In ancient Greece, the goddess of love, Aphrodite, had her human counterpart in Helen. Its beauty was so extraordinary that it was the means that the gods used to unleash a war, that of Troy, destined to end the race of heroes.

For the poet Hesiod, Helen was “the girl who had the beauty of golden Aphrodite”; For Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, it was “the one with the beautiful hair«She was, in short, a woman with the beauty of a goddessborn to charm men and get from them everything she set out to do, without caring about the death and destruction caused by a war as devastating as that of Troy.

For this reason, throughout Antiquity she was vilified as a model of the adulterous wife, the “bigamous, trigamous, and abandoner of husbands,” as another poet, Stesichorus, called her.

However, even then it also had its defenders, poets who came to support an absolutely contrary image, based on the theory that Helen did not even travel to Troy, but, instead, she did so in a simulacrum, a ghost that the gods created from a cloud.
According to this theory, the real Helen spent the ten years of the Trojan War in Egypt.

Helen, the daughter of Zeus «swan»

Everything about Helena is exceptional, starting with her birth: she was the fruit of the union of Zeus, metamorphosed for the occasion into a swan, with the human Leda. She did not arrive, however, alone, because Leda, who also lay that same night with her husband, the king of Sparta Tyndareus, ended up giving birth to four children.

In reality, there was no birth, since What Leda did was lay two eggs: from one of them came Helen and Pollux, both children of Zeus, while from the other came Clytemnestra and Castor, who had been fathered by Tyndareus.

Another version states that Helena was actually the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, the personification of divine vengeance and punishment for any crime or excessive behavior. Through her, The gods intended to provoke a war that would decimate the race of heroes, whose pride had become unbearable. In this version, Leda would have only been in charge of raising and educating the girl.

Helena’s decision about who would be her husband

Helena’s beauty fame It did not take long for it to spread throughout Greece. A myth explains that, when she was still a teenager, the Athenian Theseus and his friend Pirithous came to kidnap her and raffle which of the two would make her his wife. Luck smiled on Theseus, although that marriage would never be formalized, since Helena’s two brothers, Castor and Pollux, came to rescue her.

Given the risk of such a situation occurring again, Tyndáreo concluded that it was best to marry his daughter. What he did not count on was that practically all of the kings and heroes of Greece would attend his call. There were so many and so important, fierce and proud, that it was embarrassing, if not dangerous, to favor one at the expense of the rest.

One of those heroes, who was also realistic enough to withdraw from the race for Helena, gave him the solution. It was Ulysses of Ithaca, who He proposed that the young woman herself choose a husband. Of course, before that election took place, Tyndareus had to obtain a double commitment from all these heroes.: on the one hand, that they accepted Helena’s decision with sportsmanship; on the other hand, they had to take an oath that, if necessary, they would help the lucky one.

This is what all the kings and heroes did. With their hearts in a fist, they then prepared to listen to the name that was about to come from the lips of the beautiful maiden.
The chosen one was Menelaus.

The myth of Helen’s abduction

Satisfied with the choice, Tyndareus gave the throne to his son-in-law. Menelaus and Helen thus became kings of Sparta. After the usual time, a daughter was born, who received the name Hermione.
Theirs was a happy marriage until one day, coming from distant Troy, A prince named Paris arrived in Sparta. Menelaus received him with hospitality, and so did Helen, who, however, could not help but be attracted to the refined and handsome foreigner.

What Helena did not know is that Paris had come to Sparta carried by a promise that Aphrodite had made: “The most beautiful woman in the world will be yours.”he had whispered to him once when the Trojan had to judge which goddess was the most beautiful, Aphrodite, Hera or Athena. Carried away by that promise, Paris chose Aphrodite.

Luck allied himself with him, as Menelaus had to leave Sparta due to an engagement with another king and Paris was able to devote himself entirely to the task of seducing Helen.

Shortly after, both left Sparta on a ship that took them to Troy.

Helen and the Trojan War

In Troy, Helen was well received, although Cassandra, Paris’s sister, kept crying out that that woman would cause the destruction of the city and the death of everyone. Nobody paid attention to her: it was Cassandra’s fate, to prophesy what would happen and be taken for crazy.

As soon as he learned of his wife’s flight, Menelaus gathered the Greek kings and reminded them of the oath they had taken to support him if he required their help. A great alliance was thus formed, at the head of which Agamemnon was elected.brother of Menelaus and husband of Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra.

Cassandra’s prophecy was fulfilled and, one by one, the defenders of Troy fell. Paris, who had shown rather shameful behavior in a singular duel with Menelaus, died pierced by an arrow.

Helen then married another Trojan prince, Deiphobus, but, whether because she already sensed how that war would end or because she was homesick, she began to get closer to the Greeks.

He did not betray, for example, Ulysses, who had entered the city to spy. Nor did he denounce the trick of the wooden horse. It is even said that she was the one who, from the top of a tower, He made the agreed signal with a torch so that the Greeks would know that the horse was already inside Troy. and that its doors were going to be opened.

The reconciliation of Helen and Menelaus

As soon as he got off the wooden horse, Menelaus ran to the royal palace of Troy and, in one of its rooms, found Deiphobus and Helen. He killed the first one unceremoniously, after which, sword in hand, he addressed his adulterous wife with the same intention. But it was enough for her to look at him tenderly for him to forget all murderous intentions and fall at her feet.

To the surprise of all the Greeks, the couple reconciled and returned to Sparta, where Helen was considered a model of all domestic virtues.