Let’s Marry Helen! Mythmaking Marriage in Lacedaemon

We're going back to the beginning... Before we start the next reading series, the Johnston translation of Homer's Iliad, we're going back to basics: How did Helen end up the face was blamed for launching a thousand ships? AVAILABLE NOW! The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Sources: Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz; Topostext entries on Leda, Helen. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/grouptrip.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right tech at the right time, or tech in steps. From GPS-tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. Visit gab.com/getgab and use code GETGAB for an

• 1:22Speaker 01

  exclusive offer. That's G-A-B-B dot com forward slash get gab. Gab: Tech in Steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for parents.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  When your workday is constantly disrupted, your workflow isn't flowing. It's come to a grinding halt. You don't need an assistant, you need superpowers. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is built for how you actually work. No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. Go handles busy work like finding documents or summarizing email threads, so you can focus on the work only you can do. Try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 2:06Liv Albert?

  My fatherland is not unknown to fame, even Sparta, or my father Tyndareus, for a legend tells how Zeus winged his way to my mother Leda's breast, in the semblance of a bird, even a swan, and thus, as he fled from an eagle's pursuit, achieved by guile his amorous purpose, if this tale be true. My name is Helen, and I will now recount the sorrows I have suffered. To a hollow vale on Ida came three goddesses to Paris for beauty's prize contending. Hera and Kipris and the virgin child of Zeus, eager to secure

• 2:47Liv Albert?

  his verdict on their loveliness. Now, Kipris held out my beauty, if anything so wretched deserves that name, as a bride before the eyes of Paris, saying he should marry me. And so she won the day, wherefore the shepherd of Ida left his steading and came to Sparta, thinking to win me for his bride.

• 3:34Liv Albert?

  Oh, nerds, nerds, nerds. I am so excited to be here with this episode, but first, hi, hello, welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your nearly a decade and counting host, Liv, the woman who's slowly but surely transforming into a raging misandrist. But gosh, it's for cause, you know? Gosh, it's for cause. In the world of pedophilic presidents and princes, manosphere, sex traffickers who should have spent their time on personality transplants and critical thinking, tape brothers, let alone the Ivy League or NHL gang rapists, just allowed to live their lives and join the Edmonton Oilers.

• 4:16Liv Albert?

  Well, I'm just out here waiting for the good men to rise up and stop the bad ones, and until then, it's misandry for me. I'm talking to the you men who listen to me, because if you listen to me, then it means you're cool and you care about stuff, and I'm gonna need you to stand up. But it's okay. That doesn't mean I'm not here to tell you the stories of mythical men. Oh, no. Hell, I might even have like a handful of positive thoughts for them. Hector, right? We love Hector.

• 4:44Liv Albert?

  Like the old days, though, I'm getting ahead of myself. Really, I'm just here to introduce the fact that, as long as I can manage it, I'm going back to the basics, just sharing stories that I haven't talked about in years? Stories that I know I can present better now and with so much more context, nuance, and hopefully storytelling. But sometimes that does get hit by the nuance. I try really hard for a balance. And yeah, first up are the stories that lead up to the Trojan War, for just like reasons, I guess, just definitely not an attempt to reuse my own research for other as-yet-to-be-announced projects that I'm working on at the moment. Nope, it's not that. I just liked the Trojan War. Anyway, let's talk about the origins of the Trojan War and the lead-up to the Iliad, shall we?

• 5:31Liv Albert?

  Fortunately, it all starts with a small collection of powerful, important, stunning, and infuriating women, and a whole culture's worth of men who, very creatively, are all desperate to date the hottest girl in school, or rather, marry the hottest princess in Greece, one whose marriage just happens to include one of the most powerful kingdoms in the region. But you know, that's, that's just a bonus that you get to be king of Sparta. No, they're really coming for the hot piece of ass. That quote I read at the top of the episode was from none other. It's Euripides, obviously. It's Euripides. That bit is basically the introduction to Euripides' Helen, her explanation before, well, before she devolves

• 6:16Liv Albert?

  into what makes Euripides' Helen special, which is that, if you recall, she's a ghost, or rather, the Helen that's in Troy is a ghost, an idolon sent there by Hera, whereas Helen is just transported to Egypt. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about today, but that's where that introductory line came from, and I just really liked it.

• 6:51Liv Albert?

  Let's Marry Helen: Mythmaking Marriage in Lacedaemon.

• 7:12Liv Albert?

  Now, don't think from that title that I actually watched that show, Let's Marry Harry, like, on an ongoing basis, because I watched the first, like, two or three, and I realized how far women have fallen in this last decade, and it's heartbreaking to watch just a bunch of really smart women compete over, like, the biggest loser man I've ever seen in my life. But it did make for a really good title. The famed princess of Sparta was born to questionable parentage. The mother of this famously beautiful Helen was Leda, queen of Sparta, and that much is pretty clear. Her father, though, is hotly debated. I've talked about Helen in so many ways over so

• 7:55Liv Albert?

  many years, but it's been something like eight years since I've talked specifically about these origins in the story itself. Like, how is it that Helen ended up in Troy with a cataclysmic war being fought in her name?

• 8:12Liv Albert?

  So before I start the next reading series, which I'm very excited about Homer's Iliad, again, for just like reasons, and the modern translation by Ian Johnston that's gonna be so good, I'm starting here way back at the beginning. All the bits that didn't make it into the Iliad at all, the how and the why and the when, because the events leading up to the Trojan War, as most of you might remember, isn't at all included in the surviving stories of the Trojan War, at least not in any meaningful way. Homer's Iliad throws us right into the fray in medias res, in the middle of things. The epic starts nine years into a 10-year war and everything that came before, and much of what came after

• 8:51Liv Albert?

  just wasn't preserved in the epics, at least not from ancient Greece. Instead, in order to learn how everything started, we have to pick apart sources from hundreds, if not thousands of years, or rather, a thousand, years after the Iliad and the Odyssey were being composed by those mysterious Homeric bards of the Iron Age. It's a story that's become an enormous part of the modern imagination of that war, the story of how it was that Helen married Menelaus, how all the men of Greece, apparently, wanted to marry her, the story of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, how the golden apple became a catalyst for war, all of that comes from later sources, bits and pieces that have to be reconstructed

• 9:35Liv Albert?

  in order to understand. I mean, to be clear, there are sometimes like bits and pieces from the very ancient times, but they tend to be so piecemeal that you need the later stuff in order to actually understand what's going on. And I realized just while writing that sentence that at the time I would have originally told this story of Helen and then later of the Judgment of Paris, which will be next week, I wasn't even primarily working off of the ancient sources at that point. Like, that's a wild thought now, because these days I trust very little else, but way back then, when I had really just started out, was figuring out even how to use and find primary sources, I was still relying on a compilation book of myths, which, in hindsight, it has some of the most momentously

• 10:18Liv Albert?

  misogynist rewrites for other characters, so gods only know what I ended up having to say about Helen back then. This time, we're getting serious. This is ancient sources, to hopefully not a problematic degree.

• 10:33Liv Albert?

  Queen Leda and King Tindarius were the leaders of Sparta, also called Lacedaemon. I just really love that word, or Lacedaemonia is like the bigger region. They have a small collection of children together, the exact number of which is never quite confirmed across the sources. Sometimes Leda and Tindarius have two additional daughters that we rarely hear about, Philonoi and Timandra. But honestly, they don't really come up in this story of Helen. It's the other four children of Leda and Tindarius that we are concerned with. First, they have the twins, two boys, Castor and Polydeukes. We call them the Diosgory, which I've only now just looked up, despite saying this word forever.

• 11:16Liv Albert?

  Uh, it basically means God's boys, or Zeus's boys. Which is actually a little cute. I did read in a pseudo Apollodorus that they were called the Diosgory because of their manliness. So it does make it funnier when you translate it into Zeus's boys. And then they had the far more important, if you ask me, the daughters, the utterly incomparable, Helen and Clytemnestra. Now, I don't want to focus too much on this episode, uh, on the how exactly these children were born. But still, I must remind you that, so the story goes, poor Leda happened to encounter

• 12:00Liv Albert?

  Zeus on the very same day that she'd also happened to have had sex with her husband. Zeus, though, was his usual horrifying and beastial self and appeared to Leda not as a man, but a bird, a swan. This encounter, I am comfortable saying, should be considered rape, because he was, after all, a fucking bird. But don't tell that to all the male artists who've been painting for the last few centuries longer. Because that woman always looks like she wants to fuck a fucking swan. Still, in the end, Leda ends up giving birth via egg. And now the versions of this bit of the story are vast and ridiculously fragmentary and

• 12:42Liv Albert?

  sometimes just invented, not to mention very contradictory. So sometimes all of the children are born via eggs, and I think that comes in with like how she had sex with Tindarius on the same night as she had sex with Zeus. But it doesn't explain why the children who are born of Tindarius are also born of eggs. Now, it's, it's always the Diosgory, Castor usually, uh, and Helen, who are half divines, who are considered the children of Zeus. But it does seem like they were all imagined to be born kind of like all in one go out of like two eggs. And therefore, no, it doesn't make sense that one of the twins is half god and the other is not, despite them being twins.

• 13:26Liv Albert?

  And no, it doesn't make sense that if there were two eggs and the boys came out twins and the girls didn't. It doesn't, don't think about it too hard. Anyway, for today, it's Helen I'm concerned with. I will say, though, it's easy to think of the Diosgory as more minimal characters overall, because the time we meet Helen in the Iliad, like Helen when she's in Troy, we've learned that they've already died. They've been put up into the sky as the constellation Gemini. To my knowledge, the Diosgory don't appear in many surviving like full-length or even some like some-length myths. Instead, their story is lost in a way that's really similar to Heracles, where we know that they were incredibly important culturally and regionally, so particularly in the Peloponnese.

• 14:11Liv Albert?

  Uh, it just happens that like stories didn't survive. And unlike Heracles, the twins didn't end up appearing in enough, I guess, art to offset the lack of sources. Like, Heracles's stories don't survive in much detail anywhere in like written form, but there was literally so much art featuring his stories that we know so much purely from just that. So all to say, they were an incredibly important heroic pair, and the girl's relation to them was also a huge part of the wider mythos of the region. This whole, the Diosgory, Helen and Clytemnestra are really interconnected and heroically, like from a cultural perspective, very important.

• 14:56Liv Albert?

  I think often that's less true of Clytemnestra, but I'm going to include her anyway because I love her. Just, this is just a passing thought, though, but I imagine the lack of imagery and sourcing on the Diosgory compared to the other major heroes is also coming from their status as being Spartan, because the Spartans, as people, as a culture, weren't nearly as concerned with creating things that ended up surviving. Like, not intentionally, but they just weren't into building monumental buildings with stone. They had a lot of wooden things and they weren't quite as textually verbose as the Athenians, let's say. But we do know about the Diosgory and Helen, though, leads directly to the one bit of her childhood that is often forgotten, and I know I said this wasn't about them, but

• 15:41Liv Albert?

  when Helen was a child, a literal child, like I swear, one of the sources says nine, one of the other ones I found today says 12, but I'm about 99% sure that there's another one that says nine. So when she was like nine or something, Helen was abducted by Theseus of Athens, who attempted to hold her captive until she was old enough that he could marry her. Yes, it's giving Epstein, I, it just is. It was only because her brothers ended up saving her that Helen was able to return to Sparta, grow up into at least a teenager, and then marry on terms that, while not entirely her own, were considerably better than Theseus.

• 16:24Liv Albert?

  I want to say that something, but you have to remember that probably the Theseus bit was added later as propaganda, and so the Athenians actually thought that this kind of made them look good. Which is something else entirely.

• 16:52Liv Albert?

  Though the sources are brief and fragmentary, there is a bit in pseudo Apollodorus that, as usual, lays out the basics of Helen's origin story. Quote, "But Zeus, in the form of a swan, consorted with Leda, and on the same night Tindarius cohabited with her, and she bore Polax and Helen to Zeus, and Castor and Clytemnestra to Tindarius. But some say that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis and Zeus, for that she, flying from the arms of Zeus, changed herself into a goose. But Zeus, in his turn, took the likeness of a swan and so enjoyed her. And as the fruit of their loves, she laid an egg, and a certain shepherd found it in

• 17:36Liv Albert?

  the groves and brought it and gave it to Leda, and she put it in a chest and kept it. And when Helen was hatched in due time, Leda brought her up as her own daughter. And when she grew into a lovely woman, Theseus carried her off and brought her to Ephidni. But when Theseus was in Hades, Polax and Castor marched against Ephidni, took the city, got possession of Helen, and led Eithra, the mother of Theseus, away captive." Now, Leda and Zeus are usually considered to be Helen's biological parents, though Tindarius takes on the usual fatherly role in place of Zeus. But a fragment of the Cypria, a lost epic which is recounted in other sources, kind

• 18:17Liv Albert?

  of, suggested, like pseudo Apollodorus just a moment ago, which we will get back to. The Cypria suggested that it was not Leda at all, who was this famous mother of Helen, but the goddess of divine revenge, Nemesis. And honestly, for a brief moment, I was gonna suggest that in that version, like maybe it actually could be considered consensual, because Nemesis herself also a bird, so maybe briefly that implied, uh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. But, um, no, that turns out that's just one, um, take, and in another, it's really explicitly said that her union with Zeus only came about through, quote, "compulsion."

• 19:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's just another case of the age-old myth. God's rape in fresh and creative ways. In the end, whoever her biological parents were imagined to be, Helen is always raised by Leda and Tindarius of Sparta. Frankly, this idea of her being the daughter of Nemesis, to me, is giving misogyny, right? Like, oh, this woman who caused such a terrible war, no, she could not have just been the daughter of a mortal mother. No, she had to be the daughter of vengeance. After all, if Helen was anything in the wider ancient Greek world after the Iliad, she was a kind of a boogeywoman, a cautionary tale of what happens if a woman dares defy her husband willingly or not?

• 19:58Liv Albert?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince. You know the drill. Quince makes elevated, everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and premium stretch denim. I have been speaking into a microphone about Quince for a while now, and I have no complaints. I have a bunch of their stuff. I've got a couple cute sweaters that, I mean, it's nearing sweater season, so those will be back in the rotation anytime now. And I have this leather bag that I absolutely love. It's like this braided leather, and I use it like basically every day. Because

• 20:40Liv Albert?

  that's the thing, they have really great basics. Like, they have really great things that you can wear with so many other things. Just the options are endless. And as the weather gets colder, like all the sweaters in my closet, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves, to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. And of course, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And if we haven't learned anything in the last 10 years, isn't it just getting rid of the middlemen, you know, making things more affordable?

• 21:25Liv Albert?

  So find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was me. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

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• 22:31Speaker 01

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• 23:17Speaker 01

  The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right tech at the right time, or tech in steps. From GPS-tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. Visit gab.com/getgab and use code GETGAB for an

• 23:57Speaker 01

  exclusive offer. That's G-A-B-B dot com forward slash get gab. Gab, tech in steps. Independence for them, peace of mind for parents.

• 24:08Speaker 03

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• 24:55Liv Albert?

  Now, we find the mostly, hopefully, slightly grown-up Helen in Sparta when Daddy Tindarius is looking to have her hitched. Like I've said, the story of how it is that Helen married Menelaus isn't found in the Iliad, or in any real detail in any particularly ancient source, at least, again, not in a complete way. So to paraphrase one of my favorite sources, Gant's Early Greek Myths, there's no mention of how it happened, despite the fact that Menelaus seems completely ineligible for a woman and her kingdom like Helen. Personally, I think it's safe to say that Helen was too good for any and all of the mortal men of the time, heroic or otherwise. But alas, the patriarchy has been well-established, and

• 25:39Liv Albert?

  it was simply impossible for a beautiful, fuckable woman to live without a man there to control her. No, not when they're just so fuckable.

• 25:50Liv Albert?

  When Helen came of age, hopefully an age older than 13, it was time for the men in her life to sell her off to the highest bidder. Well, I guess they probably wouldn't put it that way, but it's pretty spot on. They seem to have been well aware of just how appealing she was. That messy boy Theseus had already tried, and how'd that turn out? In fact, not as bad as how things turned out for his co-conspirator, Pyrrhus. You remember when Theseus selected Helen as his quote-unquote "future wife"? And his bestie, Pyrrhus, picked his own bride for the same? He picked Persephone. She was already married to Hades. In some version of the story, even say that it was when Theseus was imprisoned

• 26:32Liv Albert?

  in the underworld alongside Pyrrhus as punishment for, yeah, the attempted abduction of the queen of the fucking dead. It was then, many sources say, that Helen was able to be rescued by her brothers. The kingdom of Sparta put out the call to all the eligible men of the region. If they wanted to marry Helen, the most beautiful woman in all of Greece, then they'd have to make their case. The list of men who came to seek Helen's hand is, unsurprisingly, very fragmented if we're talking super ancient sources. We know Menelaus was there, obviously. So was his brother Agamemnon, who appears to have been there to support Menelaus. It's chronologically confusing, but we're meant to think that Agamemnon is already married

• 27:15Liv Albert?

  to Clytemnestra, Helen's sister. In addition to Menelaus, Odysseus appears to be there, but seems to have just presumed that Menelaus would win, so he didn't bother bringing any gifts. Seems like him. Ajax tried out, and a number of other fairly forgettable names. Thus, the assumption is that there were an awful lot more names that have been lost. Like, there's even some just straight blanks in the sourcing that we have. When the men came to woo their sister Helen, the twins, Castor and Polydeques, were there to help their father with the hard work of deciding who to entrust with his daughter. Those twins even seem to have had another man in mind, actually, a name that is very

• 27:56Liv Albert?

  frustratingly just a complete blank in the record, but whose desire to marry Helen seems to have been snatched away by Agamemnon, who used his marriage to Clytemnestra in order to like nudge the brothers and Tindarius away towards, rather, their final decision. But Menelaus brought the gifts, at least, something good enough to convince the Spartans of his value, I guess. We don't know what, but we do know that Ajax the Great came from the island of Salamis, and he offered sheep and cattle from all over, which is pretty sick. And the real reason I'm sharing this bit of fragment is we also learned that there's a suitor from Athens. He, too, is unnamed, but apparently the Athenian believed himself

• 28:40Liv Albert?

  to be the wealthiest, which is unsurprising. And it's giving Athenian overcorrection, and I love it. Because remember, when the original stories of Homer were being developed, it's very likely that it was at a time in the Iron Age when Athens was nothing to write home about. And then, when they became special and important in the Greek world, they went about rewriting that fact into their cultural history. Have I mentioned lately how many similarities there are between ancient and modern empires? Gosh, they always have the best propagandists, even if the modern ones resemble something along the lines of a pale, decrepit mole person who's dedicated their life to being

• 29:21Liv Albert?

  the most disgustingly racist piece of human misogynist garbage. That's Stephen Miller, in case you're curious.

• 29:30Liv Albert?

  Alas, the empire could not rewrite the entire Trojan War. It was far too established for that, so Helen doesn't marry the richest, fanciest Athenian man. Her father and brothers choose Menelaus to marry their daughter and sister because, well, he brought the best gifts. Before they announce the decision publicly, though, King Tindarius makes a smart move. A move that is, in some versions at least, suggested by Odysseus and not Tindarius, because of course, he's the smart one. These bits and pieces of the story are the oldest that we have, and primarily comes from the Ehoiai, the so-called Catalog of Women. Yes, you guessed it. I am indeed obsessed

• 30:13Liv Albert?

  with the concept of that text. But, as we've seen, it survives in only the most confusing and broken fragments. And also, despite being called the Catalog of Women, it does appear to just be a catalog of all of the people that the women bore. Which is cool. It's just like a birth record, but mythic.

• 30:37Liv Albert?

  Later sources do try to parse it a little more, though. They try to explain or explore some of the motivations that have ended up being missing from our fragments, or just never considered. It's later that we are presented with this idea that the courtship was a production, something really big and serious. In the fragments, you get this sense that it was more of like a long-distance wooing, sending gifts and messengers back and forth, maybe a couple of the guys arrived, but not all of them, wasn't necessarily some big in-person event. But later sources, it's exactly that. The suitors of Helen are imagined

• 31:17Liv Albert?

  to descend upon Sparta en masse. Think Penelope and her suitors, except there's no long-missing husband for them to contend with. All the suitors show up, and they all try to prove that it's him who will be the most impressive, most rich, most heroic, and therefore, oh, it's him who's worthy of such a nymph, such a bride.

• 31:43Liv Albert?

  Centuries later, this mythologist that we call Apollodorus, who I quoted earlier, or pseudo-Apollodorus, sat about telling this story in a tiny bit of detail. Now, you've heard me mention him lots of times. Someone once called him the TLDR of myth, and that has stuck with me. It's really accurate. His tellings of myth are extensive, but brief. So he manages to fit in most of the basic storylines while draining them of all of their like emotion and real depth. But gods, is he helpful for moments like this, for like filling in the gaps? Because fuck if there aren't a lot of gaps. So according to pseudo-Apollodorus, are these gaps that you necessarily needed? Not necessarily. Do I want to read them? Absolutely. So according to pseudo-Apollodorus, quote, "The wooers were these: Ulysses, son

• 32:28Liv Albert?

  of Laertes, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, Antilochus, son of Nestor, Agapenor, son of Anchais, Stenilus, son of Copanias, Amphimicus, son of Catetus, Thelpius, son of Eurytus, Megi's, son of Philias, Amphilochus, son of Amphiarius, Mnestheus, son of Petias, Scidius, and Epistrophus, sons of Iphitus, Polixenus, son of Agasthenes, Penileus, son of Hippalchmas, Leitus, son of Alector, Ajax, son of Oylias, Aschaphus, and Ialmenes, sons of Ares, Elephinor, son

• 33:06Liv Albert?

  of Chalcodon, Eumylus, son of Admatus, Polypetes, son of Pirithous, Leontius, son of Coronus, Podalirius, and Macian, sons of Isclepius, Philoctetes, son of Pius, Euripolis, son of Iveymon, Protosileus, son of Iphicles, Menelaus, son of Atrius, Ajax, and Tucor, sons of Telamon, Patroclus, son of Menetius."

• 33:35Liv Albert?

  Now, you heard me. According to just this source, even Patroclus went looking to marry Helen. Bye-bye, Achilles. This girl's hot. Meanwhile, the question remains, why not Achilles? Why isn't Achilles there wanting to marry this beautiful woman? He's Achilles! Well, that would disrupt the entire existing story of the Trojan War, so that can't happen. And thus, we get a baffling timeline where Achilles is too young to have gone to marry Helen, and yet he can still somehow end up with a grown enough son before the wars end.

• 34:06Liv Albert?

  But you're all familiar now with Greek myth. You just know, like, ignore the timelines when they make objectively zero sense. It's mythology, after all. Still, in this more dramatized, but far too brief, version by Apollodorus, the men bicker, they argue, they even get to the point where they're threatening violence on one another. You know, because men are clearly natural leaders, and they never let their anger or quest for some amorphous masculinity get the better of them. No, no, no, they're very smart thinkers. Men are just so calm and rational. That's why we let them lead. And the men looking to marry Helen are the most calm and rational of them all, very much like the suitors of Penelope.

• 34:44Liv Albert?

  Okay, I can barely keep up with the sarcasm anymore. I'm not sure I'll ever be convinced that men make half-decent leaders, let alone natural ones. Like, give us some evidence, bros! Fortunately, there's at least one man in the room who's thinking clearly. Sometimes it's Odysseus's idea first, because he's already decided that he wants to marry Penelope, and it's his way of getting to marry her. She's Helen's cousin. But regardless, Tyndareus sees the men competing over his daughter, and he can tell exactly where it's headed. So maybe he's a half-decent leader. I don't know. He's about to give it up to Menelaus, so probably takes it back. Anyway, before the suitors can turn to violence, and in an effort to avoid creating any new enemies in the region when one of them is finally chosen, Tyndareus has them all swear an oath.

• 35:29Liv Albert?

  He's smart to be worried. I mean, you bring all of these men into a space, and you're like, compete over this lady, and then you have to pick one, and then what? You just want all the other men to be like, okay, cool, that's fine, I'll just go home. Like, there's no, like, we don't know anything about real alliances here. It's a dangerous game. And so Tyndareus makes them swear this oath. The suitors all promise that they will swear to protect Helen, no matter who she ends up marrying. They will protect her from any abductions that may happen in the future. It's convenient. And once they've done this, according to at least some dudes writing in the margins of something else, because that's how we get a lot of sources, Helen gets to choose whichever man she wants to

• 36:12Liv Albert?

  marry. She may have even followed her heart in some versions, which is pretty cool.

• 36:20Liv Albert?

  Now, does this explanation of the oath the suitors swear sound a little like a convenient way to explain the otherwise inexplicable decision for all the Greek leaders to sail to Troy over one man's wife? Yes. But that's the fun of myth. Sometimes people want to understand their own cultural histories, which are already hundreds, if not 1,000 years old, and in doing so, in attempting to understand this thing, they end up inventing new cultural histories. No matter how it came about, Helen of Sparta and Menelaus of Mycenae marry. In marrying Helen, Menelaus doesn't just get the hottest wife around, he also gets to become king of Sparta, Lacedaemon, one of the most powerful and rich regions of the time. And here, too,

• 37:03Liv Albert?

  we have a bit of, well, this doesn't make any sense? Like, why is Menelaus the king when Tyndareus is still alive, and he has two living sons?

• 37:15Liv Albert?

  Don't worry about it. So Apollodorus says that Menelaus became king after the Diosgory had already died and been transformed into their constellation of Gemini, which, yes, actually would make sense. There's just a problem. In the Iliad, we learn very clearly that it isn't until Helen is already living in Troy that her brothers have died. Because she, we have a whole beautiful, heartbreaking scene of her. She's looking out at the plains of Troy, thinking of all of these Greeks who are going to die ostensibly for her, and she looks out on those plains, searching for her brothers' faces, because obviously

• 37:57Liv Albert?

  they would be there with the other Greeks. And we learn in that moment that she won't find them, because they're dead.

• 38:06Liv Albert?

  So honestly, there's a lot of reasons to be incredibly confused when trying to understand the timeline of this particular moment. We also bring in the theories around whether aspects like this are some kind of remnant of a more matriarchal system when women could hold that power. I mean, Sparta in this way is behaving matrilecally, right? Where the man comes to marry the woman, rather than the other way around. So is that some kind of remnant? Like, is that a part of why it doesn't make sense to us now, or to the later Greeks? It's fun and fascinating.

• 38:43Liv Albert?

  But there are just so many reasons to be confused, especially in the stories that serve as the origin for the Trojan War. So we're not done with that yet.

• 38:57Liv Albert?

  And so for a while, things were peaceful across the Greek world. The Western Peloponnese are being ruled by the brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon, making them leaders of two of the most influential and powerful regions of the time. For a while, things seemed to be going well. Two sisters are married to these two brothers. Mycenae is allied with Sparta, and the rest of the suitors of Helen have all returned home, having sworn their oaths. Who knows? Their marriage might have been, even been a happy one for a time. Helen does give birth to a daughter. They name her Hermione. Yep, that's Hermione, lest you think that that terrible transphobe came up with anything on her own.

• 39:42Liv Albert?

  But for a while, the couple live with their baby daughter in Sparta, ruling as they always have, and things, ah, for a brief moment in time, things seem almost nice, peaceful, good?

• 40:04Liv Albert?

  Little do Helen and Menelaus know that there's something much bigger in the divine works, something far more dramatic, and 100% more divinely influenced. Because, well, some years before Helen and Menelaus married, don't try to think too hard about how many years, it may drive you mad, another wedding had taken place. A godly wedding, one, though, where the bride was not so much a bride as a goddess, in desperate need of being brought down a few notches. There was a goddess more powerful than her siblings, more powerful than the older generation,

• 40:46Liv Albert?

  more fated than the many Olympians. There was this woman who wanted nothing to do with the mortal man that she was being forced to marry.

• 41:00Liv Albert?

  Next week, Thetis. Gods, we love Thetis. And the Judgment of Paris.

• 41:23Liv Albert?

  Oh nerds, thank you so much for listening. I'm gonna be so for real. I am so glad I got a script out. It was fun and I really needed this. I just, this year has been really hard for a lot of reasons and like really good for a lot of reasons. And sometimes when things are really hard and hard and hard, but also good, it's really hard to recognize the hard because you're like, no, but it's okay. It's like, ah, this really good thing happened. But I do feel like my brain has been breaking. And so being able to write this script is really exciting and to have an idea of what I can do. And yeah, these, these initial bits to the war are just so fun and interesting and weird. And I was just realizing how much these are pieces that I have not revisited in any meaningful way for like ever. I know

• 42:06Liv Albert?

  I've talked about Thetis, but at least we, this way, it'll just be about the wedding and the judgment and all of that ridiculously chronologically confusing nonsense. So get ready for more messy, messy chronology. But in the meantime, thank you all so much for listening. It means a lot to me that I'm picking back up on some scripted episodes. And I have some really fun stuff coming for the other episodes as well. We will dive into the Iliad, but I will wait until we've kind of reached that point in terms of these like earlier bits and pieces, which is fun. And we've got, yeah, some conversations coming up. I'm going to be sharing with you all some other collective shows. I just want

• 42:46Liv Albert?

  to be more sharing that love between us. And yeah, you know, the world's the world right now, but I would really love to get back to a place where I am just feeding my rage in a way that feels good and productive, much like this episode. So thank you all so goddamn much. I love you all. Um, let's talk about my story is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Select music is by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network. Um, yeah, I guess that's kind of it now. Ah, I'm working on new things. Books in the works, kids books, adult books, nymph books. I'm excited.

• 43:31Liv Albert?

  And I hope you're all having a nice time. I don't know. This is now me rambling and I need to just sign off. Thank you all so fucking much. I love you all and I love this shit. Fuck, I love Helen. God damn it. I always loved Helen, but Christopher Nolan, oh, he's giving me some renewed, these are fighting words. I don't know. Thanks. Bye.

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