The Greek lyric poet Sappho (6th century BCE) says of Helen, queen of Sparta, that she ‘outshone all others in beauty’.1 Helen’s mother was the mortal woman Leda and it is said that Zeus, king of the gods, disguised as a swan seduced Leda, leading to Helen’s birth. Her mortal father was the Spartan king Tyndareus. When Helen was a young girl her beauty entices Theseus, king of Athens, to abduct her but she is then rescued by her brothers, Castor and Pollux.Some four to five years later when Helen was of marrying age (fifteen to eighteen years old), suitors from the length and breadth of Greece assemble to vye for her hand. Her father, Tyndareus, fearful of sparking a dispute amongst powerful men, demands an oath from each suitor to the effect that the selected husband would be upheld by all. Menelaus, the reigning king of Sparta, on account of his position as one of the most formidable kings in Greece, wins her hand (through either competition or negotiation with Tyndareus).In an episode known as the Judgement of Paris, a few years into Helen’s marriage, Paris, Prince of Troy (a city across the Aegean Sea), is tasked by Zeus to pick the most beautiful of the three goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Each goddess tempts him with a prize; Hera promises him power and kingship of Asia, Athena pledges wisdom and victory in battle, but Aphrodite offers him the most beautiful mortal woman, Helen. When Paris picks Aphrodite, he is able to abduct Menelaus’s wife, enraging the Greeks. The Greek city states band together and launch ‘a thousand ships’ to rescue her from Troy.2 (In an alternative version, Helen is relocated to Egypt by the gods and replaced with an eidolon, or ghostly double, in Troy.3)The story of the Trojan War, as it is known, comes to us from Greek poet Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and Odyssey (8th century BCE). Important players on the Trojan side are the princes Paris and Hector, and their father, Priam, king of Troy. The Greeks are led by Menelaus’s brother Agamemnon and count amongst their forces the hero Achilles, their greatest warrior. Furthermore, the Odyssey introduces us to the tactician Odysseus who earns his own epic, which charts his journey home from Troy after the war.In Homer’s Iliad Helen is the only one to blame herself for the war. Both the Greeks and the Trojans assign blame to Paris while King Priam credits it to ‘the gods, [...] that are to blame’.4 During her captivity, Helen spends her moments weaving, and in a notable scene in Book 3, she is summoned to the Trojan wall by King Priam who asks her to identify the Greek warriors below, which she does. The epic ends with the monumental funeral of Hector (with Helen in attendance) and its aftermath — suggesting an emphasis on the devastation of war rather than the glory of a Greek victory and the daring rescue of Helen.In the Odyssey a decade after the war, Helen and Menelaus are visited by Odysseus’s son Telemachus in search of his absent father. As King Menelaus recounts the exploits of Odysseus, he relates an episode where a selected cohort of Greek warriors conceal themselves within a wooden horse which has now been hauled within the impenetrable Trojan walls. He says that at this point Helen attempted to lure the men out by calling out to each warrior in the voice of his absent wife. She is only thwarted when Odysseus realises the deception and prevents the men from responding. However, Menelaus excuses Helen’s errant behaviour by telling her ‘it must be that thou wast bidden by some god.’5Helen also makes brief appearances in the Roman poet Virgil’s epic poem Aeneid (29–19BCE). The Aeneid follows the story of the Trojan warrior Aeneas’s journey from Troy in the aftermath of the war to the eventual founding of Rome. During the sacking of Troy, Aeneas spies Helen, ‘the mutual curse of Troy and her own country’, covering in a temple amidst the devastation, in fear of the Trojans as well as ‘the fury of a husband she deserted’. Consumed by rage Aeneas moves to kill her but his hand is stayed by his mother, the goddess Venus, who says to him that he should not hate this ‘Spartan daughter of Tyndareus’ for it was the ‘the ruthlessness of the gods’ that ‘toppled Troy from its heights’.6In Book VI, Aeneas journeys to the underworld and encounters the mutilated ghost of the Trojan prince Deiphobus, brother of Paris, who marries Helen after Paris’s death. Deiphobus claims that on the night of the Trojan horse, Helen led the Trojan women in a dance, high on the citadel, waving a flaming torch that acted as a signal to the Greeks. Deiphobus relates that during the night Helen removed all weapons from the marriage chamber and opened the door to Menelaus and Odysseus leading to his brutal murder. This, he says, she does in the hope that the ‘infamy of her past sins might be erased’.7Thus, the picture we derive of Helen from the epics is ambiguous and complex. This paradoxical nature makes her purpose malleable for the storyteller, explaining the diversity amongst the ancient works. However, for the large part her actions are overshadowed by the agendas of others, a woman unfortunately caught in the crosshairs between two warring sides: the Greeks reclaiming a stolen prize and the Trojans protecting their citadel from a devastating sacking. In the Odyssey, Helen merely acts as the foil to Penelope, the faithful and dutiful wife of Odysseus who deceptively puts off suitors in his absence.With the benefit of our modern sensibility, we see that despite having the power to launch a thousand ships of war Helen as a woman has no agency. She is merely a passive object of contention. Her outstanding beauty renders her powerful in her allure, yet also consigns her to the status of a prize in the patriarchal structures of ancient Greece. In these three major classical epics, Helen assumes a distinct role in each, leading to varying perspectives on her involvement in the war. Nonetheless, the narrative concludes in the same manner: Helen resumes her married life in Sparta, despite the turmoil and the blame that lives with her.