The Private Life of Helen of Troy
The Private Life of Helen of Troy
John Erskine
Contents
I. HELEN’S RETURN
II. THE YOUNGER GENERATION
III. THEIR ELDERS
IV. DEATH AND BIRTH
V. HELEN’S BEAUTY
NOTE
After Troy, Helen re-established herself in the home.
It will be seen that apart from her divine beauty and entire frankness she was a conventional woman.
PART I
Helen’s return
I
The point of the story is that Paris gave the prize to Aphrodite, not because she bribed him, but because she was beautiful. After all, it was a contest in beauty, though Athena and Hera started a discussion about wisdom and power. It was they who tried to bribe him. They had their merits and they had arguments, but Aphrodite was the thing itself.
Her remark, that he would some day marry Helen, interested him as a divine experiment in prophecy. It might happen or it might not. Very likely the goddess did not mean it as he thought; a wise man, even though he believed the oracle, would always wait and see.
Meanwhile he did wonder what Helen looked like. He needed travel. He might as well visit Sparta as any other place. Cassandra told him not to, but she always did. Œnone warned him, but she was his wife.
When he came to the house of Menelaus, the gatekeeper let him in, and since he was a stranger they wouldn’t ask his name nor his errand till he had had food and rest. Menelaus put off a journey he had thought of, and practised the sacrament of hospitality. But when he found out who it was, he told Paris to make himself free in the house, and after polite excuses went down to Crete, as he had planned.
So they all intended well. But Paris saw Helen, face to face.
II
When the war ended in Troy, with the fall of the city, Menelaus went looking for Helen, with a sword in his hand. He was undecided whether to thrust the blade through her alluring bosom, or to cut her swan-like throat. He hadn’t seen her for some time. She was waiting, as though they had appointed the hour. With a simple gesture she bared her heart for his vengeance, and looked at him. He looked at her. The sword embarrassed him. “Helen,” he said, “it’s time we went home.” They tell the story another way, too. Menelaus was not alone, they say, when he came on Helen in that inner room; Agamemnon was there, and others, to witness the final justice of the long war. Several who had never seen Helen, crowded in for a first and last look at the beauty for which they had fought. When Menelaus saw Helen standing there, he was conscious of his escort. Anger and strength oozed out of him, but those sympathetic friends were at hand, to see a husband do his duty. He raised the sword—slowly—not slowly enough. Then he heard Agamemnon’s voice.
“Your wrath might as well stop here, Menelaus; you’ve got your wife back—why kill her? Priam’s city is taken, Paris is dead, you have your revenge. To kill Helen would confuse those who ask what caused the war. Sparta had no share in the guilt; it was Paris entirely, he came as a guest and violated your hospitality.”
Menelaus understood why his brother was called the king of men. But later in the evening he was heard to say he would have killed Helen if Agamemnon hadn’t interfered.
He had to take her to the ships for the night, with the other prisoners, but he couldn’t make up his mind in what order they should set out. Not side by side, of course. He in front, perhaps. That idea he gave up before they reached the street. The emphasis on the procession seemed misplaced. He sent her on ahead to take unprotected whatever insults the curious army might care to hurl at her. But the men gazed in silence, or almost so. They didn’t notice him. He heard one say she looked like Aphrodite, caught naked in the arms of Ares, when Hephaistos, her ridiculous husband, threw a net over the lovers and called the other gods to see her shame. A second man said he felt like the other gods on that occasion, who expressed a willingness to change places any time with Ares, net and all.
III
Some other men, that night when Troy was sacked, having less cause for violence than Menelaus, showed less restraint. Ajax found Cassandra in Athena’s temple, where she served as priestess—a girl lovely enough for Apollo to desire, but of no such beauty as protected Helen. There, as it were in the very presence of the goddess, he violated her, and went on to other business in the riot. Afterwards when Athena’s anger was clear enough, he admitted he had injured the woman, but asserted that he had not desecrated the temple, for Odysseus had already stolen away the sacred image, and the room, therefore, if a shrine at all, was an abandoned one. But the distinction was not likely to commend itself to the deity, and Agamemnon announced at once that the fleet would delay its homeward sailing until prolonged and thorough sacrifices had been offered, due rituals of introspection and repentance, lest the goddess should wash their sins away in cold water. Agamemnon was tender in the matter from the moment the prizes were distributed. Cassandra fell to him.
All day he stood by the priest while the flames were fed on the altars, in the midst of the respectful army, and Menelaus stood beside him—the two kings without a rival, now that Achilles was gone. At dusk they let the offerings burn down and smoulder, the soldiers kindled supper-fires, and the priest said the omens so far were good.
“The sacrifices are well begun,” said Agamemnon.
“For me,” said Menelaus, “they are ended. It wasn’t our own sins that brought us to Troy, but as you said last evening, the sins of others. Whatever errors we have fallen into since we arrived, we’ve had reason to regret as they occurred. If anything was overlooked, through pride or ignorance, this day of sacrifice must have made up for it, and something more. I sail for Sparta tomorrow.”
“When I think of sailing,” said Agamemnon, “I remember Aulis. Our setting out from that harbour cost the life of my child, offered to appease the gods. You did not object to excessive sacrifices then. It was all for you, my brother. My quarrel with Achilles I atoned for long ago, since I was in the wrong. But since at other times I may have been wrong when I thought I was right, I must now satisfy even the unsuspected angers of Zeus and Athena before this host of mine can face wind and wave and what lies between us and our homes.”
“What you really fear,” said Menelaus, “is your wife.”
“Your wife is with you,” said Agamemnon, “and your daughter is safe in Sparta, no doubt looking after your affairs. We’ve all been looking after them. Now I must care for my people. What I really fear is the vengeance of Athena on every one of them, on you and me, on the meanest that row in the ships, for the theft of her image and the outrage to her priestess.”
“Odysseus stole the image,” said Menelaus, “but only because the city couldn’t be taken while the image was there. For that and for some other measures in which he proved helpful, he should perhaps offer many sacrifices. As to what happened to Cassandra, I look upon it as justice, though rather crude. Paris was her brother. The fault of Ajax was haste. She might have been his in the partition of prizes, to take home and treat as he chose, beyond the criticism of the gods and secure from the wrath of mankind, for he has no wife waiting for him.”
“My wife,” said Agamemnon, “has caused no scandal in the family as yet. In some respects she differs from her sister. How many men have captured Helen, or been captured by her? Theseus, before your time, and you of course, and Paris, and Deiphobus—and wasn’t there something between Achilles and her? Did Hector admire her, or was it only she that thought of him? Our special philosophies, brother, are evolved that we may live peaceably with our own past. You are in no position, I can see, to condemn the work of Ajax. Cherish your philosophy; you will need it.”
“As I was saying,” said Menelaus, “I sail for home to-morrow. I’m sorry we part in this mood of dispute. If staying here would do you any good, out of gratitude I’d stay. But the will of the gods is common sense, I think—or essentially so; and if your whim for prolonged sacrifices had really to do with religion, I should argue that the gods who enabled us to burn up Troy, never intended us to live here.”
“You go to your fate,” said Agamemnon. “I shall not see you again.”
“Another mistake on your part, I prefer to think,” said Menelaus, “and calling, I hope, for no ceremonial repentance.”
Helen was sitting in the tent, motionless by the flickering lamp. The scented flame and smoke of the tripod went up before her face, and made him think of goddesses and altar-fires. Why was she there? Had she been there all day? Out at the sacrifices he had imagined her humbled among the other captives, feeling at last the edge of retribution. She might have stood up when he came in.
“To-morrow we sail for Sparta.”
“So soon?”
“Is it too soon? You prefer Troy?”
“Not now,” said Helen, “and you remember I never had much preference for places. But so many ships and men to get ready in a day! You were longer in starting when you came—with more reason for haste, I should have thought. Why, there must be sacrifices, there are gods to think of, the wide dark ocean, the ghosts of so many dead to quiet before we go.”
“The dead are at peace and the gods are satisfied,” said Menelaus; “we’ve given the whole day to sacrificing. The ocean remains wide and dark. Agamemnon will continue the sacrifices for that and for some other things prayer cannot change. We have had words about it and parted. He and the host will stay a while longer, I go home to-morrow with my men and my captives.”
With her, he meant. He didn’t know how to say it. Not “with my wife and my captives.” He hadn’t the courage to say “you and my other captives.”
“Menelaus,” she said, “of course I shall share the journey with you, however unwisely you undertake it. But you are wrong, and your brother is right. Those who are conscious of wrong-doing need time for regret and for remorse, and those of us who are conscious of no wrong-doing, we most of all should offer sacrifices against our pride. You have your old common sense, Menelaus, an immediate kind of wit, but you still lack vision. If you had more vision you would be more conventional.”
“If I hear you,” said Menelaus, “you are advising me not to depart from established rules of conduct?”
“That is my advice,” said Helen.
“I am overtired and my brain refuses to work,” said Menelaus. “Will you return to—whatever place you have just come from, or shall I leave this tent to you? We start early in the morning.”
IV
The wind was against them, and the men were at the oars. Menelaus sat near the helmsman, and Helen before him, her face bare to the wind. The rowers looked up at her, not as in anger at one who had brought on them war and labour, but curiously at first, then with understanding and awe, as though there were a blessing in the boat. Menelaus watched the change in their gaze, and wondered why he had come to Troy—and remembered why.
Helen shifted her position, for the first time in hours, and looked in his eyes. The oarsmen looked up at him, too; they forgot to row.
“Menelaus,” she said, “you should have offered sacrifices. There is something very strange about this boat.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, “the boat is perhaps the only thing here that is beyond criticism. The wind is unfavourable, but the men row well, except when you distract them.”
“In Troy at this moment, or somewhere along the shore,” she said, “Agamemnon offers up prayers which I dare say will be effective; he will doubtless reach home. Our own prospect seems to me uncertain. You know my point of view—I have no love for adventure unless I know where I’m going.”
“We are going to Sparta,” he said.
“I fear we are not,” said Helen.
“We will hold to the course,” said her husband, “and unless the stars are disarranged in this much troubled world, we shall arrive in Sparta in a week. That will be excellent time, don’t you think?” he asked the helmsman.
“It took us longer to reach Troy on the way out,” said the helmsman.
“When I went to Troy,” said Helen, “it took only three days, but that was an exceptional voyage.”
Thereafter the rowers bent to the oars and the helmsman read the sun and the stars. At first Helen would look at Menelaus from time to time, serene enough, but as though she could say something if it were worth while to do so. After many days she only sat motionless, gazing far ahead across the sea, and the oarsmen kept their patient eyes on her, as though she and they were faithful to something Menelaus could not understand. He passed the time feeling lonely, and wondering whether the water and the food would hold out.
“Ah, there is Sparta at last,” he said.
“I doubt it,” said Helen.
As a matter of fact it was Egypt. Helen walked ashore on the narrow bridge the sailors held for her, as though one always landed in Egypt. The wind died completely. The weary men set up the king’s tent and shelters for themselves, and went to sleep. Menelaus could not remember that he had given orders for disembarking, but he wasn’t sure and didn’t like to ask.
“This famous land is more interesting than I had thought,” said Helen some weeks later. “In my afternoon walks I have met several of the natives, and they seem to have reached here an average of culture somewhat above our best in Sparta, don’t you think?”
“Helen, you exasperate me,” said Menelaus. “I’m not here to tour the country nor to compare civilisations.”
“Of course you aren’t, nor I either,” said Helen, “and when you are ready to sail you have only to tell me. Meanwhile, Polydamna, the wife of that substantial man who sold you the food for our next voyage, is teaching me her skill in herbs and medicines—a good skill to have in any house, and here they all seem to have it. Unless you offer sacrifices in the next few days, I shall learn much of what she knows.”
“I will make no more sacrifices,” said Menelaus. “The wind will rise of itself.”
“Then I shall learn it all before we go,” said Helen.
After a fortnight or thereabouts, she saw him one day coming from the house of Thonis, Polydamna’s husband, with a small lamb under his cloak. While he called the men to a quiet spot and sacrificed the animal, she kept herself discreetly in the tent. Menelaus found her there.
“Be prepared to sail to-morrow,” he said, “in case a wind should rise.”
She was ready, and the wind rose, but it turned out to be only a frail breeze, young and short-lived. As they reached the island of Pharos it died altogether.