Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore

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.
Illustrations
Text Acknowledgements
Maps
Timeline
Dramatis Personae
Family Trees
Foreword & Acknowledgements
Introduction
Cherchez la femme
An evil destiny
Helen-hunting
Goddess, princess, whore
1. Helen's birth in pre-history
A dangerous landscape
A rape, a birth
The lost citadel
The Mycenaeans
The pre-historic princess
2. The land of beautiful women
The rape of 'fair Hellen'
Sparte kalligynaika
Tender-eyed girls
3. The world's desire
A trophy for heroes
The kingmaker
A royal wedding
4. Kourotrophos
Hermione
A welcome burden
Helen, high priestess
La belle Hélène
5. A lover's game
The golden apple
Bearing gifts
Alexander Helenam Rapuit
The female of the species is more deadly than the male
6. Eros & Eris
Helen the whore
The pain of Aphrodite
The sea's foaming lanes
7. Troy beckons
East is east & west is west
The fair Troad
The topless towers of Ilium
The golden houses of the east
A fleet sets sail
8. Troy besieged
Helen, destroyer of cities
Death's dark cloud
A beautiful death, Kalos Thanatos
The fall of Troy
9. Immortal Helen
Home to Sparta
The death of a queen
The age of heroes ends
'Fragrant treasuries'
The daughter of the ocean
10. The face that launched a thousand ships
Helen in Athens
Helen lost & Helen found
Helen, Homer & the chances of survival
Veyn fables
Helen of Troy & the bad Samaritan
Perpulchra, more than beautiful
Dancing with the devil
Helen's nemesis
Appendices
The Minotaur's island
La Parisienne
Women of stone & clay & bronze
Elemental Helen, she-gods & she-devils
Royal purple, the color of congealed blood
Epilogue: Myth, history & historia
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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