What did Helen have to do

Legend has it that she was wife of King Menelaosof Sparta; she ran off with visiting Trojan prince Paris(Alexander); she compounded the problem by taking a lot ofMenelaos’ property with her. The Greeks under King Agamemnon ofArgos mounted an expedition to recover her and, more importantly,the property. When the Greeks gained the upper hand, King Priam ofTroy offered to give Helen back, but they demanded the property aswell, and this being refused, persisted with the seige. After Pariswas killed and Troy was captured, ‘much-manned Helen’ was takenback to Sparta by her husband who simply regarded her as part ofhis property he had recovered, rather than any ongoing concerns ofbetrayal/infidelity – which he was apparently quite used to fromthe epithet ‘much-manned’..

The reality is more like the Greeks (Achaians)organised a coordinated series of pirate raids on the coast andislands of Asia Minor. After an initial attempt on the richestprize, Troy, they pillaged the rest of the area over a period ofabout ten years, and then came back for another go at Troy, whichsucceeded. The bards wove this story and a lot of other materialfrom before and after it into an epic poem of which there wereendless versions, each bard telling a different story, and evenseveral versions of his own version for variety. One of the mostpopular versions came to us after cursive writing allowed itspermanent recording four hundrd years after the events, from oneknown as Homer the blind poet of Chios, whoseIliad is about several weeks of thesecond attempt on Troy. Helen was just the romantic-interestembellishment of the robust story of heroes and slaughter.