HELEN
Helen was the daughter of Leda and Zeus and she became the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, Agamemnon's brother. Being the daughter of Zeus, she was immortal. Zeus mated with Leda in the guise of a swan and Helen was hatched from and egg and brought up as a member of the royal family of Sparta. Menelaus and Helen were initially very happy, but Paris the heir of King Priam of Troy visited Sparta and with the help of Aphrodite the goddess of love, gained Helen's affection. Stealing part of Menelaus' treasury, the pair eloped.
The character of Helen of Troy in the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. The research will show that though the environment and scenario of each work are different, Homer's portrayal of Helen is consistent in each. The possibly apocryphal tradition that one blind poet, Homer, is the author of both the Iliad and the Odyssey can be set beside the fact that the two epic poems, undoubtedly related by continuity of narrative, make use of a common mythic foundation that is shared by a significant literary culture. The narrative lines of one epic do not point for point complete the narrative lines of the other, although that is in general terms the case. Undoubtedly there is a difference between the Iliad and Odyssey, connected as they are, in the transformation of poetic vision from one of tragic heroism and lack of it on a grand scale to one of individual rebirth and closure (Porter 2), or from tragedy to romantic adventure (Rieu vii). The Iliad sends the Greeks abroad in the world, and the Odyssey brings at least
some of them back home. The resolution of the Odyssey is generally favorable, at least for Odysseus and family, though fraught with peril all along the way.
One individual who, like Odysseus, does come home is Helen, whose legendary beauty, sometimes attributed to her being the offspring of Zeus as Swan and Leda, literally dazzles all men and whose disappearance with Paris caused all the trouble. She is a relatively minor character…
The Iliad and Odyssey put the flesh-and-blood Helen in Priam's royal household for the tenure of the war and back with Menelaus at Sparta afterward. The implication in each story is that she was not raped: She is "dear child" to Priam. She calls him "dear father-in-law" when agreeing to identify various Achaean warriors in the field (Il. III). Not raped, then, but seduced: Though in the first full flush of romance she willingly went with Paris, she did experience regret, alienation, and loneliness -- as it were maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of her life. The Iliad's Helen has been described as "a shallow and self-centered woman, unconcerned with the havoc her infidelity has wrought" (Benet 436a). But this is more true of the Helen of Euripides's Trojan Women than of either of Homer's works. In that regard, Rieu (xii) says it is "difficult to recognize the characters of Homer" in other classicists' portraits of the Trojan war. Indeed, the evidence of both Iliad and Odyssey is that Helen has reflected at some length on the elopement and its consequences and that this Troy for ten years.
Helen's beauty was unsurpassed . Helen, obviously the title character.
Castor and Pollux, Helen's brothers, which is also wrong according to mythology.
Agamemnon, Mycenaean king, and the main antagonist in the movie.
Menelaus, King of Sparta, betrothed to Helen, in the movie as the sympathetic husband and also weak.
Leda, Queen of Sparta and Helen's mother, as the typical headstrong wife.
Tyndareus, father of Menelaus and king of Sparta before his son took the throne.
Clytemnestra, sister of Helen and wife of Agamemnon, she also kills Agamemnon in the final scene which is wrong and this doesn't happen until he sails home where he is then killed by his wife. He also never raped Helen, though it shows this in the movie.
Paris, youngest son of Priam and also the lost son. His love affair with Helen sparked the Trojan War.
In ‘Doctor Faustus’ Christopher Marlowe use Helens beauty. Here Doctor Faustus said;
Sweet Helen , make me immortal with a kiss
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
Come Helen , come , give me my soul again.. ( Collected)
