaeology and art, focusing on what can be learned or plausibly inferred about the role of women in Mycenaean culture, the Hittite documents which may refer to Troy or to Greece or otherwise have some relevance to the Trojan War, the ancient religious and literary traditions relating to Helen (she was a figure in later cult), and the ways in which Helen has been represented in literature and art from classical Athens through modern times. She presents a mass of material, much of which I was unfamiliar with, some only discovered since I studied the Iliad in my college Greek classes at Columbia in the 1970's. Not everything she says is convincing to me; I think she sometimes blurred the lines between the historical and the mythical or folklore elements. Her interpretations are sometimes rather subjective; she writes from a very feminist perspective, and although I generally agree with her viewpoint she occasionally becomes too rhetorical and repetitious in making her points; and the material especially in the later chapters on the "reception history" of the Helen story is not well-organized, although it may not have been possible to organize such miscellaneous material in any definite way. The writing is generally good, but occasionally too colloquial for a non-fiction book on a serious topic. On the whole, I learned a lot from the book, and I would recommend it to anyone who is reading Homer and looking for background material.
December 17, 2014
I love antiquities. Helen of Troy is clearly a five. The book is a detailed and provocative study, or was it a journey, of one of mankind's most celebrated, revered, and demonized women. Her biography is a fascinating read. She is an icon, not just of sex-appeal, but also for personal growth and development. She lived through many roles; from being the victim of a kidnapping and sex assault by the legendary Theseus, into a Spartan queen, then a Trojan princess, and back again into her role as queen and ruler of Sparta, always ascending into positions of power, wealth, and respect.
I have two take-aways from the book. First, is the intention to read it again. Second, is the timeline of Helen's life story. She is from prehistory. Assuming that the Trojan War(s) took place between 1275 and 1250 BCE, author Bettany Hughes postulates that Helen's birth was around 1300 BC. Her life preceded the development of the alphabet used by Homer to record her story, by about 500 years.
I have two take-aways from the book. First, is the intention to read it again. Second, is the timeline of Helen's life story. She is from prehistory. Assuming that the Trojan War(s) took place between 1275 and 1250 BCE, author Bettany Hughes postulates that Helen's birth was around 1300 BC. Her life preceded the development of the alphabet used by Homer to record her story, by about 500 years.
June 24, 2012
Hughes bills her book as “The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Woman in the World” – which is certainly ambitious. She devotes 312 pages to the main text followed by 130 pages of appendices. The book contains roughly 30 colored illustrations and even more black and white images -- altogether a very impressive and comprehensive treatment of the topic. Hughes furthermore sets out not only to discover the historical reality behind the story of Helen of Troy, but to describe the Bronze Age in which she allegedly lived, and then to describe how the story of Helen of Troy was handled in literature and art down the ages from Homer onwards.
Although at times I found the narrative long-winded and had the feeling Hughes was trying to justify what must have been a significant investment in time and money by dragging out some commentary unnecessarily and belaboring some points to the point of exhaustion, the book nevertheless provides some very useful information. Particularly impressive was the amount of information she collected on life in the Bronze Age, something I knew little about.
One of her principle thesis is that Helen (or the Helen Pro-type) was a Bronze Age aristocrat (princess and Queen) – and every subsequent treatment of Helen tells us more about the age in which the work of art depicting her was created than about Helen herself. Less successfully, Hughes tries to analyze why the story of Helen of Troy should have fascinated artists and audiences for three thousand years.
Perhaps due to my ignorance of the Bronze Age, I found Hughes descriptions of recent archeological discoveries about this period particularly exciting and informative. She succeeded in convincing me that the Bronze Age civilizations were very sophisticated and international, with significant trade across the Mediterranean. A recent trip to Egypt helped me visualize just how rich and yet familiar such ancient societies could be. The art of Minoa and Egypt, with which I am more familiar, provided collateral, flanking evidence, to Hughes’ thesis about a Bronze Age Helen, who was more powerful and independent than the women in ancient Greece. In short, Hughes succeeded in making me change my own views of Helen, by enabling me to see her as a figure from a pre-archaic society with significantly different social structures and traditions.
Almost as fascinating was the way in which the character and role of Helen changed depending on the values of the society re-telling the story. For example, the fact that Helen received a comparatively positive treatment in the 12th Century AD due to Eleanor of Aquitaine's patronage of Benoit de Sainte-Maure, author of the Roman de Troie. As Hughes perceptively points out, Eleanor, like Helen, had been the bride of one king, but effectively – if less surreptitiously -- ran away with his arch-rival and became the Queen of an empire that threatened her first husband’s realm. Eleanor had good reason to see Helen as a positive role model and not some tawdry whore or instrument of the devil.
After reading Hughes, I admit, I am more sympathetic to Helen than I was before reading Hughes. When she described a 1974-5 staging of Christopher Marlowe’s "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" in which Helen is portrayed as “a marionette with blond wig, a mask and a chiffon nightie.” (Hughes, p. 307), I found myself feeling indignant. How could a director show so little respect for Helen? Would a dumb blond in a negligee really have been worth fighting for? For ten years? And worth recovering? Reinstating as Queen? In short, Hughes achieved her presumed of objective of making me see Helen as more than “just a pretty face.”
As such, despite its stylistic faults, I think Hughes work makes a significant contribution to our understanding both of the historical and the literary Helen.
Although at times I found the narrative long-winded and had the feeling Hughes was trying to justify what must have been a significant investment in time and money by dragging out some commentary unnecessarily and belaboring some points to the point of exhaustion, the book nevertheless provides some very useful information. Particularly impressive was the amount of information she collected on life in the Bronze Age, something I knew little about.
One of her principle thesis is that Helen (or the Helen Pro-type) was a Bronze Age aristocrat (princess and Queen) – and every subsequent treatment of Helen tells us more about the age in which the work of art depicting her was created than about Helen herself. Less successfully, Hughes tries to analyze why the story of Helen of Troy should have fascinated artists and audiences for three thousand years.
Perhaps due to my ignorance of the Bronze Age, I found Hughes descriptions of recent archeological discoveries about this period particularly exciting and informative. She succeeded in convincing me that the Bronze Age civilizations were very sophisticated and international, with significant trade across the Mediterranean. A recent trip to Egypt helped me visualize just how rich and yet familiar such ancient societies could be. The art of Minoa and Egypt, with which I am more familiar, provided collateral, flanking evidence, to Hughes’ thesis about a Bronze Age Helen, who was more powerful and independent than the women in ancient Greece. In short, Hughes succeeded in making me change my own views of Helen, by enabling me to see her as a figure from a pre-archaic society with significantly different social structures and traditions.
Almost as fascinating was the way in which the character and role of Helen changed depending on the values of the society re-telling the story. For example, the fact that Helen received a comparatively positive treatment in the 12th Century AD due to Eleanor of Aquitaine's patronage of Benoit de Sainte-Maure, author of the Roman de Troie. As Hughes perceptively points out, Eleanor, like Helen, had been the bride of one king, but effectively – if less surreptitiously -- ran away with his arch-rival and became the Queen of an empire that threatened her first husband’s realm. Eleanor had good reason to see Helen as a positive role model and not some tawdry whore or instrument of the devil.
After reading Hughes, I admit, I am more sympathetic to Helen than I was before reading Hughes. When she described a 1974-5 staging of Christopher Marlowe’s "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus" in which Helen is portrayed as “a marionette with blond wig, a mask and a chiffon nightie.” (Hughes, p. 307), I found myself feeling indignant. How could a director show so little respect for Helen? Would a dumb blond in a negligee really have been worth fighting for? For ten years? And worth recovering? Reinstating as Queen? In short, Hughes achieved her presumed of objective of making me see Helen as more than “just a pretty face.”
As such, despite its stylistic faults, I think Hughes work makes a significant contribution to our understanding both of the historical and the literary Helen.
April 5, 2011
This is not really a biography of Helen so much as a biography of the idea of Helen through the ages. While she does try to uncover what historical facts are available, she spends a lot more time—understandably because of the lack of evidence—discussing all the versions of Helen in Literature and History. She also traces Helen’s path (as it is told in the stories) through the lands of ancient times. She attempts to recreate as much as possible what the life of a woman like Helen would have been.
I have two criticisms of the book that downgraded it from a “4” to a “3”: 1) The repetition of the whole “Helen as symbol” thing got boring. 2) She has an awful tendency to lapse into cheesy-novel writing—using expressions like “dripping gore” and such. She also feels the need to fictionalize at the oddest times such, when discussing Goethe’s Dr. Faustus, she refers to an actor, “lone actor as he paced up and down the south bank, desperately trying to remember his lines.” Since this imaginary moment has absolutely nothing to do with Helen or her stories, I’m not sure why she feels the need to write it.
I have two criticisms of the book that downgraded it from a “4” to a “3”: 1) The repetition of the whole “Helen as symbol” thing got boring. 2) She has an awful tendency to lapse into cheesy-novel writing—using expressions like “dripping gore” and such. She also feels the need to fictionalize at the oddest times such, when discussing Goethe’s Dr. Faustus, she refers to an actor, “lone actor as he paced up and down the south bank, desperately trying to remember his lines.” Since this imaginary moment has absolutely nothing to do with Helen or her stories, I’m not sure why she feels the need to write it.
February 15, 2016
I am so sad that I have finished reading this book.
This was such a delight to read. Hughes has such an evocative writing style. I was so sucked into this "biography" of the perhaps-mythical, perhaps-based-in-reality figure. She traces Helen's life and legacy from her conception to the modern western world's perceptions of her. It was just so interesting to read about the different interpretations of Helen throughout time and place, about the different tellings of the Trojan War, about all the different Helen's that have been presented to us, and about how (if she ever existed) the Spartan Queen herself would have lived. Coupled with a delightful writing style, this was just a pleasure to read.
(Also, p. 207, "Achilles' lover, the Greek hero Patroclus". Bettany Hughes knows that Achilles and Patroclus were 100% gay for each other. Everything is wonderful.)
This was such a delight to read. Hughes has such an evocative writing style. I was so sucked into this "biography" of the perhaps-mythical, perhaps-based-in-reality figure. She traces Helen's life and legacy from her conception to the modern western world's perceptions of her. It was just so interesting to read about the different interpretations of Helen throughout time and place, about the different tellings of the Trojan War, about all the different Helen's that have been presented to us, and about how (if she ever existed) the Spartan Queen herself would have lived. Coupled with a delightful writing style, this was just a pleasure to read.
(Also, p. 207, "Achilles' lover, the Greek hero Patroclus". Bettany Hughes knows that Achilles and Patroclus were 100% gay for each other. Everything is wonderful.)
May 28, 2020
The thing I love about ancient history and myth is that it is, consistently and unfailingly, stranger, weirder, more astonishing and more subversive than you would ever think it would be. I learnt some things from reading this about prehistory, Spartan society, war and religious rituals that, to me, really are stranger than fiction. Some of these things are just mind-bending. You couldn’t make it up. It forces cracks through your most fundamental assumptions about people who lived and died in the past; about humanity as a whole — about our similarity as well as our astonishing differences. It offers a comforting reminder of the sort of transience of the times we live in now: that this was not always the way things were — not for almost anything. And it will change again, before we even know it. I just love that.
April 23, 2025
hercules had his 12 labors, reading this book was mine. Not to say it’s not good, but it was very dense & academic so I’m proud of myself for finishing!!
January 1, 2025
”Helen's lament in the Iliad, that on her the gods had laid an evil curse, making her 'A singer's theme for generations to come', was prophetic. How Helen has been sung. Where women have in general been written out of history, Helen has been written in. She is one of the few, evergreen female personalities to survive from antiquity."
Bettany Hughes’ Helen of Troy is an ambitious study and biography of the mythical character Helen. In this book, Hughes explores the origins and stories of Helen’s myth, attempts to present her in as accurate a context as possible and presents the reader with all the different ways Helen has been, throughout history, interpreted and presented. After reading this book, Helen will never be just the most beautiful woman in the world for you but a woman who was so much more than that: a queen, a kingmaker, a goddess, a mother, a priestess and woman so titillating that we will never let go of her story.
Helen is one of my favorite characters in anything ever. Her story – all the myriad versions of her story – are captivating and no matter how she is depicted, the strength of her character is just simply intoxicating. She is unforgettable. Bettany Hughes is one of my favorite historians and someone I respect with my whole heart for all she has done for classics as a field and for her fellow female historians. So naturally, I was excited to finally begin reading this book, perhaps the most seminal study ever done on Helen and one of the first – if not the first – in-depth study done by a female historian about a female character of mythology/history.
Before I begin discussing all the stuff I liked and found intriguing, I will get my negative opinions and criticisms out of the way. This book is, to put it simply, stuffed too full of information. I can appreciate the desire to put everything you’ve learned and found out into your work, but as it is, the book has way too many personal anecdotes of Hughes’s travels and goes on way too many tangents about things that are, granted, interesting, but not strictly relevant to the story of Helen. We do not need pages on Bronze Age perfumes, Schliemann’s personal life and so on. I appreciate the way Hughes contextualizes Helen and paints a vivid picture of the Bronze Age world she would’ve lived in if she was a real woman, but there is such a thing as too much. It sometimes felt like the book lost sight of Helen and became a book about the bigger political, economical and cultural situation of the time period discussed. Context is important, but Hughes went a bit overboard. As someone who has a relatively good understanding of Greek myth and history, reading this book was not too hard (just tiresome), but if I had tried to read this some years ago, I would’ve been way more lost and confused. Hughes's Helen of Troy is not a beginner-friendly book.
But now, on to stuff I liked. Though Hughes’s way of contextualizing Helen had its issues, I loved that Hughes explained to the reader how Mycenaean culture came to flourish and took over the Greek world after the fall of Minoan culture during a period of intense political and natural upheaval (the Thera eruption and so on), and described what the life of a Bronze Age woman would’ve been like. The reader gets a good idea of the kind of clothes and jewels Helen would’ve worn, what her home palace would’ve been like and what kinds of roles a Mycenaean princess or a queen would’ve fulfilled. Helen is so often, falsely, thought of as a woman of the Classical period, so Hughes representing her as a Bronze Age woman – a queen who would’ve worshipped through dance and song, played a signifcant role in religious practices, cut her hair when young and so on – was very much appreciated. We shouldn’t look for Helen in Classical Athens or Sparta, but in the more distant past where the role of women was, based on art and archeological evidence, very different to the silent, invisible role of women in the Classical world. In the Bronze Age, women could own land, acted as priestesses in publiv roles, walked around seemingly freely and were depicted in abundance everywhere from frescoes to drinking cups. Archeologists have found more depictions of women than men. In this time period, Zeus was not yet the king of the Gods (he came took over the Pantheon of Gods later – Helen, his daughter, is a much older figure). Speaking of religion, I had no idea how widely Helen was worshipped during the Bronze Age and the time periods after that: she was an icon for young girls and women, a godly being, a divine ancestor, a fertility goddess, a divinity associated with all elements but especially water. She become, for Spartans especially, a key figure in creating their sense of self. I liked this quote a lot: "Whether or not the 'world's desire' enjoyed a mortal life, there is no question that she lived, vividly, prominently, in the minds of the ancient Spartans. We call her Helen of Troy - for the Greeks she was, indisputably, Helen of Sparta." On Sparta, I had no idea that archeologists have not been able to find a palace at Sparta, something that resembles the grand palace of Sparta from the myths. Is it gone forever, or is it someplace else?
One of the key goals of this book is to present a more nuanced depiction of Helen. She has been, throughout history, seen as a fallen woman, a whore, the most beautiful woman in the world and ”an incarnation of sexual promise”. She has also been more positive things: a protector, a guide, a symbol of female power. Every age has created their own Helen, because we haven’t been able to let go of her. During the Classical age, she became widely depicted as a bitch and a slut, and in Christian times, she was often depicted as a kind of Eve, a woman who brought destruction and an end of an age. The passive pawn Helen, one that has no agency and is just there for men to rape and kidnap, is a more modern take on her: in antiquity, she was often way more nuanced and an equal partner to Menelaus and then Paris. Modern artists have, time and time again, depicted her rape and kidnapping, but in antiquity her story was more complex than that. It seems that post-antiquity, people were only comfortable seeing Helen as either an innocent good woman horribly mistreated by men or a near-demonic she-wolf who causes the deaths of thousands with her pretty face and uncontrollable, scary sexuality (Marlowe’s Helen who ”launched a thousand ships” and burnt down the ”topless towers of Ilium” is a literal demonic figure). Throughout history, women’s sexuality has been seen as something threatening and something men have to control – it’s no wonder, then, that Helen has become so irresistible a figure. She is alluring and seductive, a woman men cannot resist (inside or outside of her myth), and thus she has become a character that’s rewritten over and over again because, I guess, in writing her, there is a sense of taking control away from her. Helen always exists in three different eras: the mythical Bronze Age (the Age of Heroes), the age in which the depiction of her was created and the time period in which we consume the creation. We always see her through the lense of these three eras and because of that, we all see her differently because we bring our contemporary morals, ideals and baggage with us and shape her according to them. She is reborn time and time again. And that is one of the things I find most intriguing about her and mythology in general.
Hughes presents different interpretations of Helen and quotes many ancient and more modern texts about her, showcasing how her story has been retold over the years. Sometimes Helen runs away willingly, sometimes she is taken. Sometimes she blames herself for everything and sometimes she seems way colder than that. Whatever the way she ended up in Troy was, one thing Hughes gets across very well was that the Trojan war was never just about her. As she puts it: "--by stealing Helen he [Paris] abused something far more important than a woman." The Trojan war was a war over a man’s hurt honor, the riches of Troy, the broken laws of xenia and an insult to all sense of common courtesy. It was also a way for men – heroes – to achieve the most prized of futures: a kalos thanatos, a beautiful, glorious death. Helen’s own death is also an interesting topic. Despite everything she does and causes in mythology, she never seems to face any consoquences for anything: she is taken back by Menelaus and seems to live a long life in Sparta, or she is made into a star or a goddess, so she can forever escape death. People have hated her and blamed her for so long, but still she gets to escape and we let her get away with it all. It’s interesting because so often women like her, in stories, are given a horrible ending as a lesson to all women on how to behave. But not her.
I loved this quote near the end of the book where Hughes discusses Helen’s enduring myth and how she has become a symbol of a treacherous, dangerous woman all men should avoid for she will, with a wink and a smile, lure them to give up everything for her: "I will share my private fantasy of 'the world's desire': that one day her body will be found. Because it is only when Helen of Troy becomes a desiccated pile of bones, when men can look at a toothless jaw, a tarnished ring and hand that has become an incomplete jaw, that she can, finally, be laid to rest. Only then that we will stop hounding her, stop blaming her for being the most beautiful woman in the world." I love all versions of Helen, but I too would love to see her be allowed to just be a woman, a person, not a symbol, a trope, a beautiful face or a woman men fought over. Whether she was real or not does not matter, what matters is that she has become something bigger than any woman could possibly ever be. We will never lay her to rest in the sense that we would stop imagining her – she will always be rewritten and I, as a Helen fan, am happy about it – but we should give her the courtesy of treating her as a nuanced individual, a human, despite her mythical, bonkers origin story.
Here are some random facts I learned from the book that I found interesting:
- The concept of xenia existed already in the Bronze Age and was known as xenwia.
- Some historians like Herodotus saw Helen as the cause of the enmity between the Persians and the Greeks: Helen was not just blamed for a mythical war, but for real-life ones as well. She was used as a political, rhetorical device, sometime as a traitor to Greeks, sometimes as a symbol of the Greeks.
- Delphi was seen as the center of the world in antiquity.
- The life expectancy of women in the Bronze Age was about 28: they were mothers at 12, grandmothers at 24 and dead by 28.
- Contraception was well-known in the Bronze Age. A lot of that knowledge seems to have come from Egypt.
- There is a story set in Rhodes that says that after the Menelaus's death, Helen was exiled and she ended up seeking sanctuary on Rhodes, but ended up hanged because the lady of the island blamed her for the death of her husband at Troy. Despite this gruesome story, Helen was, on Rhodes, worshipped as a tree-deity.
- At the time of writing this book, the most common date given to the Trojan War was around 1184 BC – it was a time period during which the Mycenaean world and the city of Wilusa began to collapse and fade away.
- Helen should be remembered as a kingmaker: it is through her that Menelaus became the king of Sparta and it is her daughter who will inherit the throne.
- The Hittite Empire – to which Troy belonged – disappeared completely by 1175.
- In Hittite culture, rape and adultery were capital offences and could result in execution.
- A man known as Simon Magus (one of the first official heretics) created his own Christian sect which highlighted Helen as this sacred feminine figure, a symbol of power. It is said that he had, as his partner, a prostitute he referred to as Helene who was the reincarnated Helen of Troy. Even during Christian times, the pagan figure of Helen was a notable figure.
- When Alexander the Great visited Troy, it is said that a local leader offered him the lyre Paris played for Helen – Alexander was grumpy about this cause he didn’t want Paris’s lyre but the lyre his hero, Achilles, had played for his lover, Patroclus. Iconic behaviour.
- Throughout history, kings and queens have attempted to legitimize their rule by creating bloodlines for themselves that tie them to Trojan heroes: Britain was said to be created by Brutus of Troy and so on. Eleanor of Aquitaine used Helen as a way to bolster her own self-image and present herself as a smart, pious, beautiful, fearsome woman like her (it’s thanks to her, her time period and this dude called Benoit and his Roman de Troie that Helen was slightly rehabilitated during the Middle-Ages).
- So many powerful depictions of women have been found on Crete that some scholars have even suggested Minoan Crete – and Bronze Age Greece in general – was a matriarchal society. It was most likely not that simple, but still, clearly, women were considered to have immense power and influence.
This is an impressive feat of research, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just that this book could’ve used a bit more editing to be more digestable, easy-to-understand and less bogged down. But I respect Bettany Hughes a whole lot for doing this work and for all she has done since. She’s an incredible historian. I would recommend reading this book for anyone interested in Helen of Troy, Mycenaean history and how Greek cultural history. It might be a tough read at some points, but even with its flaws, it is worth it.
Bettany Hughes’ Helen of Troy is an ambitious study and biography of the mythical character Helen. In this book, Hughes explores the origins and stories of Helen’s myth, attempts to present her in as accurate a context as possible and presents the reader with all the different ways Helen has been, throughout history, interpreted and presented. After reading this book, Helen will never be just the most beautiful woman in the world for you but a woman who was so much more than that: a queen, a kingmaker, a goddess, a mother, a priestess and woman so titillating that we will never let go of her story.
Helen is one of my favorite characters in anything ever. Her story – all the myriad versions of her story – are captivating and no matter how she is depicted, the strength of her character is just simply intoxicating. She is unforgettable. Bettany Hughes is one of my favorite historians and someone I respect with my whole heart for all she has done for classics as a field and for her fellow female historians. So naturally, I was excited to finally begin reading this book, perhaps the most seminal study ever done on Helen and one of the first – if not the first – in-depth study done by a female historian about a female character of mythology/history.
Before I begin discussing all the stuff I liked and found intriguing, I will get my negative opinions and criticisms out of the way. This book is, to put it simply, stuffed too full of information. I can appreciate the desire to put everything you’ve learned and found out into your work, but as it is, the book has way too many personal anecdotes of Hughes’s travels and goes on way too many tangents about things that are, granted, interesting, but not strictly relevant to the story of Helen. We do not need pages on Bronze Age perfumes, Schliemann’s personal life and so on. I appreciate the way Hughes contextualizes Helen and paints a vivid picture of the Bronze Age world she would’ve lived in if she was a real woman, but there is such a thing as too much. It sometimes felt like the book lost sight of Helen and became a book about the bigger political, economical and cultural situation of the time period discussed. Context is important, but Hughes went a bit overboard. As someone who has a relatively good understanding of Greek myth and history, reading this book was not too hard (just tiresome), but if I had tried to read this some years ago, I would’ve been way more lost and confused. Hughes's Helen of Troy is not a beginner-friendly book.
But now, on to stuff I liked. Though Hughes’s way of contextualizing Helen had its issues, I loved that Hughes explained to the reader how Mycenaean culture came to flourish and took over the Greek world after the fall of Minoan culture during a period of intense political and natural upheaval (the Thera eruption and so on), and described what the life of a Bronze Age woman would’ve been like. The reader gets a good idea of the kind of clothes and jewels Helen would’ve worn, what her home palace would’ve been like and what kinds of roles a Mycenaean princess or a queen would’ve fulfilled. Helen is so often, falsely, thought of as a woman of the Classical period, so Hughes representing her as a Bronze Age woman – a queen who would’ve worshipped through dance and song, played a signifcant role in religious practices, cut her hair when young and so on – was very much appreciated. We shouldn’t look for Helen in Classical Athens or Sparta, but in the more distant past where the role of women was, based on art and archeological evidence, very different to the silent, invisible role of women in the Classical world. In the Bronze Age, women could own land, acted as priestesses in publiv roles, walked around seemingly freely and were depicted in abundance everywhere from frescoes to drinking cups. Archeologists have found more depictions of women than men. In this time period, Zeus was not yet the king of the Gods (he came took over the Pantheon of Gods later – Helen, his daughter, is a much older figure). Speaking of religion, I had no idea how widely Helen was worshipped during the Bronze Age and the time periods after that: she was an icon for young girls and women, a godly being, a divine ancestor, a fertility goddess, a divinity associated with all elements but especially water. She become, for Spartans especially, a key figure in creating their sense of self. I liked this quote a lot: "Whether or not the 'world's desire' enjoyed a mortal life, there is no question that she lived, vividly, prominently, in the minds of the ancient Spartans. We call her Helen of Troy - for the Greeks she was, indisputably, Helen of Sparta." On Sparta, I had no idea that archeologists have not been able to find a palace at Sparta, something that resembles the grand palace of Sparta from the myths. Is it gone forever, or is it someplace else?
One of the key goals of this book is to present a more nuanced depiction of Helen. She has been, throughout history, seen as a fallen woman, a whore, the most beautiful woman in the world and ”an incarnation of sexual promise”. She has also been more positive things: a protector, a guide, a symbol of female power. Every age has created their own Helen, because we haven’t been able to let go of her. During the Classical age, she became widely depicted as a bitch and a slut, and in Christian times, she was often depicted as a kind of Eve, a woman who brought destruction and an end of an age. The passive pawn Helen, one that has no agency and is just there for men to rape and kidnap, is a more modern take on her: in antiquity, she was often way more nuanced and an equal partner to Menelaus and then Paris. Modern artists have, time and time again, depicted her rape and kidnapping, but in antiquity her story was more complex than that. It seems that post-antiquity, people were only comfortable seeing Helen as either an innocent good woman horribly mistreated by men or a near-demonic she-wolf who causes the deaths of thousands with her pretty face and uncontrollable, scary sexuality (Marlowe’s Helen who ”launched a thousand ships” and burnt down the ”topless towers of Ilium” is a literal demonic figure). Throughout history, women’s sexuality has been seen as something threatening and something men have to control – it’s no wonder, then, that Helen has become so irresistible a figure. She is alluring and seductive, a woman men cannot resist (inside or outside of her myth), and thus she has become a character that’s rewritten over and over again because, I guess, in writing her, there is a sense of taking control away from her. Helen always exists in three different eras: the mythical Bronze Age (the Age of Heroes), the age in which the depiction of her was created and the time period in which we consume the creation. We always see her through the lense of these three eras and because of that, we all see her differently because we bring our contemporary morals, ideals and baggage with us and shape her according to them. She is reborn time and time again. And that is one of the things I find most intriguing about her and mythology in general.
Hughes presents different interpretations of Helen and quotes many ancient and more modern texts about her, showcasing how her story has been retold over the years. Sometimes Helen runs away willingly, sometimes she is taken. Sometimes she blames herself for everything and sometimes she seems way colder than that. Whatever the way she ended up in Troy was, one thing Hughes gets across very well was that the Trojan war was never just about her. As she puts it: "--by stealing Helen he [Paris] abused something far more important than a woman." The Trojan war was a war over a man’s hurt honor, the riches of Troy, the broken laws of xenia and an insult to all sense of common courtesy. It was also a way for men – heroes – to achieve the most prized of futures: a kalos thanatos, a beautiful, glorious death. Helen’s own death is also an interesting topic. Despite everything she does and causes in mythology, she never seems to face any consoquences for anything: she is taken back by Menelaus and seems to live a long life in Sparta, or she is made into a star or a goddess, so she can forever escape death. People have hated her and blamed her for so long, but still she gets to escape and we let her get away with it all. It’s interesting because so often women like her, in stories, are given a horrible ending as a lesson to all women on how to behave. But not her.
I loved this quote near the end of the book where Hughes discusses Helen’s enduring myth and how she has become a symbol of a treacherous, dangerous woman all men should avoid for she will, with a wink and a smile, lure them to give up everything for her: "I will share my private fantasy of 'the world's desire': that one day her body will be found. Because it is only when Helen of Troy becomes a desiccated pile of bones, when men can look at a toothless jaw, a tarnished ring and hand that has become an incomplete jaw, that she can, finally, be laid to rest. Only then that we will stop hounding her, stop blaming her for being the most beautiful woman in the world." I love all versions of Helen, but I too would love to see her be allowed to just be a woman, a person, not a symbol, a trope, a beautiful face or a woman men fought over. Whether she was real or not does not matter, what matters is that she has become something bigger than any woman could possibly ever be. We will never lay her to rest in the sense that we would stop imagining her – she will always be rewritten and I, as a Helen fan, am happy about it – but we should give her the courtesy of treating her as a nuanced individual, a human, despite her mythical, bonkers origin story.
Here are some random facts I learned from the book that I found interesting:
- The concept of xenia existed already in the Bronze Age and was known as xenwia.
- Some historians like Herodotus saw Helen as the cause of the enmity between the Persians and the Greeks: Helen was not just blamed for a mythical war, but for real-life ones as well. She was used as a political, rhetorical device, sometime as a traitor to Greeks, sometimes as a symbol of the Greeks.
- Delphi was seen as the center of the world in antiquity.
- The life expectancy of women in the Bronze Age was about 28: they were mothers at 12, grandmothers at 24 and dead by 28.
- Contraception was well-known in the Bronze Age. A lot of that knowledge seems to have come from Egypt.
- There is a story set in Rhodes that says that after the Menelaus's death, Helen was exiled and she ended up seeking sanctuary on Rhodes, but ended up hanged because the lady of the island blamed her for the death of her husband at Troy. Despite this gruesome story, Helen was, on Rhodes, worshipped as a tree-deity.
- At the time of writing this book, the most common date given to the Trojan War was around 1184 BC – it was a time period during which the Mycenaean world and the city of Wilusa began to collapse and fade away.
- Helen should be remembered as a kingmaker: it is through her that Menelaus became the king of Sparta and it is her daughter who will inherit the throne.
- The Hittite Empire – to which Troy belonged – disappeared completely by 1175.
- In Hittite culture, rape and adultery were capital offences and could result in execution.
- A man known as Simon Magus (one of the first official heretics) created his own Christian sect which highlighted Helen as this sacred feminine figure, a symbol of power. It is said that he had, as his partner, a prostitute he referred to as Helene who was the reincarnated Helen of Troy. Even during Christian times, the pagan figure of Helen was a notable figure.
- When Alexander the Great visited Troy, it is said that a local leader offered him the lyre Paris played for Helen – Alexander was grumpy about this cause he didn’t want Paris’s lyre but the lyre his hero, Achilles, had played for his lover, Patroclus. Iconic behaviour.
- Throughout history, kings and queens have attempted to legitimize their rule by creating bloodlines for themselves that tie them to Trojan heroes: Britain was said to be created by Brutus of Troy and so on. Eleanor of Aquitaine used Helen as a way to bolster her own self-image and present herself as a smart, pious, beautiful, fearsome woman like her (it’s thanks to her, her time period and this dude called Benoit and his Roman de Troie that Helen was slightly rehabilitated during the Middle-Ages).
- So many powerful depictions of women have been found on Crete that some scholars have even suggested Minoan Crete – and Bronze Age Greece in general – was a matriarchal society. It was most likely not that simple, but still, clearly, women were considered to have immense power and influence.
This is an impressive feat of research, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just that this book could’ve used a bit more editing to be more digestable, easy-to-understand and less bogged down. But I respect Bettany Hughes a whole lot for doing this work and for all she has done since. She’s an incredible historian. I would recommend reading this book for anyone interested in Helen of Troy, Mycenaean history and how Greek cultural history. It might be a tough read at some points, but even with its flaws, it is worth it.
December 8, 2023
This was perhaps one of the most comprehensive, thorough texts on the Trojan War and ancient Greece that I have read. It covered Homer, to Hesiod, to the Age of Heroes, to the Classical Age, the tragedians, to the Christianization of myth, to Monica Lewinsky, to beauty magazines. It's all Helen.
This was less a series of essays on Helen and more a search for Eleni, the person who may or may not have existed. The book doesn't require you to draw a conclusion, but does suggest that we should stop trying to pin either motive or blame on Helen. At this point, she is no longer one person. Helen is a thought experiment. You can return her to her humanity, but to do so strips her of some of her might. To accept the full Helen in the full scope of the story, you have to take her only as myth. To be Helen, she can't be just a woman.
I'm obsessed with this book, so here's some of my favorite excerpts.
"This scene tells the story of a master painter from the 5th century BC Zeuxis, A man much in demand, particularly in Magns Graecia. Commissioned to produce a picture of Helen of Troy for the Temple of Hera at Agrigentum in Sicily, Zeuxis decided he could realize his task only if the city supplied him with the five most beautiful maidens in the region as models. The sum of their beauty might at least approach Helens. The selection process started in the town's gymnasium. Inspecting young men as they exercised, Zeuxis asked to see the siblings of the most handsome. word went out and the pretty sisters of the pretty boys began to line up. Edwin Long created another painting, the Search for Beauty, which illustrates what happened next. It is a voluptuous scene. Here Zeuxis is auditioning his models. scores of women crowd around him; many begin remove their clothes. One woman is drawing out a pin till it fall her blue black hair. these girls had to be palpably perfect, perfect and every last detail if they were to become second Helens.
Across the English channel and on the second floor of the Louvre in Paris there is another Zeuxis, attempting to paint another Helen. [...] here there are five eager girls, again, each is a wonderful specimen. One blonde, with a blue ribbon in her hair and pearls around her neck, is undressed, her modesty precariously preserved by a flimsy drape of cloth, and old woman pokes at her, staring covetously at the plump young flesh which is about to be immortalized. yet what dominates this painting is not the cluster of beauties. it is the bleak virtually empty canvas in the center of the composition. this is where Helen should be: avoid that Zeuxius is desperately, abortively, trying to fill.
Because, of course, the wonderful irony about the most beautiful woman in the world is that she is faceless.
There is no contemporary representation of the Spartan Queen from the 13th century BC, the punitive date at the Trojan war. The extant images of highborne Greek women from this period, the late bronze Age, are all standards, and recycled replicas within a genre. at the time there was no characterization in Greek art. Excavators have turned up striking Bronze Age death masks, but only of men. There are precious signet rings belonging to the aristocrats of the time, but the female faces they bear are abstracted, quasi-divine creatures; there are no portraits."
"A host of ancient authors are very clear in articulate on the matter, and given that inventory of violence deductions imagined by latter-day artists, their opinion is perhaps a little surprising. Paris certainly did not have the upper hand. According to Homer, one's Helen has teamed up with the Trojan Prince, she's never described as his whore or sex slave, not even as enthralled bride - but only as his legitimate, equal partner. She is first Meneleus' parakoitis and then Paris' akoutis - words which translate as bedmate, spouse, or wife. Both the Spartan king and the Trojan Prince are described as her posis, her consort. Helen is never given the title damar - subservient wife.
The fact that Helen is to be seen across the art galleries of Europe portrayed as a victim is a later manifestation of a rape fantasy. As far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, Helen, instructed by the goddess of sexual love, Aphrodite, made herself irresistible to Paris."
"Aphrodite is only ever moments away, because she is both Helen's Muse and her altera ego. and Helen is Aphrodite's mortal surrogate. in some traditions, the pair are mother and daughter. if Aphrodite is the goddess of sex, Helen is sex incarnate. The two are a potent combination and they are inextricable. Paris has caught himself up in an intense love triangle semicolon he is outnumbered and he is to be pitied, not envied: Aphrodite's bed is a place you are 'driven mad' as Euripides instructed his 5th century BC audience."
"Helen whirls through history, often turning full circle as she does so. she is worshipped by the ancient Greeks as a sex goddess, and becomes that again in the Gnostic tradition. works of scholarship claim Helen's responsibility for a huge range of things from the Aryan ideal, fair-haired blue-eyed superiority, to Easter eggs parentheses fertility symbols and parentheses, from the Hollywood stereotype of a blonde bombshell to fairy strung up on top of our Christmas trees. Men sees her from the Spartan Palace and then trap her in whichever sanctuary or castle or brothel or heaven or hell best fits their age. they're attempting, always unsuccessfully, to frame her beauty, both mentally and physically: creating ever more Helens as they do so."
"We still, with willful partiality, focus on the shame rather than the triumph of Helen's life story. for centuries, we have chosen to adopt the post-homeric, misogynistic worldview, have you codified in the city such as Athens from the 5th century BC onwards, as a precedent for our own. But Helen springs from an earlier time. since the birth of history her name has never been forgotten. her very survival is proof of her significance. She is special because she is a consistent female presence, both sacred and profane, across three millennia. worlds have changed, civilizations have come and gone, social, cultural and political sensibilities have shifted, poets have sung and been silenced, but Helen has outlasted them all.
and what of the elusive prehistoric Helen, the Bronze Age Queen who sat on the limestone blocks of the Spartan Palace? The aristocrat who controlled the men around her. The hieratic potentate who owned land. The woman who glistened as she passed, smelling of olive oil and roses, and who left the palace by night to officiate at Hetty cultic rituals. The queen who lived in a palace adorned with images, high priestesses, goddess girls: who prepared narcotics, who walked hand in hand with the spirits of her land. A woman who had pole position, power, wealth and respect.
Evidence of this woman's life is embedded in the Peloponnesian and Anatolian landscape. She has left us many clues, but she is not left us a corpse. although it seems from the conditions of the Spartan citadel this is one piece of Helen that is escaped for certain from the record, I will share my private fantasy of the world's desire: that one day her body will be found. Because it is only when Helen of Troy becomes a desiccated pile of bones, when men can look at a toothless jaw, a tarnished ring and a hand that is become an incomplete claw, that she can, finally, be laid to rest. Only then will we stop hounding her, stop blaming her, for being the most beautiful woman in the world."
This was less a series of essays on Helen and more a search for Eleni, the person who may or may not have existed. The book doesn't require you to draw a conclusion, but does suggest that we should stop trying to pin either motive or blame on Helen. At this point, she is no longer one person. Helen is a thought experiment. You can return her to her humanity, but to do so strips her of some of her might. To accept the full Helen in the full scope of the story, you have to take her only as myth. To be Helen, she can't be just a woman.
I'm obsessed with this book, so here's some of my favorite excerpts.
"This scene tells the story of a master painter from the 5th century BC Zeuxis, A man much in demand, particularly in Magns Graecia. Commissioned to produce a picture of Helen of Troy for the Temple of Hera at Agrigentum in Sicily, Zeuxis decided he could realize his task only if the city supplied him with the five most beautiful maidens in the region as models. The sum of their beauty might at least approach Helens. The selection process started in the town's gymnasium. Inspecting young men as they exercised, Zeuxis asked to see the siblings of the most handsome. word went out and the pretty sisters of the pretty boys began to line up. Edwin Long created another painting, the Search for Beauty, which illustrates what happened next. It is a voluptuous scene. Here Zeuxis is auditioning his models. scores of women crowd around him; many begin remove their clothes. One woman is drawing out a pin till it fall her blue black hair. these girls had to be palpably perfect, perfect and every last detail if they were to become second Helens.
Across the English channel and on the second floor of the Louvre in Paris there is another Zeuxis, attempting to paint another Helen. [...] here there are five eager girls, again, each is a wonderful specimen. One blonde, with a blue ribbon in her hair and pearls around her neck, is undressed, her modesty precariously preserved by a flimsy drape of cloth, and old woman pokes at her, staring covetously at the plump young flesh which is about to be immortalized. yet what dominates this painting is not the cluster of beauties. it is the bleak virtually empty canvas in the center of the composition. this is where Helen should be: avoid that Zeuxius is desperately, abortively, trying to fill.
Because, of course, the wonderful irony about the most beautiful woman in the world is that she is faceless.
There is no contemporary representation of the Spartan Queen from the 13th century BC, the punitive date at the Trojan war. The extant images of highborne Greek women from this period, the late bronze Age, are all standards, and recycled replicas within a genre. at the time there was no characterization in Greek art. Excavators have turned up striking Bronze Age death masks, but only of men. There are precious signet rings belonging to the aristocrats of the time, but the female faces they bear are abstracted, quasi-divine creatures; there are no portraits."
"A host of ancient authors are very clear in articulate on the matter, and given that inventory of violence deductions imagined by latter-day artists, their opinion is perhaps a little surprising. Paris certainly did not have the upper hand. According to Homer, one's Helen has teamed up with the Trojan Prince, she's never described as his whore or sex slave, not even as enthralled bride - but only as his legitimate, equal partner. She is first Meneleus' parakoitis and then Paris' akoutis - words which translate as bedmate, spouse, or wife. Both the Spartan king and the Trojan Prince are described as her posis, her consort. Helen is never given the title damar - subservient wife.
The fact that Helen is to be seen across the art galleries of Europe portrayed as a victim is a later manifestation of a rape fantasy. As far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, Helen, instructed by the goddess of sexual love, Aphrodite, made herself irresistible to Paris."
"Aphrodite is only ever moments away, because she is both Helen's Muse and her altera ego. and Helen is Aphrodite's mortal surrogate. in some traditions, the pair are mother and daughter. if Aphrodite is the goddess of sex, Helen is sex incarnate. The two are a potent combination and they are inextricable. Paris has caught himself up in an intense love triangle semicolon he is outnumbered and he is to be pitied, not envied: Aphrodite's bed is a place you are 'driven mad' as Euripides instructed his 5th century BC audience."
"Helen whirls through history, often turning full circle as she does so. she is worshipped by the ancient Greeks as a sex goddess, and becomes that again in the Gnostic tradition. works of scholarship claim Helen's responsibility for a huge range of things from the Aryan ideal, fair-haired blue-eyed superiority, to Easter eggs parentheses fertility symbols and parentheses, from the Hollywood stereotype of a blonde bombshell to fairy strung up on top of our Christmas trees. Men sees her from the Spartan Palace and then trap her in whichever sanctuary or castle or brothel or heaven or hell best fits their age. they're attempting, always unsuccessfully, to frame her beauty, both mentally and physically: creating ever more Helens as they do so."
"We still, with willful partiality, focus on the shame rather than the triumph of Helen's life story. for centuries, we have chosen to adopt the post-homeric, misogynistic worldview, have you codified in the city such as Athens from the 5th century BC onwards, as a precedent for our own. But Helen springs from an earlier time. since the birth of history her name has never been forgotten. her very survival is proof of her significance. She is special because she is a consistent female presence, both sacred and profane, across three millennia. worlds have changed, civilizations have come and gone, social, cultural and political sensibilities have shifted, poets have sung and been silenced, but Helen has outlasted them all.
and what of the elusive prehistoric Helen, the Bronze Age Queen who sat on the limestone blocks of the Spartan Palace? The aristocrat who controlled the men around her. The hieratic potentate who owned land. The woman who glistened as she passed, smelling of olive oil and roses, and who left the palace by night to officiate at Hetty cultic rituals. The queen who lived in a palace adorned with images, high priestesses, goddess girls: who prepared narcotics, who walked hand in hand with the spirits of her land. A woman who had pole position, power, wealth and respect.
Evidence of this woman's life is embedded in the Peloponnesian and Anatolian landscape. She has left us many clues, but she is not left us a corpse. although it seems from the conditions of the Spartan citadel this is one piece of Helen that is escaped for certain from the record, I will share my private fantasy of the world's desire: that one day her body will be found. Because it is only when Helen of Troy becomes a desiccated pile of bones, when men can look at a toothless jaw, a tarnished ring and a hand that is become an incomplete claw, that she can, finally, be laid to rest. Only then will we stop hounding her, stop blaming her, for being the most beautiful woman in the world."
October 10, 2013
I had seen and heard Bettany Hughes on several DVD commentaries and BBC-produced history specials. Having been impressed by the knowledge and contagious enthusiasm she brought to her TV work, I wanted to see whether these translated to the printed page. In short, do they ever.
As an avid student and later teacher of Latin and classical mythology, I was aware of Helen's prominent place in the folklore of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Hughes, however, posits and beautifully illustrates the case for Helen's being not only an actual historical figure, but an even more significant one than I and others had previously believed. Via tales of her own travels to archaeological digs and various museums that hold pieces of the Helen narrative, Hughes demonstrates that the ancients saw Helen in both a reverent and a disparaging light. Further, these differing interpretations have persisted through the art of succeeding ages. There is relatively little written record of Helen's life, and between that and the visual evidence emerging steadily from excavations, those interested in Helen's story can form their own opinions as to her existence. The opinion of Ms. Hughes is fascinatingly laid out in these pages.
The book can be appreciated by both a popular and a scholarly audience; Hughes provides copious endnotes for those interested in further exploration, and her prose keeps the story moving for those who prefer not to stop along the way. The book was an enlightening and entertaining read, and I look forward to more from Bettany Hughes in the future.
As an avid student and later teacher of Latin and classical mythology, I was aware of Helen's prominent place in the folklore of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Hughes, however, posits and beautifully illustrates the case for Helen's being not only an actual historical figure, but an even more significant one than I and others had previously believed. Via tales of her own travels to archaeological digs and various museums that hold pieces of the Helen narrative, Hughes demonstrates that the ancients saw Helen in both a reverent and a disparaging light. Further, these differing interpretations have persisted through the art of succeeding ages. There is relatively little written record of Helen's life, and between that and the visual evidence emerging steadily from excavations, those interested in Helen's story can form their own opinions as to her existence. The opinion of Ms. Hughes is fascinatingly laid out in these pages.
The book can be appreciated by both a popular and a scholarly audience; Hughes provides copious endnotes for those interested in further exploration, and her prose keeps the story moving for those who prefer not to stop along the way. The book was an enlightening and entertaining read, and I look forward to more from Bettany Hughes in the future.
July 2, 2017
Bettany Hughes’s book, Helen of Troy, is a work of staggeringly epic proportions. It is the story of Helen of Troy – not just as a historical or mythological figure, but a cultural figure. It looks at what life would have been like for a historical Helen, if she existed, at the landscapes Helen’s story has crossed, how Helen has been seen through the lens of myth, religion, art, theatre and more.
At over 500 pages, this could make for a dense read. But Hughes’ writing, while detailed and discerning, is lively, insightful and, most importantly, never dull. She injects herself in the narrative, recounting her own experiences of the landscapes where Helen may have walked or was worshipped, which adds a personal touch to the narrative.
Perhaps Hughes’s greatest triumph in this book is not that she builds up a wholly believable portrait of both the mythological and historical Helen, but how she examines what portraits the world has made of Helen and what that says about the world.
A thoroughly excellent book, the best I’ve read that touches on the Trojan War.
At over 500 pages, this could make for a dense read. But Hughes’ writing, while detailed and discerning, is lively, insightful and, most importantly, never dull. She injects herself in the narrative, recounting her own experiences of the landscapes where Helen may have walked or was worshipped, which adds a personal touch to the narrative.
Perhaps Hughes’s greatest triumph in this book is not that she builds up a wholly believable portrait of both the mythological and historical Helen, but how she examines what portraits the world has made of Helen and what that says about the world.
A thoroughly excellent book, the best I’ve read that touches on the Trojan War.
November 4, 2009
After watching the BBC documentary of the same title, I felt compelled to get this companion book. I had been pleased with the Paul Cartledge companion to Greeks: Crucible of Civilization, and felt this was worth the investment.
Ms. Hughes is very descriptive and entertaining in her account of the story of Helen of Sparta (later Troy) and her attempts to reconstruct the myth with what facts are available are well constructed.
This is not the "Troy" movie but a serious delving into the idea of a Bronze Age queen and how she shaped the lives of the men around her, for good or ill, and also is an exploration--on some levels--about modern feminism and gender identity.
Recommended for anyone with an interest in peeling back layers of myth to get at the history underneath.
Ms. Hughes is very descriptive and entertaining in her account of the story of Helen of Sparta (later Troy) and her attempts to reconstruct the myth with what facts are available are well constructed.
This is not the "Troy" movie but a serious delving into the idea of a Bronze Age queen and how she shaped the lives of the men around her, for good or ill, and also is an exploration--on some levels--about modern feminism and gender identity.
Recommended for anyone with an interest in peeling back layers of myth to get at the history underneath.
May 18, 2020
I loved this book. The author delves into, all the bits and pieces of bronze age museum artifacts, Greek myths, Homer's Illiad along with countless writings throughout the ages, personal visits to historical antiquity field sites etc., to mold a story that reveals a woman who must have been monumental. The author conjures up wonderfully colorful and insightful metaphors. For those interested in ancient, bronze age history, the book for me, was a delight.
January 10, 2022
Loved every moment! Helen is such a fascinating figure and Bettany Hughes really does her justice in this, exploring all the nuance around her.
November 15, 2022
How do you write a biography of a woman who possibly never existed at all? By presenting the reader with a lot of archeological evidence about how women in the Bronze Age lived. By explaining how society, literature, religion and politics worked back in the day. It's quite an adventure, but Hughes pulls it off.
Hughes gives you the context of a Bronze Age princess and allows you to paint your own picture of one of the most illustrous women in history. At the same time she debunks a lot of imagery (mainly male) painters and writers have given us throughout history by presenting you different texts and evidence.
I also loved the travellogue part of this book. Hughes doesn't shy away from how she felt when she visited the many places connected with her book. I did a nice trip through Greece myself a couple of years back and some places just came alive back again. This is not another boring history book, but a really interesting read!
Hughes gives you the context of a Bronze Age princess and allows you to paint your own picture of one of the most illustrous women in history. At the same time she debunks a lot of imagery (mainly male) painters and writers have given us throughout history by presenting you different texts and evidence.
I also loved the travellogue part of this book. Hughes doesn't shy away from how she felt when she visited the many places connected with her book. I did a nice trip through Greece myself a couple of years back and some places just came alive back again. This is not another boring history book, but a really interesting read!
April 7, 2025
I love how Bettany Hughes humanizes the past in her writing. In Helen of Troy, she paints a vivid picture of what life would have been like in the Mycenaean era and brings to life one of the most legendary figures of history and literature in a powerful and very human way. I learned a lot from this book, and it increased my appreciation of one of the greatest stories ever told.
February 26, 2015
I wasn't certain what I was getting into when I opened this book. After all, how could one write a biography of Helen of Troy without sources? It isn't as if there is a Who's Who of the Bronze Age, written on stone tablets in archaic Greek. This is a pretty hefty volume, too, suitable for use as a doorstop and pretty lethal if dropped on your toe. However, any doubts I had were foolish and soon forgotten. Remember when the word awesome, meant something? You know, capable of inspiring open-mouthed, wide-eyed respect? This book is that kind of awesome. The sheer amount of research that went into this work is staggering, and the skill with which the author handles her material is considerable. For the lover of the Greek myths, this book is indispensable, and for the romantic it is a story of the ultimate hottie. How can you lose? Buy it! Read it! Give it to a friend!
August 4, 2014
A splendid piece of cross disciplinary writing! Ms. Hughes creates a vivid picture of the Bronze Age using both traditional and experimental archeology, literature, and art. Generally I am impatient with books that focus on the author's experience, but she does it well. Her visits to the places involved or explorations of the literature and portrayals of Helen's story are a genuine enhancement of the history. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough to anyone interested in history or women's studies.
December 27, 2017
Totally enjoyed this book which looked at Helen of Sparta/Troy from all possible angles. Her influence and very existence were judged via archeology, literature, art history, and myth. Great sections on the Myceneans and the Minoans. I had quite forgotten how much I enjoyed reading about this time period.
January 16, 2013
I think this is not the right book......its Goddesses of Troy I entered, and read.
I believe the authers last name i Clare, and its a series of time travel through history.
Most of it was good fun, a little of the top and hard to swallow ending.
I believe the authers last name i Clare, and its a series of time travel through history.
Most of it was good fun, a little of the top and hard to swallow ending.
October 12, 2014
This is a fabulous book for anyone interested in Greek Mythology, Archeology, History, the Bronze Age, and/or women's history. Bettany Hughes is a brilliant writer and stellar researcher. I was genuinely sorry to complete the book and will not be passing it on to the library book sale.
April 28, 2022
This was such an informative read, I loved this.
Of course everyone knows the classical story of Helen of Troy, the basic details but speaking for myself I knew little of the history of the myth surrounding her, the cult and worship of her and even how she inspires art, literature, movies and much more throughout the ages.
In this book the author tries to chart the "real" story of Helen, she examines physical and cultural evidence of her journey through life and real life locations around the world and the total mythology that grew up around this mythological yet perennial figure of the classical age that still resonates with scholars and the general population alike.
She fascinates and intrigues us, the power this one women supposedly yielded at a time when women were considered subservient amidst a male dominated atmosphere.
I have long been a fan of Bettany Hughes as a historian and tv presenter but this is the first book of hers I have read, I love her attention to detail of every aspect of the period of history or person she is writing about and her way of writing is well researched and very readable even if the reader is not actually an expert on that topic.
This was such a great read, rich in historical detail and exhaustively researched.
Of course everyone knows the classical story of Helen of Troy, the basic details but speaking for myself I knew little of the history of the myth surrounding her, the cult and worship of her and even how she inspires art, literature, movies and much more throughout the ages.
In this book the author tries to chart the "real" story of Helen, she examines physical and cultural evidence of her journey through life and real life locations around the world and the total mythology that grew up around this mythological yet perennial figure of the classical age that still resonates with scholars and the general population alike.
She fascinates and intrigues us, the power this one women supposedly yielded at a time when women were considered subservient amidst a male dominated atmosphere.
I have long been a fan of Bettany Hughes as a historian and tv presenter but this is the first book of hers I have read, I love her attention to detail of every aspect of the period of history or person she is writing about and her way of writing is well researched and very readable even if the reader is not actually an expert on that topic.
This was such a great read, rich in historical detail and exhaustively researched.
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