Helen’s “and then what happened?” was pretty well sewn up, but her “well, what happened before that?” was wide open. Plenty of her story remained untold, and I wanted to tell it. The only traditional tales about young Helen concern her birth as Zeus’s daughter and her abduction by the Athenian hero Theseus when she was still just a girl but already incredibly beautiful. There’s no mention of her being at the Calydonian boar hunt, though her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, were. There’s certainly nothing in the old tales about her knowing how to use weapons or hunt or ride. Exploits like these make a good story, but did I have any sound reason for letting her do them?
Oddly enough, though Helen herself is mythological, much of what I’ve written about her in this book is based on ancient Greek history. Many people used to believe that myth and history had nothing to do with each other. They thought that Troy itself was an imaginary place, like the lost city of Atlantis. Then in 1876, the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was so deeply inspired by the Iliad that he decided to search for Troy. He was only a merchant, but a merchant with vision, passion, and an abiding love for a good story. He, too, must have believed that there was more to the tale of the Trojan War than what the Iliad had to tell—maybe not “and then what happened?” or “what happened before that?” but “did it really happen at all?” Using information from that ancient epic, he astonished the world when he uncovered the ruins of a great city on the very spot Homer’s poem described. There was even evidence that the city had been destroyed by violence and been burned, just like Helen’s Troy.
Since Schliemann’s success, we no longer look at myths and legends in the same way. Fantastic stories may contain hidden grains of truth that archaeologists and historians can use to guide them in putting together a more complete picture of the past. Even the sinking of Atlantis might be based on a real event, the volcanic explosion that destroyed most of the Mediterranean island of Thera.
Myths take place in the past, but some of them can be assigned to a specific part of the past rather than a vague “once upon a time.” Helen’s story takes place during the Bronze Age, almost 2,500 years ago. We know this for various reasons, including the fact that the great kingdom of Mykenae, where Agamemnon ruled, flourished during this era. Therefore, the weapons, clothing, food, transportation, royal palaces, and such that appear in this book belong to Bronze Age Greece. Most of what is known about this time comes from archaeological finds, including jewelry, statues, wall paintings, pottery, and sites of major ruins. In addition, some of Homer’s descriptions of life in Helen’s day make the archaeological evidence come alive.
Helen’s era was quite different from what most people think of when they hear the words ancient Greece. The Parthenon, the graceful statues, the works of Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, all came nearly a thousand years after Helen’s time, during the classical era. In the Bronze Age, no one yet knew how to make brittle iron flexible enough to use for tools and weapons. Art, especially sculpture of the human form, was stiffer and more stylized. Few people could read or write. Instead of signing important papers, you would use a stone seal to leave an impression on clay tablets. The design on the seal would be as unique as a signature. There was a kind of writing in Bronze Age Greece, but it was mostly used to keep track of financial matters, such as royal tax records. Messages, poems, songs, and stories were not written down but were memorized and passed along by word of mouth. Inevitably, they’d change when someone with a poor memory or a rich imagination retold them. Money hadn’t been invented yet. The first coins were centuries in the future, so Helen lived in a barter economy, with lots of haggling, negotiating, and trading goods for goods instead of paying for them outright.
Though markedly different from Helen’s time, there were some aspects of life in classical Greece that influenced me while writing this book. Chiefly, these things concerned the Spartans, who lived a thousand years after Helen. Today we use Spartan as an adjective meaning “plain,” “austere,” “strict,” even “harsh.” Spartans of classical times were famous for being all of these, as well as being known for their warcraft. At birth, all infants were brought before the elders, who decided whether a child would be allowed to live or be left in the mountains to die from exposure. This decision was based entirely on whether the child looked strong enough to survive. It’s hard to think of anything harsher than that. The Spartans’ whole way of life seemed to center on physical perfection, endurance, and skill in handling weapons. Most significant was the fact that, unlike other Greeks, they trained their daughters as well as their sons in athletics. The girls ran, wrestled, practiced throwing the javelin or spear, and, like the boys, they exercised unclothed, to strengthen their bodies. Spartan men were frequently away from home for long periods of time, fighting wars. This left Spartan women in charge on the home front. As a result, they were much more independent than other Greek women.
In spite of the centuries separating them, I like to think that the classical Spartans’ attitude toward women might have had its roots in Helen’s time. There is archaeological evidence that Bronze Age women were powerful and respected, holding important positions in their society. One image, taken from a seal, shows a huntress armed with bow and arrows.
No doubt Greek females could also be independent. Mythology is full of stories about such women, but unfortunately they usually end with some great disaster caused by the woman’s independent behavior. Was this the original ending of the story, or was it changed over the course of the centuries and turned into a “lesson” against women’s freedom by those who feared it?