In the tradition of Homer, Helen of Sparta was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her story goes that her father held a tournament to determine which of her suitors would become her husband because so many young men had come to seek her hand. The tournament went on and finally the suitors were made to swear to help Helen’s new husband, Menelaus, in the event that she was ever taken from him … which she was. Paris, a Trojan prince claimed that the goddess Aphrodite had promised Helen to him and so he came to Sparta from Troy to get her. He took her to Troy (whether she went willingly or not is unknown) and Menelaus called upon the former suitors to march against Troy with him. Thus began the Trojan War.
The War goes on for ten years and finally the Greeks and the Trojans decide that Menelaus and Paris should do battle alone to determine who will win her hand. Paris is beaten horribly and just as he is about to be slaughtered, the goddess Aphrodite saves him and takes him back to Troy. Paris goes to Helen’s bed and is begging her to sleep with him when his brother, Hector (Troy’s greatest soldier and ONLY hope of victory) enters. Hector demands to know what Paris is doing in Helen’s bed while his countrymen are dying because of a choice that he made. Paris quickly answers that he was afraid and the Helen had just finished convincing him to return to the battlefield. Because of Paris’ cowardly action Helen scorns him, and tells Hector that she was really berating Paris for the same thing.
Ultimately Troy is sacked, Hector is killed by Achilles, the surviving Trojans are carried off into slavery by the Greeks who sacked their city, and life goes on.
When my mythology professor told us this story and asked us how we reacted to it, I realized how little people have changed since Helen’s time. People still get restless in relationships – like Helen. People still lie about their actions – like Paris. People still fight for lost causes – like Hector. It’s been some two thousand years since these events supposedly took place and I’ve found these mythological people doing things that modern people do.
This got me thinking about why we still do these things. Why has human nature seemingly not changed in the past two thousand and some odd years since these events were supposed to have taken place? It fascinates me and it disappoints me. It fascinates me because it allows me to relate back to people across the ages, but it disappoints me because it seems that people should have learned their lesson at some point.
But perhaps if we, in our own time, never did these things ourselves we would never learn what it is to be human.
