For 3,000 years, the woman known as Helen of Troy has been both the ideal symbol of beauty and a reminder of the terrible power beauty can wield.In her search for the identity behind this mythic figure, acclaimed historian Bettany Hughes uses Homer’s account of Helen’s life to frame her own investigation. Tracing the cultural impact that Helen has had on both the ancient world and Western civilization, Hughes explores Helen’s role and representations in literature and in art throughout the ages. This is a masterly work of historical inquiry about one of the world’s most famous women.For 3,000 years the woman known as Helen of Troy has been both the ideal symbol of beauty and a reminder of the terrible power beauty can wield. But who was this "gorgeous, pre-historic creature, this proto-Rasputin, who refuses to die?" This is the question that fuels Bettany Hughes's marvelous book.
Hughes uses Homer's account of Helen's life as told in The Iliad and The Odyssey as a narrative framework for her own inquiry into the mythology and the possible reality of Helen's existence. She traces the cultural impact that Helen has had not just on the ancient world, but on Western Civilization as well. She traces Helen's presence in literature and in art through the ages. She explores the ways in which the fluid image of Helen has been appropriated at various times and in various cultures. And she takes us into the very world where Helen may have existed: walking us through the Greek landscape where Helen may have walked, examining the concrete details of life in Late Bronze Age Greece--exploring the world of "a blood and guts Helen."
Standing myth and reality side by side, Hughes succeeds in giving us the richest, most vital, most imaginative and informed picture of this "enduring celebrity" that we have ever had. A masterly work of historical inquiry and a spellbinding story brilliantly told.
"Hughes' portrait is as close to a real Helen as we are likely to get. In an increasingly sexualized culture, the questions Helen raises are more alive than ever."--Financial Times
"Evoking in sensuous and gorgeous prose the citadels, the palaces and the luxuries of that long-vanished world, history and mythography have been dazzlingly elided. In this passionate book,Hughes adds to Helen's mystery...powerfully."--The Sunday Times (London)
"[Hughes] splendidly reclaims Helen from centuries of helpless victimhood...This book puts Helen of Troy at the centre of a world in which, as Bettany Hughes convincingly explains, the primordial power was female."--The Observer (London)
"Helen-ophiles, rejoice! Bettany Hughes' new Helen of Troy gives you everything you ever wanted to know about the Face That Launched A Thousand Ships. There won't be another book on Helen in a long, long time, because Ms. Hughes has brilliantly and exhaustively covered ( or I should say uncovered) her subject from more angles - romantic, historical,archaeological, mythological, psychological - than even Paris could dream of on his best night." --Dr. Steven Pressfield, Spartan expert and bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The Virtues of War
