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Helen of Troy, the fatal beauty: Who was really the woman for whom the Trojan War was fought?

2022-10-09 16:55:11Histori SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Helen of Troy, the fatal beauty: Who was really the woman for whom the Trojan
Actress Diane Kruger as Helen in the movie "Helen of Troy"

A beautiful, blonde, marble-pale prey, a delicate victim of the desire of others? No. A half-naked diner, with a beauty that was anything but classic, yet with so much influence that it sets armies in motion. This is, according to English historian Bettany Hughes, the most likely portrait of the femme fatale of antiquity: Helen of Troy, the woman Homer speaks of in the Iliad, more than 3,000 years ago, who sparked the war between the Greeks and the trojans.

Princess without hair

"Helena is a mythical character, but her character can have its roots in one of the Spartan queens of the XIII century BC", explains the researcher, author of a long investigation in this field. The place where we should look for the real Helen is not Troy (the place that is located in Turkey today, and which in Homer's story was her place of residence after the abduction by Paris), but Sparta, where the young woman would become a sovereign by the side of her husband , Menelaus.

"For many years it has been thought that the palace of Menelaus was to be sought on the hill of Terapne, outside Sparta, where 300 statues associated with the cult of Helen have been restored," says Hughes. "According to some Greek archaeologists, recent excavations suggest that the remains of Lacedaemon, the capital of the southern Peloponnese at the end of the Mycenaean era, are found in Pellana, 25 km north of Sparta."

Here, when they turned 12, the girls of 3,200 years ago were of male age, and Helena was no exception. Only then would it be possible to grow smooth hair, as poets and painters have described it for centuries. Initially, you were hairless. "In the Mycenaean frescoes, women who belonged to the upper class kept their heads shaved until adolescence, except for a curl or a short ponytail," says the researcher.

traditionalist

"We know very little about the education of Spartan girls in 1200 BC," says Marxiano Melotti, assistant professor of archaeological research methodology at the University of Milan Bicocca, "but it can be guessed that some costumes of archaic, very traditionalist Sparta show that they were used much earlier". We know, for example, that the Spartans of the 7th century BC practiced combat like men, fighting naked, hand-to-hand.

Helen of Troy, the fatal beauty: Who was really the woman for whom the Trojan

Noble, destined for a career as a priestess, but also to become a wife and mother, the princess was "initiated" into rampant cults related to fertility. Secluded for long periods among forests and mountains, Spartan teenage girls made contact with the divinity through music and dance, while learning the use of medicinal plants, such as the opium poppy, which grew spontaneously in the Peloponnese. "Women of the Late Bronze Age were the privileged mediators of the Gods. And the cult became all one with earthly matters," explains Hughes.

With influence and childbearing age, the girl was an excellent case. Sprayed with olive oil, with the skin of the entire body "whitened" by a cream of lead oxide, and covered in tattoos of strong colors, eyes heavily made up with black and pink, and body surrounded by layers various blue and purple linen, studded with precious stones, but bare-breasted, so she will appear before the future bridegroom. Wedding banquet menu? Cucumber lentil soup, chickpea flour buns, baked with fruit, and (VIP guests only) roast pork and venison.

But what a kidnapping! The Mycenaean courts of the 13th century BC often welcomed foreigners, and the Trojan Paris, of whom Homer speaks, could be one of these. "Young aristocrats were "diplomatic goods", continues Hughes, "and it happened that hospitality also meant the exchange of women". But there is more. According to a tradition dating back to the poetess Sappho (7th-6th century BC), polyandry (the female counterpart of polygamy) was widespread in ancient Sparta, a practice whose origins date back to precisely this elopement for love (and not abduction). of Helen.

What is certain is that going to war for a woman, three millennia ago, was not so rare, as many written testimonies prove. We know, for example, that sometime around 1230 BC, the kingdoms of Ugar and Amurru (in present-day Syria) were threatened with destruction for the sake of the princess of Amurru. This is given in marriage to the king of Ugar to strengthen the alliance between the two city-states, but is sent back to the sender, perhaps not wanting to consummate the marriage. / Story


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