Helen of Troy, the Catalyst for the Trojan War

The story of Helen of Troy, and the Trojan war specifically, is best known from the Iliad, by Homer, after the abduction by Paris of Troy, which was ultimately the catalyst for the tenyear Trojan War. The most common version of the birth of Helen is that her parents were Leda, the Queen of Sparta, and Zeus, the king of the gods. The beautiful Helen obviously had many suitors, but she ended up marrying Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon. Considering her beauty, Tyndareus sacrificed a horse and then made all of the Greek leaders swear that Helen was rightfully Menelaus wife, and that they would protect his daughter from harm. In certain Greek states like Sparta, Rhodes, Attica, and Therapne, Helen was worshipped as divine which is a bit at odds with the way that most of the ancient world saw her: as a symbol of moral failure since she valued lust above reason in abandoning her family for her lover. No one in antiquity thought it was a good thing for a woman to behave like Helen. SUPPORT US VIA