The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander Page B

of war is also a symptom of its powerlessness. 27 At the very moment Helen sits calmly weaving her own story, she is entirely ignorant of the fact that her story is being changed yet again—her fate rewoven, as it were, by Paris’ off-the-cuff offer and Menelaos’ acceptance. The hosts of two entire armies, thousands of men, know the terms of her fate before she does. “ ‘You shall be called beloved wife of the man who wins you,’ ” says gentle Iris, and her categorical matter-of-factness has a sinister ring.
    The goddess’s words, the speaking of Menelaos’ name, stir Helen:
    Speaking so the goddess left in her heart sweet longing after her husband of time before, and her city and parents. And at once, wrapping herself about in shimmering garments, she went forth from the chamber, letting fall a light tear.
    Going out onto the roof above the Skaian Gates, one of two named entrances to the city and of all features of Troy the most fated, Helen passes Priam and the Trojan elders, men too old to fight, who remain now inside the gates with the women and children:
    . . . these, as they saw Helen along the tower approaching,
murmuring softly to each other uttered their winged words:
“Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaeans
if for long time they suffer hardship for a woman like this one.
Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.
Still, though she be such, let her go away in the ships, lest
she be left behind, a grief to us and our children.”
    Helen’s timeless beauty is evoked with not a single physical attribute—her hair, her features, her eyes—but by the reaction of those who should hate her most. “Terrible”— ainōs —“is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses”; the word ainōs carries the same double edge as its literal English counterpart—“in an extreme degree,” “strongly,” but also “to such a degree as to cause apprehension,” “dreadfully.” 28 This charged word and the men’s conclusion—“ ‘Still . . . let her go away in the ships’ ”—eloquently establishes Helen’s precarious existence in the city of her people’s enemy.
    The only man to turn to her with wholehearted warmth is Priam himself, who calls her to join him in watching her “ ‘husband of time past’ ” and inquiring as to the identity of one of the Achaean warriors, who given his splendid, lordly appearance “ ‘might well be royal.’ ” Helen’s response, the first words she utters in the epic, is roundabout, and tellingly begins with a devastating self-characterization:
    Helen, the shining among women, answered and spoke to him:
“Always to me, beloved father, you are feared and respected;
and I wish bitter death had been what I wanted, when I came hither
following your son, forsaking my chamber, my kinsmen,
my grown child, and the loveliness of girls my own age.
It did not happen that way: and now I am worn with weeping.
This now I will tell you in answer to the question you asked me.
That man is Atreus’ son Agamemnon, widely powerful,
at the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter, 29
once my kinsman, slut that I am. Did this ever happen?”
    The fate Hektor wishes on Paris is the fate Helen calls down upon herself: “ ‘I wish bitter death had been what I wanted.’ ” Other traditions characterized Helen’s elopement with Paris as a rape and an abduction; it was in this vein that Nestor called for the Achaeans to put aside all thoughts of home and to “avenge Helen’s longing to escape and her lamentations.” 30 Yet another tradition held that Helen never came to Troy but spent the war in Egypt, while men unwittingly fought over a ghostly cloud of her image. 31 Nestor’s wishful thinking apart, the Iliad consistently, if sympathetically,