Page 12 - GALIET BEAUTY´S LURE: WAR Helen of Troy and Margareta of Germany IV

conjure up potential calamity to the welfare of Ilium and its families. Amidst her beauty’s threat, they judiciously esteem it is best to let her depart Ilium. So immeasurably powerful is Helen’s negative beauty 3⁄4 emblem of the terrible sublime 3⁄4 that she is capable of launching a thousand ships, and burning the walls of Ilion, as Marlowe sings in his eloquent verse.6
Besides Helen’s immortal beauty, there are other justifications, too, given for the Trojan War. These are scattered in many fragments, some in the Cypria, in the Catalogue of Women, and in many other texts. One of them suggests Zeus’ desire to annihilate the heroic age.7 Similarly, Helen is not the only one to blame for the Trojan War, but, others, too, in Homeric and post-Homeric texts, are blameworthy, such as Paris, Hera, the Gods, and King Menelaus8 to name a few. However, the familiar consensus in the Iliad, and in the Odyssey, affirms that, though Helen may blameworthy or blameless,9 it is for Helen’s sake, as a result of
6 Marlowe, Christopher. Dr. Faustus. New York: W.W.W. Norton, 2004. 99-118.
7 Zeus is “eager to annihilate” the human race and the semi-gods in order to end the Heroic Age. Hesiod. Catalogue of Women and Other. Loeb Classical Library. Ed. and Trans. Most. London: Harvard University Press, 2007 (60). 233.
8 For Paris’ blame for abducting Helen and assets, see Hom. Il. 3.46-50, 99-100, 3.351- 54; 6.328-29. For Helen's fault, see Il. 2.160-62, 176-78; 3.125-28; Od. 4.145-46; cf. Il. 3.243; 7.349-53; but see also 3.156-65. For Hera's responsibility, and spite on losing contest of beauty, or Helen's acting under divine compulsion: Il. 4.30 33; 6.349, 356 58; Od. 23.218-24; cf. Hesiod, Catalogue of Women 67 (Rzach), and Hom. Il. 1.148- 60. This footnote was gathered from Joseph Roisman’s Notes 2 of his article “Greek Perspectives on the Justness and Merits of the Trojan War.” College Literature Journal 35.4 (2008): 107.
For the Gods’ fault, see Il.,3.164-65. In this passage, Priam redeems Helen and blames the gods: “I am not blaming you: to me the gods are blameworthy/who drove upon me this sorrowful war against the Achaeans.”
9 Helen is seen as blameless and blameworthy. Sue Blundell claims Helen in the Iliad shows a double motivation given that two contradictions drive the War: human agency and divine will. In some instances, Helen says she is ‘a nasty bitch evil-intriguing’
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