![]() ![]() Thru the eyes of a young Mycenaean woman, she examines the physical, historical & cultural traces that Helen has left on locations in Greece, N. Focusing on the “real” Helen–-a flesh-&-blood aristocrat from the Greek Bronze Age–-Hughes reconstructs the life context of this prehistoric princess. But who was she? Helen exists in many guises: a matriarch from the Heroic Age who ruled over one of the most fertile areas of the Mycenaean world Helen of Sparta, the focus of a cult that conflated the heroine with a pre-Greek fertility goddess the home-wrecker of the Iliad the bitch-whore of Greek tragedy the pin-up of Romantic artists. ![]() For millennia she's been viewed as an agent of extermination. ![]() Because of her double marriage to the Greek king Menelaus & the Trojan prince Paris, Helen was held responsible for enmity between East & West. For close to 3000 years she's been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty & a reminder of the terrible power beauty can wield. As soon as men began writing they made Helen of Troy their subject. An erudite, lively search for the real Helen of Troy-–a chronicle combining historical inquiry & storytelling élan–-from one of Britain’s most widely acclaimed historians. ![]()
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