Helen in Lyric Poetry
Katie Olesker

Sappo's Lyre:

Stesichorus:
• Helen did not reach Troy and a phantom was substituted for her, recanting other versions in which he maintains that she had reached Troy

• Helen interprets an omen for Telemachus

Sappho:
• Helen left Menelaos for Paris

• Talks of the absence of Anaktoria

Alkaios:
• Contrasts Helen and Thetis, blaming Helen for the destruction of Troy, not Achilles

• Contrasts Thetis' and Peleus' wedding in which the gods approved to Helen's elopement with Paris

• Condemns Helen for leaving Menelaos

Ibykos:
• Blames Helen's appearance for stimulating the war that Zeus planned and Aphrodite caused

General Comments:

• Sappho and Stesichorus have opposite attitudes toward Helen

• Stesichorus, from Doric Sicily, first accepted Homer's Helen, then recanted and replaced her with the goddess Helen who never went to Troy or betrayed her people

• Sappho, from Lesbos, was an Aeolic Greek, and Aeolic roots were deep in the epic tradition, so it was harder for Sappho to imagine the Trojan war without Helen in the plot

• Sappho found Helen's behavior less offensive than Stesichorus did, but believed that Helen allowed herself to be guided by Eros, even though this spelled out trouble for her husband, child, and parents

• Lobel and Hunt, two editors of the papyrus of "Anaktoria", differed in their interpretations. Lobel believes the emphasis of the poem to be on Helen's desertion of her husband, while Hunt believes the emphasis was on her choice of Paris

• Sappho believed that Helen exercised her individual judgement in disregard for social consequences

• Alkaios believed Helen left her "sumptuous bed" because she thought Paris' bed to be more sumptuous

• Euripides thought that Menelaos was more of a comic buffoon than tragic hero

• According to Sappho, Helen preferred beauty above everything else. She indicts Helen for causing misfortunes to others

• Helen's beauty was synonymous with shame, and she cast shame aside for the effeminate Paris, as Sappho did by rejecting men for women

• Sappho's attitude toward Helen's morality was neutral

• In Sappho's poem, Helen is not the most beautiful thing, but moves towards it drawn by desire. Helen's superiority is fixed

• The poem says that the most beautiful thing is whatever one loves. Helen is an example of the particular, who is Anaktoria

• For Homer, Helen is a reward, for Aeschylus she is the cursed cause of war

• According to Plato, Stesichorus was blinded for singing abuse of Helen, and regained his sight after saying that Helen never went to Troy

• In the Homeric world, women were prizes, slaves, and fixed entities who marked geographical place. Sappho did not believe in the Iliadic interpretation of Helen's passivity in being taken to Troy, but saw Helen as an actant, moving to what she thought was the most beautiful thing

• Alkaios also believed Helen accountable for the disasters at Troy, but in contrast to Sappho, disapproved of her beauty

• Sappho saw Helen's actions as a result of Eros. But Helen was accountable for her movement, which Sappho believed to be positive because she was more than an object of men's desires

Contact the author, Katie Olesker
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