Helen of Troy Was a Whore

In the archives of Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, there is an infrequently studied medieval manuscript. Created in 1406 it is an illustrated version of Boethius' sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy. The Consolation is a fusion of Christian and pagan principles written in an attempt to identify the root of happiness – and set down while the author Boethius was awaiting execution in Pavia. On one page of the discoloured parchment, Helen of Troy, dressed in the fashionable robes of the day, stands on a parapet while flags flutter on the towers of the castle behind her; she stares down at Paris who is climbing up to greet her. Helen has a flick of rouge on her cheeks. She grips Paris' shoulders firmly, hauling him up towards her and to infidelity.

Although we now tend to think of Helen as a passive figure, a feeble thing swept along to Troy on the tide of Paris' libido, the simpering shell immortalized in Wolfgang Peterson's movie Troy (2004), a close study of representations of Helen through the centuries yields a feistier figure. She is a woman who is at times applauded, but more often damned, for being sexually active – and is, furthermore, branded a whore. Helen of Troy is a telling icon: a woman who impacted on the world around her – as one of the earliest named authors of the West, Hesiod declared in his Works and Days: ‘[there was] a god-like race of hero men ... grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them ... [war] brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake' – but whose impact has to be explained away in terms of a shabby sale of sex.