It is in the Trojan War, arguably the denouement of the stories, that we see the costs of singularity. Narcissus wasting away at his own reflection and Echo being stripped to a voice that can only repeat is nothing compared to the fates of the Trojans and the Greeks who fought them. That event is bookended by the most singular characters in Greek mythology: Achilles and Helen.
It has always struck me that Achilles was bound up with the Trojan War since his parents’ wedding, but Calasso makes the case that it goes back even further. Thetis, sister-in-law of Poseidon, is the It Girl of divinity that every god wants for themselves, but there’s a catch.
Forgive me not because I’m saying too much, but because I’m not saying enough; to tell one story, you have to tell all of them, which is a reflection, I think, of how well-preserved the myths are, not how superior the Greeks were.
Prometheus, personification of foresight (let us never forget that there is a difference between being a personification and a god), was a second generation Titan who was, by extension, a cousin of Zeus. He had two brothers, Atlas, as strong as the first generation of Titans, and Epimetheus, the personification of after thought. In the war between the Titans and Olympians, Atlas sided with his father’s generation, but Prometheus knows how this is going to turn out, and counsels Epimetheus to join him in siding with their cousins. When all is said and done, Prometheus and Epimetheus make a home for themselves among the mortals, and Atlas is punished by having to hold up the sky.
In spite of his foresight, Prometheus has his own set of ethics, and he chooses to defy Zeus and give the newest batch of mortals the gift of fire. Zeus, who endured Prometheus’ defiance because he needed his insight, has had enough, and orders him bound to a mountain, where an eagle will devour his liver every day (the curse of immortality is that his liver will grow back every night). Prometheus has one final card that he uses to stab at Zeus rather than save himself: he knows who the mother of the son who would overthrow Zeus is, and Zeus, known for his uncontrollable libido, will have to find out in his own due time.
Then along comes Heracles, who may himself be one of the more singular figures in Greek mythology. On his way to one of the labors he needed to perform to work off the sin of killing his wife and children, he comes across Prometheus as he waits for the agony of the eagle. Heracles is no stranger to the wrath of the gods, and he also isn’t known for thinking through consequences. He kills the eagle—a symbol of his father Zeus, no less—and frees Prometheus. Prometheus, in gratitude, and probably not unaware that Zeus didn’t stop Heracles, finally reveals the identity of the woman whose son will be greater than his father: the Nereid Thetis.
Whether Heracles reports this to Zeus or not, major and minor gods breathe a sigh of relief that they managed to avoid...being succeeded by their own children? Regardless, Zeus marries Thetis to the very brave king of the Myrmidons, Peleus, but because he—and arguably those other gods—can’t quite let go of Thetis (or they just want to make sure she is successfully married off), he honors the new couple with a lavish wedding attended by all of the gods.
And yet...Zeus and company should know better at this point than to honor any mortal this way. When he and the rest of the Olympians attended a dinner his son Tantalus hosted, Tantalus went mad and served his own son Pelops as the main course. (No worries—the Olympians were able to revive him, and Pelops went on to...well, found an extremely dysfunctional dynasty, including grandsons Agamemnon and Menelaus, who will have starring roles in the Trojan War.) There was also that time the gods attended the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia, which started well enough—least you can do after kidnapping and raping someone’s sister is throw them a good wedding, right, Zeus?—but part of the legacy was the cursed House of Thebes. By the time of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Zeus should have known better, but he is possibly the hardest person to teach a lesson to.
For some reason, the gods decided not to invite Eris, the goddess of Discord to, you know, a wedding, but Eris didn’t have much of a sense of proportion or humor, so she showed up anyway, and with her own special gift. Sadly, it wasn’t for the happy couple, but the guests. It was an apple “for the fairest”, and every goddess jumped to grab it. (Is this where the tradition of tossing the bouquet comes from?) However, the majority of the goddesses weren’t stupid, and they stepped back when Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite staked their claim.
Either none of the gods wanted to weigh in, or the goddesses decided that only an unbiased mortal could make the decision—or, as Calasso has it in many things, both—so they decide that the judge of this contest should be Paris, the banished prince of Troy, who is passing his time as a shepherd instead of living with his royal family. (Why was he banished? Because he’s fated to bring down Troy, obviously.) He also happens to be one of the most handsome of mortals and thus a good judge of beauty...right? No, of course that doesn’t track, but Paris’s biography makes him, in some ways, a perfect judge.
The goddesses ask him to choose, but if the contest is supposed to be about appearance, they put their thumbs on the scale immediately and begin offering him rewards—bribes—if he chooses them. This is either one of the most blatantly corrupt contests in history, or it’s really asking Paris to choose *what* he values—or, again, it’s both. Hera offers him power in the form of a kingdom and wealth; Athena offers to make him the wisest of all men; and Aphrodite offers him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world.
In a fair contest seeking to establish the fairest of the goddesses, how could the goddess of *beauty* not win? So the contest is really about the rewards—the bribes—and what Paris wants. As the scorned prince, he could want to reassert himself and take over Troy; as the son abandoned by his parents over a prophecy, he could want to have the wisdom he needed to either avoid his fate or reason with his family. These would both be life-changing, and there’s reason to think that someone like Paris would have been tempted by either. But no—of course not. The handsome shepherd is too satisfied to be ambitious: he wants the most beautiful woman in the world by his side.
Pity that’s Helen and she’s already married, and to Menelaus no less, a powerful scion who is now ruling Sparta, the kingdom she was born into. But maybe Aphrodite doesn’t have to be gifted with prophecy to know how that’s going to turn out. Maybe what Hera and Athena are offering is a way to keep the status quo, and what Aphrodite is offering is a way forward, messy as only she can be (Gaea has set down at this point).
But who is Helen, and what is Helen? The standard myth is that Leda, the beautiful Aetolian princess married to King Tyndareus of Sparta, is raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, and nine months later she gives birth to quadruplets: Clytemnaestra and Castor, whose father is Tyndareus, and Pollux and Helen, whose father is Zeus. Castor and Pollux are the OG twins—there’s even an arc about them taking on another pair of twins—and upon their deaths (long story), Zeus put them both in the heavens as the constellation Gemini. They are duality personified, but Helen, according to Calasso, stands alone, glorious in her beauty even as a child. (Don’t worry about Clytemnaestra—she gets into plenty of trouble on her own, and one gets the sense that divine parentage would only have made things worse.)
And yet...there’s another myth about Helen’s parentage, and her parentage is doubly divine. Zeus becomes enamored with, of all goddesses, Nemesis. She is an old goddess—one of the children of Nyx—and while she is known as the goddess of retribution, particularly for hubris, she might be best understood as being what Calasso calls a member of the Family of Consequences. Was Zeus extra special reckless when he raped her—again, in the form of a swan—or was he literally trying to make something happen? Again, maybe it was both.
Whomever Helen’s mother was, Zeus was definitely her father, and that in and of itself stood her out as his only mortal daughter. Neither that nor her beauty helped her, however; if anything, those were vulnerabilities. In fact, throughout mythology, it’s difficult to think of anyone—male, female, or otherwise—who didn’t suffer for their beauty, which begs the question of what, exactly, Aphrodite is the goddess of (and gives credence to the theory I first read in Women in the Picture that she is really male lust dressed up as a woman).
Helen is kidnapped by Theseus and his buddy Pirithous (technically king of the Lapiths, but really, he’s best known for his association with Theseus). After both of them lose their wives, they decided to marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus—you may remember him as the “hero” who, as noted above, abandoned Ariadne after she helped him escape from her father, Minos of Crete—was never one for humility, and he kidnaps Helen of Troy—a princess of Sparta—when she is ten years old, so he can hold his place, so to speak, until she’s of marriageable age. (How long he waits is a question: he rapes her before she is rescued, and by some myths it is this act that produces Iphigenia, not the ill-fated marriage of her sister Clytemnaestra and Agamemnon. Given that Nemesis may have been Helen’s mother and given the consequences of Agamemnon’s murder of Iphigenia, that tracks.)
There’s arrogance and hubris, and then there’s plain stupidity, and that’s what Theseus and Pirithous exhibit when they take it upon themselves to kidnap Persephone from the kingdom of Hades for Pirithous to marry. If they were thinking “It worked once,” they forgot the part about the importance of divinity, and soon found themselves trapped in Hades. Heracles to the rescue once again: he finds them trapped when he visits Hades—one of his many labors—but he can only free Theseus, not Pirithous.
It’s not clear how long Theseus is gone, but by the time he returns, Helen has been returned to Sparta by her brothers (and Theseus has lost his kingdom, which is, perhaps, more of a consequence than Hades faced for the kidnapping and rape of a child). Her ordeal with Theseus is just a taste of what’s to come, however. Once she is of marriageable age, the real drama begins.
Famously, Tyndareus is swamped with suitors for Helen once she’s at a marriageable age. (One has to wonder: did they want the most beautiful woman in the world, the daughter of Zeus, or control of her mortal father’s kingdom, Sparta? Somehow, “why not all three?” says too much and too little about those suitors.) Of those suitors, only one looks around and realizes that this is a game he doesn’t want to play: Odysseus, gifted with wisdom by Athena. (In her defense, the mortals she made alliances with did tend to work out better for them than the ones allied with Hera or Aphrodite.) He approaches Tyndareus and makes a deal: give him Helen’s cousin Penelope as a wife, and he’ll tell him how to avoid all out war. Tyndareus agrees, and thus announces to the suitors shortly after that they must *all* take an oath to not only respect Tyndareus’ decision, but to defend the marriage he does bless in case it is interfered with. (Here, really, it’s difficult not to see Helen as a stand-in for territory.) All of the suitors hopefully agree and “draw lots”—similar to the ones drawn by Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus—and then Tyndareus is able to pick the suitor he wanted all along: Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon, who is already married to his other daughter, Clytemnaestra. (Fun fact, as these things go: Clytemnaestra was already married to someone else and had a small child when Agamemnon decided that she should be his wife, and in the struggle to claim her, he killed both her husband and child. If he didn’t bless the remarriage before the fact, Tyndareus appreciated either having the ruthless House of Pelops as in-laws enough to overlook that crime...or how much he didn’t want to be on their bad side—what Atreus, son of Pelops and father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, did to his half-brother Chrysippus is a story for another day).
This is the backdrop to Paris’ meeting with Helen about a decade after her marriage to Menelaus. She is the most beautiful woman in the world that Paris was promised, her marriage to one of the most powerful kings in Greece be damned, and he takes her away. Menelaus invokes the oath, and thus begins the decade-long Trojan War.
(I am resisting the urge to delve into the parallels between Helen’s suitors and Penelope’s more than two decades later, but those of you already familiar with the Odyssey should give it a think.)
And what does Helen herself think? As with so much in Greek mythology, it depends on whom you ask. She is described in the majority of sources as being enamored with Paris as well, but Paris is frequently said to have kidnapped her, and the vibe around her is that she’s a victim who leans into her fate—something she might have been primed to do after she was kidnapped the first time.
There is also a famous alternate version of the story, in which Helen doesn’t make it to Troy at all, but is actually sent to Egypt, and a lookalike phantom is sent to Troy in her place. Fanciful—until one contemplates what, exactly, the Greeks and Trojans are fighting over. Helen may very well have been the face that launched a thousand ships, but given how quickly the war escalated and the consequences to both parties, it’s not hard to think that those ships were going to be launched eventually—and possibly even at each other, as evidenced by Tyndareus’ anxiety when all those suitors sat in his court. Helen was just the literal provocateur.
Exactly what you might expect when Power meets Consequence. And yet...doesn’t it all begin at the wedding of the parents of Achilles, most mighty (and whiny) of the Greek heroes? His immortal mother goes to great lengths to burn the mortal out of him—there may or may not have been a few children who couldn’t withstand the flames before Achilles—but his father stops her before she can finish the job, thus leaving one bit of vulnerability: his ankles (hence, Achilles tendons). Achilles has the *ability* to live and fight hard, if not for long, or he can play it safe and live a long life, literally living in the safety of women. For Achilles, who has had glory whispered at him since he was born, the choice was clear.
Achilles matched Hector, the prince of Troy who was fighting for both his kingdom and his family, and as long as he lived, Troy could withstand Achilles. But Hector overplays his hand and Achilles is able to best him, at last. He drags Hector’s corpse around the camp until his father Priam, the king of Troy who has given shelter to his son Paris and Helen, begs for the return of his body. Achilles returns the body, but the war is now Achilles’ to lose; which of the Trojan warriors stands a chance against Achilles? None, obviously—unless they’re being guided by a god (or goddess).
It is Paris who kills Achilles, which he could only do because he was guided by Apollo. (It might be fair to ask what that means; when Odysseus is “guided” by Athena in the Odyssey, it is almost never any kind of divine intervention—it is easily understood that he is given to cunning in a way that would befit the goddess of strategy. Apollo, among other things, is the god of logic, as well as an expert archer. It doesn’t push credibility to think that Paris might have used logic and skill to hit Achilles’ weak spot...even if he could have used a little more of that strategic thinking Athena symbolizes.) The Greeks haven’t been able to breach the divine walls of Troy even with Achilles, and now they have no chance—so they resort to the subterfuge of the Trojan Horse.
Without Hector to protect them, it’s over for the Trojans, especially since the Greeks have secured Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, who fights well but lacks even his father’s honor (no, I don’t want to talk about poor Astyanax). Troy is gone, but while the Greeks may have won the war, ten years away from home inflicts a high cost, and those who make it home find that the world they knew has changed, and the gods themselves peter out.
And yet...it is the survivors of Troy who ultimately thrive. Aeneas is a second cousin of Paris and Hector, as well as a son-in-law of Priam. He is also the son of Aphrodite, and it is under her protection that he lives through the war—though he isn’t a bad warrior himself—and escapes with his father on his back and his young son in hand as Troy burns. You might know him better as the hero of the Aeneid, and the progenitor of Rome. It is through him that Aphrodite—sorry, Venus—is such a big deal in the Roman ethos...but that is a story for another day.
Aphrodite may have looked like she couldn’t play the long game, but maybe it was Hera and Athena who were the short-sighted ones, because, again, what they were offering was essentially an extension of the status quo. Maybe it is desire that is the impetus behind creation, though frequently you have to live through creative destruction first.
And what of Helen, after all this? The most accepted version is that she and Menelaus return to Sparta, and they live, essentially, happily ever after. She may later, among other things, be driven out of Sparta by her stepsons and murdered while seeking shelter—or, according to Pausanias, she may spend her afterlife with Achilles.
One almost wonders if Zeus dropped hints to Eris that she really should show up at Peleus and Thetis’ wedding. Did I mention that she is Zeus’ daughter with Hera?
From Achilles, we learn that singularity may bring glory, but it doesn’t bring you true victory; it isn’t until after his death that the Greeks devise the plan that gets them inside of Troy. Helen’s singularity was worth even less: in the final analysis, she is not only an object, but potentially a stand-in—whether for the “real” Helen, or the territorial ambitions of the men around her—and whether she has agency or not, she has precious few opportunities to exercise it.
And yet...isn’t Helen’s story an echo of Persephone’s? The daughter of Zeus, kidnapped, in Helen’s case repeatedly. And who is making more progress? Persephone is in a constant state of going back and forth between an Earth—a mother—she gives bounty to and the underworld, where she watches over the dead. Helen is moved back and forth as well, but while she always comes back to Sparta, her alternate destinations change: first with Theseus in Athens, then with Paris in Troy, then any number of fates after. Helen may not have agency, but she does experience more change than her immortal counterpart.
Just as Achilles and Helen book end the Trojan War, Persephone and Helen book end the age of heroes. It is the domination of Persephone and her mother Demeter that solidifies the order of the Olympians, and it is the domination of Helen that brings about the demise of it. The Olympians, none of whom could bring themselves to defend Demeter and Persephone, are now at each other’s throats over the fate of Troy. They are not all-powerful immortals who stay out of things because they don’t want to tip the scales and upset the Fates; they are over-powered deities who bring pettiness to a new level, and their immortality—their durability as gods—is ultimately undermined by it.
The sacrifice of Persephone protects the hegemonic rule at the cost of living under one ruler—Zeus—while the kidnapping/rape/seduction of Helen finally answers the question of who will succeed that ruler: not another god, but another civilization and set of ideas. No wonder Zeus went to so much trouble to parent glorious, irreplaceable heroes when he himself struggles so mightily to assert his own singularity, all the time knowing that he is just an echo of his grandfather and father who wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without assists from his grandmother and mother, who reeled from not being able to parent their own children. Zeus showed no regard for that primal need when he held power, and it’s difficult not to see the fate of Troy as Demeter’s payback.
[What? Sorry—I forgot to include one more story of Demeter. During the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia, she seduces the bride’s foster brother, Iasion (and through him becomes the mother of Plutus, the god of wealth). Zeus, who doesn’t seem to object to his brother Poseidon assaulting Demeter, takes exception to her favoring a mortal (never mind that Iasion might actually be his son by the Pleiade Electra), and strikes him dead with lightning. Who lives? Iasion’s brother, Dardanus—who survives the Great Flood and moves to Asia Minor, where his descendants will found...Troy. But I’m sure these are just coincidences.]
We begin with Chaos that gives birth to the seeds of order, and we end, if not with Chaos, then with something that must have felt very much like it. The descendants of Heracles get into it with the descendants of Orestes—among other things, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnaestra, great-grandson of Pelops, and great-great-grandson of Tantalus—and various men fight it out over this, that, or the other thing, but the age of heroes is over, and the action moves to Rome—and Roman culture itself was in many ways an echo of Greek culture.
Does it all come back to Prometheus? Perhaps his curse wasn’t that he wouldn’t tell Zeus which woman would be his downfall if she had his son, but that this woman existed at all—and that he would tell her who it was. There’s more than one way to bring about your own end.
I wish I could say more about Heracles and Prometheus, the hubris of the house of Agamemnon, the intertwining of descendants of Pelops and Perseus, and so much more, but perhaps I’ve already made my point, and those stories can be left for another day.
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