Pod Insights Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: The Most Infamous Woman of Greek Myth, A History of Helen About this episode This two part series on Helen originally aired in December 2021. Helen is simultaneously the most well known mortal of myth and a complete and utter enigma. What do we actually know about her, and the choices she did and did not make that lead to the Trojan War? Helen of Sparta, later of Troy, is so many things... it all depends on where you're looking. In this episode we examine the Helen of Homer, and of Sparta itself.
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Sources:
Sources: Helen: Goddess, Princess, Whore by Bettany Hughes; Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity by Sarah B. Pomeroy; Theoi.com; The Iliad, translated by Caroline Alexander; The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson; Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz. The Iliad, translated by Samuel Butler; Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz; Sappho's Lyre by Diane Rayor.
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.
Transcript 10,615 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Liv 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/groups.
0:43 Speaker 01 Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend.
0:48 Speaker 02 More than 1,000 episodes. For nine years, Creepy has been delivering you horror stories every week. Dark tales from the internet, urban legends, haunted places, and horrors that feel a little too real. And this October, we're taking things even further with our annual 31 Days of Horror event. For 31 days, we're releasing two stories a day, every day, in the run-up to Halloween. That's 31 chances to find something that gets under your skin and refuses to leave. This is Creepy.
1:27 Speaker 01 Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
1:45 Liv Albert? Helen's heart yearned after her former husband, her city, and her parents. She threw a white mantle over her head and hurried from her room, weeping as she went. Not alone, but attended by two of her handmaids, Ithra, daughter of Pythias, and Clymeni. And straightway, they were at the Scannan gates. The two sages, Eucalygon and Antenor, elders of the people, were seated by the skatingates with Priam, Panthus, Thymytes, Lampus, Clytias, and Hecateion, of the race of Mars. These were too old to fight, but they were fluent orators, and sat on the tower like Cicalis the chirrup,
2:28 Liv Albert? delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood. When they saw Helen coming towards the tower, they said softly to one another, "Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake of a woman so marvelously and divinely lovely. Still, fair though she be, let them take her and go, or she will breed sorrow for us and for our children after us."
3:21 Liv Albert? Hi, hello, welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am that host of yours, the woman who likes to rant, Liv. Fucking Helen, you guys. I am thrilled to be doing this deep dive into that oh-so-infamous woman of Greek mythology. She's one of those people that is so utterly fascinating. She herself is enigmatic as fuck, mysterious and baffling, and yet the things we know about her are often so straightforward, to the point. She's the face that launched a thousand ships. She's the woman whose beauty was enough to start a ten-year war that saw the destruction of an entire city. She is the reason for it all.
4:04 Liv Albert? Except that I mean, she isn't, not really. But we'll get there. First, what I quoted at the beginning of the episode was one of the few moments where we experience Helen in the work itself, the Iliad, and really shows how others saw her as really the cause of all of it. Before we dive into the story and history of this incredible and intriguing woman, a reminder that I'm doing a Q and A episode for the first Tuesday of January. This is the time to ask me those questions that pop into my DMs that I can't answer individually. If you have a burning question about any myth or character from myth, any play or playwright, episode-specific questions, if you want to know about podcasting, or how any bit of the podcast works, if you want to know about careers in classics, that's something I get
4:48 Liv Albert? asked often, this is the time to ask it. Go to mythsbaby.com/ questions to submit your questions and listen to the episode on January 4th for all my answers. I do try to limit Q and As. I know you all want new episodes, but they're perfect for this time of year when I both want to enjoy the holiday season and am working on an enormous and epic series of episodes that will begin the following week. Atlantis. Ugh, Atlantis, but more on that later. I even have fancy graphics that the incredible and brilliant Sarah Richard made for me. This is going to be the most researched and planned series I have ever done, by far. It is going to be good. Ugh.
5:30 Liv Albert? Anyway, that is all to say, giving you a Q and A episode for this first week of 2022 is so utterly perfect for all of us. It's been a while. I know you all have questions, so just get on that. All right, stay tuned at the end of this episode, too, because a friend of the show, Lisa Charlotte, who's one of the hosts of Sweet Bitter and has been on the podcast to talk all about Sappho, has been shortlisted for iHeartRadio's Next Great Podcast. It's super exciting and cool, and also the show she's presenting for this contest is true crime, which I mean, I fucking love it. So I will be playing a trailer for that at the end of the episode. But for now, Helen. A woman whose infamy is based entirely on the actions of the men around her rather
6:13 Liv Albert? than her own, but hey, that's why I'm here, to set the record straight.
6:31 Liv Albert? This is episode 148, "The Most Infamous Woman in Greek Myth: Helen of Sparta."
6:54 Liv Albert? Helen was born in Sparta. For all she's referred to as "Helen of Troy," she was born and she died Helen of Sparta. Helen's mother was the queen of Sparta, Leda, who was married to King Tyndareus. Now, Leda's story I've told before. She alone is infamous, and like Helen, not for anything she initiated herself. Leda was the mother of Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Polydeukes. Two were children of Zeus and two, children of her husband, Tyndareus. There are many versions of how Leda gave birth to these children, but the most famous of which is that she laid them all in two eggs.
7:33 Liv Albert? This comes from, you guessed it, Zeus taking the form of a swan in order to, as the old white men translators like to say, "seduce Leda." In truth, like so many other stories of women and gods, we don't know much of anything about Leda's own thoughts and feelings on the matter. But given Zeus appeared to her in the form of a fucking swan, I think it's fairly safe to say that Leda wasn't an entirely consenting party. I mean, he was a fucking bird. Regardless, on the same night that Leda was with Zeus, she was also with Tyndareus, which led to this odd mass conception event.
8:13 Liv Albert? Now, I'm giving you this quick rundown on her backstory because it is vital to understanding her character further. But as I have told most of it before, I will be focusing on Helen of the War primarily, because of course, that is where all of her infamy comes from. But like I said, Helen was the daughter of Zeus. Her sister was Clytemnestra, but the daughter of Tyndareus, creating a very odd dynamic between the two sisters. Helen is inherently special, while Clytemnestra is left to be simply mortal. The brothers' parentage is much less clear. Castor and Polydeukes are twins. You've heard of them before. They were the members of the quest of the Golden Fleece on the Argo,
8:57 Liv Albert? and they're the twins from the Gemini Zodiac sign. One of them is almost certainly a child of Zeus, but who it was tends to vary on the source. Also, frankly, I hate saying poor Polydeukes' name. He's Polax in Latin, and oh how much easier that is. But regardless for today, we're not very concerned with these twin brothers, save for a horror show moment in Helen's life that we will get to soon enough.
9:22 Liv Albert? What we're concerned with is, simply, that Helen was a daughter of Zeus. And daughters, rather than sons of the gods, are a rare breed, as if Helen needed another reason to be considered special. As we well know, this divine parentage came with another trait that made Helen particularly special. She was beautiful. Perfect, even. Helen was fucking gorgeous from day one. Actual descriptions of her, though, are few and far between, as if it didn't matter what made her beautiful, or perhaps that her beauty be allowed to be universal and not defined by any one person or region's standards.
10:06 Liv Albert? But whatever the reason, we don't know much about what made her so beautiful, just that she was. She was gorgeous and incredibly desirable, which, of course, brings out the absolute worst in men, let alone men of Greek mythology. Enter Theseus.
10:48 Liv Albert? When Helen was, at best, 12 years old, and at worst, 7 years old, Theseus, in all his horror show of a self, determined that he should have her. Theseus and his equally horrible friend Pyritus decided, seemingly on a whim, that they should get themselves each a daughter of Zeus to marry. Either Theseus selected Helen as this daughter himself, or he won her in a contest against Pyritus, but either way, they determined that they would get this actual child for Theseus, by any means necessary.
11:31 Liv Albert? And then, once they'd accomplished this, they'd move on to the underworld to kidnap Persephone for Pyritus. Truly great guys. Of course, Theseus and Pyritus both succeeded and failed in this, as I've told you in much more detail in the Theseus episode, but it served to start Helen's young life off with a traumatic bang. If you're labeled as beautiful when you're 7 fucking years old, abducted by a man who is, according to at least one source, 50 at the time, in order to become his wife, things are likely only going to go downhill from there.
12:16 Liv Albert? Particularly if you're living in the world of Greek myth. So Helen, as a young child, was indeed abducted by Theseus. According to some of the sourcing, she was abducted and then, thank the fucking gods, left by Theseus to, well, get a little bit older, while he and his friend distracted themselves by going in search of their next daughter of Zeus, Persephone. While the two were away, Helen was, thankfully, saved by her brothers, the Darius Gori, the twins, brought and brought home to Sparta where she was allowed to have a bit more of her childhood years before becoming the Helen that we all well know.
12:59 Liv Albert? But we can only imagine how much of an experience like this would break a person, even a mythological one.
13:08 Liv Albert? Time goes on, and down the line Helen finally reaches an age where it's socially acceptable for her to marry. Thankfully though, by this point Theseus doesn't seem to care, or more factually, Theseus wasn't actually invented in the timeline of the oral tradition. Yet, he'd come later where they would then introduce a backstory where he once abducted a famous woman. Ah, the trials of navigating an ancient culture that told its stories orally over the course of many hundreds of years. In any event, we're at the point where Helen is now old enough to be sought after by suitors. Lucky her. Helen is still quite young, but now at least, she's in her teens, when almost the entirety
13:50 Liv Albert? of Greece comes together to attempt to win her in marriage. But you know, no pressure. You probably remember the gist of this. Like I said, I really want to focus on Helen as a person, and a person in the war more so than her backstory. So let's just say that basically all eligible Greek men came to try to win her, and due to some conniving on the part of Odysseus, Tindarius, Helen's adoptive father, makes every man wooing her swear an oath that they will protect her eventual marriage. Protect it to the point of going to war for the future couple. The future couple, in the end, is Helen and Menelaus, who gets the bonus of becoming king of Sparta once he's married this Spartan princess.
14:34 Liv Albert? Agamemnon, his brother, had already married Helen's sister Clytemnestra by this point, and so between Sparta and Agamemnon's Mycenae, they've got a bit of a Peloponnesian dynasty in the works. And there are also two brothers who are cursed as the sons of Atreus. Helen has at least one child by Menelaus, though sources suggest possibly more. A daughter named Hermione. And so their lives go on there in Sparta, until, one day, a Trojan prince arrives in town seeking hospitality. Hmm, Paris, Paris, Paris.
15:32 Liv Albert? This is where we get to the bits that people are often the most concerned with when it comes to Helen. So, we all know that Helen eventually goes with Paris, whether she likes it or not. As you'll hear in this Friday's reading episode, and as you all well know, this is because of the judgment of Paris, the silly contest between Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera about who is the loveliest, a contest that is adjudicated by Paris for some reason. But, does Helen go with Paris willingly, or is she taken? That is the age-old question of the Trojan War. How much say did she actually have? Of course, regardless, I don't think anyone could have guessed that it would spawn quite
16:14 Liv Albert? the war that it did, so I'm not placing any blame here, but the question of her agency in the matter is deeply fascinating and deeply up for debate. So let's dive into what we do and do not know about Paris and Helen's departure from Sparta. First, according to most tellings of it, Menelaus was away at the time. He was called off to some business on Crete, leaving the pair alone. Of course, not actually alone, they would have had loads of other people in the Spartan house, both free and enslaved, but Helen was left to be the head of the house, in whatever way women were allowed. And thus, she was the person determining the xenia of it all.
16:55 Liv Albert? Remember, xenia is the rule of hospitality that was vital in the ancient Greek world, particularly in stories from their mythology. Everything comes down to xenia, whether the guest was a good guest and the host was a good host. It's very much a give-and-take relationship, but when you fuck it up, you're in real trouble.
17:16 Liv Albert? Paris, just by visiting Sparta with this secret desire to run off with Helen, is breaking Zenia, though no one knows it until the truth comes out. And not only is he about to spit in the face of his hosts by running off with Helen, but they also steal a huge amount of Spartan treasure. One thing I noticed when researching this is often Helen is described in the Iliad alongside the wealth of Menelaus, as though she is part of that wealth, but also that there is a hell of a lot of gold and other treasure that is at stake, in addition to a wife. The two go off while Menelaus is away, taking with them so much of the Spartan treasure, and they sail off into the sunset.
18:00 Liv Albert? I mean, we don't know what time of day it was, but it certainly sounds better if they're sailing off into the sunset. Off they go, no matter the time of day, stopping en route on an island where we are told they have sex. Again, consensual? Tough to say. It's not clear one way or the other, but like so many instances like these, that could very well just be because the men writing the stories down, or telling them in songs, didn't much care how the women felt. The purpose was to explain the origins of the war, to exemplify Helen and Paris's betrayal of Menelaus. Some say they went straight to Troy, others that they wandered around Phoenicia for a while, still more that suggests that in the time it took them to reach Troy, Helen had
18:44 Liv Albert? already given birth to a child of Paris's? That would certainly be a long wander. No one seems quite certain how long it took, but it seems to me the most logical timeline is a fairly quick arrival in Troy with no child of the two. But, still, we're asking the big question: Did Helen want to go? Did she fall in love with Paris and leave with him happily? Was this some kind of epic love story for the ages? Did Paris convince her to go that she would have had a better life with him off in Troy?
19:21 Liv Albert? Did Paris seduce her using his handsomeness that seems equal to Helen's beauty to draw her in in an almost purely sexual encounter? Did that happen? Maybe Helen was willing to have sex with him before realizing that this meant she would have to leave with him because if anyone in Sparta found out, she'd be well and truly fucked? Or was it a straight-up abduction? A story of a horrible kidnapping and eventual assault by Paris? Like so much of Greek myth, it really depends on who you ask.
20:22 Liv Albert? In most of the very oldest sources on this topic, the question of why any of this happened typically comes down to simply divine intervention. Paris picked Aphrodite in the Judgment of Paris, and that was the end of it. She promised him the most beautiful woman in the world, and she followed through. According to the work called The Kipris or The Kipria, which is one of the lost epics surrounding the story of the Trojan War, it was as simple as that. Aphrodite brought the two together, and off they went. The Kipris, though lost, is talked about enough that we know it's basically about the origins of the Trojan War. It's named for Aphrodite, the Kiprian goddess.
21:08 Liv Albert? Meanwhile, in the Iliad itself, it remains pretty vague, with Helen only lamenting that it ever happened at all, rather than much of anything about her own choices in the matter.
21:21 Liv Albert? There's a moment where she's speaking with the Trojans, particularly Priam, and they're looking down upon the battlefield, taking note of the Greeks laying siege. Priam asks her to speak of her old husband, Menelaus, and asks her to tell him about the other Greeks that are assembled there, to which Helen replies, "Sir, father of my husband, dear and reverend in my eyes, would that I had chosen death rather than to have come here with your son, far from my bridal chamber, my friends, my darling daughter, and all the companions of my girlhood. But it was not to be, and my lot is one of tears and sorrow."
22:07 Liv Albert? As much as Helen's phrasing here could suggest that she's taking some kind of accountability, it's actually in direct response to Priam telling her that he knows it isn't her fault, that none of this is her fault, and that the gods are to blame. Meanwhile, the Greeks during and after the war do love to blame Helen. So what about the idea that Paris took her quite literally by force? A violent abduction that would then ultimately lead to a violent assault? That too is never really explicit. The idea of that kind of encounter has certainly emerged, but it didn't necessarily exist in the ancient world, or at least in the ancient sources that we have.
22:51 Liv Albert? Okay, what about Helen leaving quite willingly, happily, by her own explicit choice? That in fact does exist in at least one fragmentary source that survives. It's a fragment attributed to Alcayus, but I'm reading it quoted in Bethany Hughes's book on Helen. It's noted in the episode's description.
23:11 Liv Albert? So the fragment of this poem goes, "And fluttered the heart of argive Helen in her breast, maddened with passion for the man from Troy, the traitor guest, she followed him over the sea in his ship, leaving her child at home and her husband's richly-covered bed, her heart persuaded by desire."
23:35 Liv Albert? This is a notable fragment, but to me, it sounds a lot more like the blame that we hear placed on Helen in the plays, like Aeschylus' Agamemnon, or even just in the references to her by the Greeks in the Iliad, who are always going on about how much better a husband Menelaus was. This idea that she just up and left her husband on a whim because a hot guy rolled into town. These suggestions are certainly meant to place more blame on her, but they can also obviously be read as simply a woman doing what she wanted? If you imagine Helen's marriage to Menelaus to be less than ideal, to not have any love in it at all, then why wouldn't she want to leave her home with this stranger, this beautiful man from the east who's come professing his love? Could she have foreseen a war that
24:18 Liv Albert? brought all the Greeks together against Troy? Certainly not, because the idea of all the Greeks coming together to do something like this was unheard of. It's part of what makes the Iliad notable in the first place. This idea that Helen went quite willingly and sometimes quite maliciously gets taken up by later poets, too. Apollodorus describes her as quite callously leaving behind her much better husband and child. And of course, then there's Ovid. His heroines include a letter from Paris to Helen and a letter from Helen to Paris? I won't say too much about these because you just know I'm reading them to you on Friday's episode. Phew. But Ovid
24:59 Liv Albert? certainly takes his idea of Helen to another level. Yes, he makes her leave willingly, but he does add a bit more depth to it and a bit more humming and hawing and calling out Paris for his failure to adhere to Xenia, to his insult on Menelaus for even showing up there in the first place. But, well, honestly, the letter from Paris to Helen is the one that's the really good stuff. It's truly something else. You're going to love it. So sure, we do have all these varying notions on why Helen left and just how much agency she had or didn't have. But if we're sticking to the sources from those earliest days, those that surround the Iliad and the Odyssey and those works themselves, the main answer
25:38 Liv Albert? for all of this mess is, quite simply, the gods. It's all Aphrodite's fault. Because regardless of anything else, Aphrodite controls love.
25:51 Liv Albert? One could really blame Aphrodite for any messes that they make when it comes to love, but in this case, we have explicit evidence that Aphrodite instructed Paris to go take Helen, that she may have even made him love her, and that she at least in part convinced Helen to go with him. She may not have made Helen outright love Paris, but she certainly made her go with him.
26:14 Liv Albert? It's rare, almost unheard of, to have a woman's point of view when we're talking about these aspects of mythology. So often, I talk about what we've lost, what kinds of women's stories existed, what did they tell each other behind closed doors, what did they believe? We almost never have an answer. Almost.
26:56 Liv Albert? Some say an army of horsemen, others say foot soldiers, still others a fleet, is the fairest thing on the dark earth. I say it is whatever one loves. Everyone can understand this. Consider that Helen, far surpassing the beauty of mortals, leaving behind the best man of all, sailed away to Troy. She had no memory of her child or dear parents since she was led astray by Cypress.
27:28 Liv Albert? That was Sappho's Fragment 16. We almost never have a woman's words on these topics, on the world of Greek mythology and their stories. Almost never! But leave it to Sappho, the single surviving women's voice from ancient Greece, whose work survives mostly in single-line or two-line fragments, except for a handful of fragments that are longer. And lucky us, one of those longer fragments talks about Helen.
27:56 Liv Albert? "Everyone can understand desire," Sappho tells us. "Even Helen, the most beautiful, left everything behind for love, for desire, led astray by Aphrodite."
28:09 Liv Albert? For obvious reasons, I find a woman's perspective on this idea of Helen to be the most telling. Sappho seems to agree with those of the period. She wouldn't have been too long after the height of the Homeric oral tradition, and she too attributes it to the goddess of love. But, like I mentioned earlier, she attributes it to the goddess of love more out of the love itself, which suggests that maybe Helen did love Paris. And if Helen did love Paris, was it only because of Aphrodite, or are these things one and the same? Could anyone love anyone without the help of the goddess of love and desire? And if not, then does that add to the idea of Helen being to blame for it all,
28:53 Liv Albert? or does it take away from it? Separating these human emotions from the gods, at least in the time period we're talking about, is essentially impossible. The gods gave the humans these emotions, and without them, they would be nothing. So in the end, can we still blame Aphrodite? Aphrodite may have given love to Paris and Helen in whatever way she did, but it wasn't Aphrodite who started the war. She didn't make Menelaus react the way he did. She didn't make Agamemnon determined to defend his brother through all-out war.
29:31 Liv Albert? Really, as much as everyone wants to know the background, wants to know why Paris took her, or why Helen left, ultimately, the whole of the war comes down to Helen, but not necessarily in the way that we're often led to believe.
29:46 Liv Albert? The Trojan War didn't take place because Helen left with Paris willingly or otherwise. It took place because of what men are willing to do in order to save face, in order to be respected, to seem as though they have control over their lives and their property.
30:06 Liv Albert? It wasn't about Helen as a person. It was about Helen as property of Menelaus. It was about the lengths these men would go to for the sake of their own honor. Whether it's Menelaus dishonored by the loss of his wife, Agamemnon dishonored by his brother's embarrassment, or Achilles dishonored by the loss of an enslaved woman he abducted. The war and everything in it ultimately had nothing to do with Helen.
31:00 Liv 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.
31:41 Liv Albert? Because 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- 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?
32:26 Liv 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.
32:53 Speaker 01 Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend.
32:58 Speaker 02 More than 1,000 episodes. For nine years, Creepy has been delivering you horror stories every week. Dark tales from the internet, urban legends, haunted places, and horrors that feel a little too real. And this October, we're taking things even further with our annual 31 Days of Horror Event. For 31 days, we're releasing two stories a day, every day, in the run up to Halloween. That's 31 chances to find something that gets under your skin and refuses to leave. This is Creepy.
33:37 Speaker 01 Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
33:49 Speaker 03 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
34:20 Speaker 04 Hello, I'm Chris Richards, General Manager at Safravolkswagen Richmond. I'm here to announce an exciting new program that I want you to listen to. Here's my friend Happy.
34:29 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Happy Harry Turner, Special Finance Manager at Safradcredit.com. If you're in an open Chapter 13 bankruptcy, recently filed a Chapter 7, or you've been turned down because of credit challenges, don't give up. For nearly 30 years, I've helped people get reliable transportation when others said no. Visit Safradcredit.com. Remember, I'm not happy unless you are.
34:50 Speaker 01 Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend.
34:55 Speaker 06 You know that ache when a book ends and you're not ready to leave that world? We live there. Fantasy Fangirls is your best friend's book club meets English class. Where we dive deep into beloved fantasy books, discussing lore, characters, themes, theories, and so much more. I'm Lexi, older sister and fantasy lore nerd. And I'm Nicole, younger sister and romantic at heart. Right now, we're exploring Prythian as we go deep into the highly anticipated and newly released Atcatar books by Sarah J. Maas. Fantasy Fangirls is not your typical deep dive book podcast. When we say deep dive, we really mean it. Every episode covers a stretch of chapters and is structured with five segments to easily follow along.
35:36 Speaker 06 So pack your bags, we're headed to the Night Court with new episodes every single Monday.
35:42 Speaker 01 Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
35:59 Liv Albert? Why should I blame her that she filled my days with misery or that she would of late have taught to ignorant men most violent ways? Or hurled the little streets upon the great, had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind that nobleness made simple as a fire, with beauty like a tightened bow, a kind that is not natural in an age like this, being high and solitary and most stern? Why? What could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?
36:52 Liv Albert? This is episode 149, "Beyond the Face That Launched a Thousand Ships: Helen of Sparta."
37:14 Liv Albert? Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
37:22 Liv Albert? That's Christopher Marlowe, of course, who coined the most common phrase used to describe Helen: "The face that launched a thousand ships." There are ancient sources that mention a fleet of a thousand ships, but it's Marlowe who has them sail in the name of her beauty in that way. The poem I read at the top of the episode was William Butler Yeats, the early 20th-century poet. It's ostensibly about a woman who rejected him, so he likened her to Helen in an incredibly gross way. "With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind that is not natural in an age like this, being high and solitary and most stern, why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?"
38:05 Liv Albert? Oh, yes, it was Helen who burned Troy, Yeats. That's some valid blame being placed there. Whether this poem is about Helen or a woman who didn't want him, it's equally disturbing. Yeats sounds like one of those horrible men on the internet these days who blame women for their own shortcomings, who think they've got the most incredible personalities in the world, that they're true gentlemen, and it's only the fault of women that they're alone.
38:30 Liv Albert? Have I managed to connect Helen of Sparta with the modern incel movement? Apparently. Meanwhile, back in the ancient world, Seneca has some things to say about Helen in his play The Troides, The Trojan Women. "You plague, Holocaust, blight of both nations, see this graveyard of heroes and the naked bones lying all over, the plain unburied. Your nuptials strewed them, for you spurted Asia's blood, spurted Europe's, as you viewed dueling husbands indifferent, unsure of your wish."
39:04 Liv Albert? Lovely. So often, this is how it's phrased, how it was seemingly understood by much of the ancient world, that Helen couldn't decide that if she did leave loving Paris, that
39:17 Liv Albert? that if she did leave loving Paris, that when she got there, she regretted it, or at least in part, and that she was left unsure which husband she preferred, that she is the cause of all the horror because she couldn't pick a man. This is obviously supremely dismissive of, well, basically, all of the context. Regardless of whether it's true that she went with Paris and then found herself regretting leaving Menelaus, unsure of which of them to choose, even if that was the case, she didn't force the entirety of the Greek world to descend upon Troy, spending ten years trying to raise it to the ground before they finally succeeded. Those actions were not Helen's. As Bettany Hughes puts it in her book on Helen, quote, "There are usually many contributory causes to international conflict, to the end of civilizations.
40:03 Liv Albert? The ancient Greeks needed only one, the promiscuity of a beautiful woman."
40:09 Liv Albert? So we've covered who Helen was before the war in her homeland of Sparta, but who was she during and after the war?
40:18 Liv Albert? The Helen of the Iliad has very few words to speak. She's referenced mostly in relation to Paris, who's often called the husband of lovely Helen. She's referenced because the war is happening so that the Greeks can take her back, and so in those cases, she's referenced as a prize to be sought after, her and all her treasure she and Paris took with them from the palace of Sparta. Treasure that is believed to be Menelaus's as the king, but remember, Menelaus became king because he married Helen. She was the one who actually had Spartan blood. That, too, I believe, is unique to Sparta, that the line can pass through the woman, even if, in this case, it passes through the woman and straight into the man, who is then very much the ruler of the kingdom.
41:03 Liv Albert? But she as a living, breathing human who's experiencing the exact same war as everyone else? That is rare. Very early in the Iliad, we have the scene I referenced last week, where she tells Priam of the Greeks assembled below, giving the king information on his adversaries, while Trojan elders look on, wondering whether she is special enough to have caused all of this. Later, in the same section, Paris returns from one of his rare moments on the battlefield, and Aphrodite seeks to have Helen go find him in their bedroom. It's an interesting scene, because obviously Aphrodite is involved, suggesting again that Helen's passion for Paris is influenced by the goddess.
41:45 Liv Albert? But also because, well, she stands up to Aphrodite in a way that feels very unique. For all Odysseus is guided by Athena during the Odyssey, he never turns to her and says, "Hey Athena, what's up?" Meanwhile, Helen? Well, obviously I'll quote it for you. Today, I'm using Caroline Alexander's translation of the Iliad, because that feels only right. Aphrodite has just told Helen to go find Paris, that he's lying on the bed, looking more like a dancer than a soldier. From there, Aphrodite's words, quote, "stirred the anger in Helen's breast, and when she recognized the goddess's beautiful cheeks and ravishing breasts and gleaming eyes,
42:27 Liv Albert? she stood amazed, and spoke out, and addressed her by name. Mad one, why do you so desire to seduce me in this way? Will you drive me to some further place among well-settled cities, to Phrygia or lovely Meonia?" Helen recognized Aphrodite immediately through her disguise, because she's disguised, like all the gods do when they speak with humans, but Helen? Oh, she's caught on to the goddess of love. She calls her "mad one." Ugh, she's angry because she assumes that Paris has been killed by Menelaus, they'd gone to duel over Helen, and she thinks the goddess is taunting her, that she's threatening
43:07 Liv Albert? to, now that Paris is dead, bring her off to some even further lands, cause another war in her name.
43:17 Liv Albert? She goes on, quote, "Perhaps there too is some mortal man beloved by you, since now Menelaus has vanquished godlike Paris and desires that I, loathsome as I am, be taken home. Is it for this reason you stand here now, conniving? Go, sit yourself beside him, renounce the haunts of the gods, never turn your feet to Olympus, but suffer for him and tend him forever, until he makes you either his wife or his girl-slave." In this scene, Helen gets to be completely and utterly badass, and it is essentially the only scene in which she gets to do this, where she gets to stand up to the goddess of love and, though in more ancient Greek sounding terms, tell her to fuck off. That
44:01 Liv Albert? the goddess has already done such damage she won't be allowed to do anymore. Helen tells Aphrodite to go off and live as Helen has, to sit by some mortal man away from her home and her source of power, to suffer for him and tend him, and maybe in the end he'll make her his wife, at best, or his slave, at worst. It's an incredible scene, and I only wish there were more like it. But alas, the Iliad is concerned not only with the men going to war for Helen, over Helen herself, but, as we all well know, it's concerned with the wrath of Achilles. If only we got to hear more from the woman at the center of it all.
44:59 Liv Albert? Fortunately, the moment with Aphrodite isn't all that Helen gets in this book of the Iliad. After she talks back to Aphrodite, she is, unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, chastised by the goddess pretty hard. I mean, we could have seen that coming, but I don't think it takes anything away from the kind of strength that comes from her speaking back to Aphrodite in the first place. Still, Helen leaves the goddess chastised before she does indeed find Paris in their bedroom. It wasn't a trick as Helen thought. Paris had been brought back to the palace through divine intervention. He'd been losing the duel with Menelaus badly, and Aphrodite had whisked him off the battlefield like she would later do with her own son, Aeneas.
45:43 Liv Albert? Helen didn't know this, though, and last she'd seen Paris was about to be killed by Menelaus, and she'd been so upset that she'd left so she wouldn't have to witness it. Does that mean she really loved either of these men, truly? Or does it just show how beholden she was to which one of them was her husband, as it determined her entire life?
46:05 Liv Albert? Having been chewed out by Aphrodite, Helen goes into her bedroom to find her husband, Paris, lying on the bed looking straight up sexy. This is obviously because of Aphrodite. Aphrodite is so involved in this scene that she physically carries a stool over for Helen to sit on, next to the bed where Paris is laying after his duel with Menelaus. Aphrodite's inclusion here, both in the physicality of the situation and the love and lust that accompanies it, is explicit, only adding more fuel to the question of, even if it was love, how much of it was free will and how much of it was divine intervention? Or still further, was there any such notion of love of free will rather than love from the goddess?
46:49 Liv Albert? Still, I'm mentioning this moment because Helen's fire wasn't debated by Aphrodite's chastising of her. It only moved on to a more worthy subject, one that was not divine and thus held no real sway in Helen's eyes. Taking the seat that Aphrodite had put out for her, Helen sits down at Paris's bedside and, "averting her eyes reviled her husband with her words. 'You're back from war? Would that you had died there, broken by the stronger man, he who in time past was my husband? Yet before this you used to boast that you were stronger than Menelaus, beloved by Ares in your courage and strength of hand and skill with spear.'"
47:33 Liv Albert? The woman knows how to cut deep, and I'm a bit obsessed with her in this moment. These scenes between her and Aphrodite and her and Paris. She goes on, quote, "Go now and challenge Menelaus, beloved by Ares, to fight again face to face. But no, I recommend you give it up and not fight fair-haired Menelaus man to man or recklessly do battle lest you be swiftly broken beneath his spear." She's basically calling Paris a wimp, that he's all talk and no action, that he doesn't really deserve to be her husband, and I am here for it. I'm no fan of Menelaus, but I'm absolutely here for Helen standing up for herself and telling Paris off. He is everything that she has said.
48:18 Liv Albert? Meanwhile, Paris, in response, basically tells her not to reproach him after their duel, that he'll certainly best Menelaus in another battle later in the war. "But anyway, let's go have sex," he tells her, quote, "For never at any time has desire so overwhelmed my senses, not when I first carried you off from lovely Lacedaemon." And once again, there's Aphrodite in the room.
49:09 Liv Albert? Helen in the Iliad has these very few, brief moments of badassery, where she stands up for herself and speaks her mind. We still don't necessarily know how she felt about anything, who she really wanted to be with, if she really wanted to be with either of them. But at the very least, she does, if only this once, have a strong voice in the matter. It's refreshing, because otherwise we have the alternative, the Helen of the Odyssey, who is interesting. Helen in the Odyssey is a bizarre creature, full of contradictions and lacking much, if any, of the personality she shows here and/or even in the earlier sources. She is another woman entirely.
49:53 Liv Albert? Helen appears in the Odyssey when Telemachus is going off in search of news of his father. He's sent by Athena, and after speaking with Nestor and Pelos, he arrives in Sparta to speak with Menelaus. He's welcomed, and they have a bit of a chat before Helen enters. Helen enters as the traditional woman. She has an entourage of women with her, and they're carrying all she needs in order to do some weaving. This is our first image of her, and it's making a point. Helen is now, having returned to Sparta with her first husband, the traditional wife. She's the wife she should have been all along. She then asks her husband if she can speak, a moment which in itself feels contradictory
50:38 Liv Albert? to the Helen we've just seen in the Iliad. She asks Menelaus if she should conceal her thoughts or speak. Then she notes that this man in front of her looks an awful lot like Odysseus's son, Telemachus, who he left when they went off to war. Menelaus agrees with her. Telemachus hasn't revealed his name just yet, so they're both intuiting that he is indeed Odysseus's son. The friend who's with him, Pisistratus, confirms Telemachus's identity. The men chat a bit, talking about sad things from the war and the lost Odysseus. They get emotional. This is when, we're told, Helen decides to make them drugs to take away their painful emotions.
51:17 Liv Albert? Quote, "Whoever drinks this mixture from the bowl will shed no tears that day, not even if her mother or her father die, not even if soldiers kill her brother or her darling son with bronze spears before her very eyes."
51:34 Liv Albert? So now Helen is a practitioner of pharmaka? Who saw that coming? We're told that Helen learned these skills in Egypt, apparently having stopped there with Menelaus on their way back to Sparta after the war. Interestingly, that she was actually in Egypt all along and not in Troy is a theory from the ancient world, but obviously not a theory of the Iliad because there she is in Troy. Frankly, it doesn't really fit with my point anywhere, but I learned that it was a bizarre theory, so you're welcome. Once Helen has administered these drugs to her husband and the young Telemachus, she speaks. She says that she will entertain them with a story, not about whatever challenges Odysseus
52:15 Liv Albert? may have been or is enduring, but what he did during the war. She tells the men that Odysseus snuck into the walls of Troy disguised as a poor old beggar. A bit of foreshadowing there for later in the Odyssey. She says, "She recognized him, that she cleaned him up a bit, but that she didn't tell the Trojans who he was. And as he was leaving Troy with information from the inside, he killed many Trojans." Quote, "The Trojan women keened in grief, but I was glad. By then, I wanted to go home. I wished that Aphrodite had not made me go crazy when she took me from my home and made
52:55 Liv Albert? me leave my daughter and the bed I shared with my fine, handsome, clever husband." Who is this Helen? This Helen practices pharmaka. Suddenly, she's known for her ability to make drugs to take away pain and make one forget all their sorrows. This Helen wanted to go home to Troy to be with her fine, handsome, and clever husband. This Helen makes very clear that it was Aphrodite pulling the strings. But again, is it not then Aphrodite pulling the strings for her love of Menelaus? Or does she not really love him, just sees in him a more appealing life for herself?
53:36 Liv Albert? This Helen is so odd and curious. She feels wrong, like she's been tacked on later as a way to ensure that the character who'd been made so famous for her sexuality, for what they saw as her choice to run off with a handsome eastern prince, that that character is redeemed in their eyes, turned back into the simple clever wife whose role it is to be kind to guests and to help her husband. Still, this odd section goes on. Once Helen has spoken of this story of Odysseus, Menelaus adds his own. He tells everyone that he well remembers Helen's role during the end of the war, that
54:16 Liv Albert? it was she who went around the wooden horse of Troy knocking on the sides and calling in to the Greeks, imitating their own wives' voices when she called their names. He says she was being accompanied by a Trojan, Diphobus, and the Greeks were nearly given away inside the horse if it weren't for Odysseus inside keeping them quiet before Athena, in disguise, called Helen away. Which then begs the question, did Helen want to go home by that point then? She just said that she did want to go home, and her story of Odysseus in Troy must come
54:57 Liv Albert? before Menelaus's story of the Trojan horse, but it suggests that she wanted to find the Greeks in the horse, that she wanted to give the Trojans the upper hand. So did she want to go home or not? And, well, that's it for the Helen of the Odyssey. Looking back, I'm really starting to agree that the first four books of the Odyssey feel really tacked on, like additional notes to a story that didn't need them.
55:28 Liv Albert? That Helen plays such a role in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, for all the Trojan War was depicted as almost entirely about her, seems to me so indicative of the oral storytelling nature of these works. Maybe she originally had a much bigger role? I imagine when the songs were sung in Sparta, she absolutely had a bigger role. What more of Helen did they know back then? What did they sing about her that we don't have now? Since it's very likely that these works weren't actually written down into the form that we have them until the 6th century Athens, what influence comes from that simple fact?
56:10 Liv Albert? Helen was not an Athenian heroine, though she was important, so what did they decide wasn't necessary in the story about the war over her? Meanwhile, why did what little we have of her in the Iliad change so much when it shifted to the Odyssey? She goes from a strong woman, standing up to a goddess and her new husband, one who helps the Trojans and seems to like living there with them, to a woman who says she simply decided she wanted to go home to Sparta one day, in the midst of it. Did she decide that, or at least say she decided that, after Paris's death? In later works, she even had another Trojan husband by the time the war is actually over,
56:55 Liv Albert? so perhaps by then she realized her life would just be so much better and easier with Menelaus, back in her homeland of Sparta? Or maybe she just missed home, missed her daughter, which meant that Menelaus was the only answer? This domestic, soft-spoken, and deferential Helen of the Odyssey is just someone else entirely. She and Menelaus live together as though nothing has happened. They speak to each other as husband and wife, as if everything about their relationship is and has been 100% normal. It's bizarre.
57:55 Liv Albert? When we look beyond the texts themselves of the Iliad and the Odyssey and what's explicitly or not so explicitly said within them, there's a lot to be said about Helen as a character affected by the passage of time, not in her story, but in the historical reality that surrounded it.
58:14 Liv Albert? There's what I mentioned earlier about the Iliad and the Odyssey being by nature epic poems that changed and evolved. And then there's Helen was a queen of Sparta, which from a historical perspective was pretty unique for the region and the period. The period being generally the Bronze Age, the accepted time period for when the Trojan War would have happened if there were a Trojan War, or when we imagine it for the mythology. Anything equivalent that might have spurred on the story? I don't really have an opinion on what could and could not be real, but regardless, the Bronze Age is the period we use to discuss these mythological people and their lives. Because of this, the character of Helen is influenced by a number of different time periods. Yes, the original notion of these characters is that they were Bronze Age heroes in a
58:59 Liv Albert? Bronze Age war caused by the Bronze Age woman, Helen. But because the Iliad and the Odyssey are part of the oral tradition, they've been influenced by more timeframes than just the Bronze Age. The stories were being told by traveling bards for probably at least a couple of hundred years before they were finally written down in likely the 6th century Athens. That alone suggests influence of archaic Athens, like I mentioned, a world that would have been very, very different from the Bronze Age. It makes me wonder about her as a person, the blame placed upon her for the war, and most notably, the Helen of the Odyssey, the woman who's somehow become the ideal queen and housewife for her original husband back in Sparta in the intervening years since the war.
59:43 Liv Albert? That Helen alone is a big old question mark for me. So, did she get added later? I'm definitely not the first to suggest that the first few books of the Odyssey, those awkward sections where Telemachus is traveling around on Order from Athena, seeking news of Odysseus, might have been tacked on later. I think it was my recent guest, Joel Christensen, who mentioned it, but I feel like even that wasn't the first mention I've heard. To me, it checks out. The Helen of those moments feels like an entirely different Helen than the one in the Iliad, and a much, much less appealing character. But beyond that even, there's some fascinating pieces to her character and story when you look at her as a Spartan, rather than a woman from almost anywhere else in the ancient Greek world.
1:00:27 Liv Albert? I briefly mentioned it, that Helen's marriage was notable because Menelaus became king of Sparta, because he married her, but I've since learned more. Sarah Pomeroy, in her book that's listed in the episode's description, notes that not only was it notable and pretty specific to Sparta that Menelaus became king from his marriage to Helen, but she clarifies some things about this that are fascinating. So first, the way to describe this is that Sparta was both matrilineal and matralocal. This means that the royal line in Sparta was tied to the woman and not the man. I can't quite find whether this was all historical or time period or just mythological,
1:01:06 Liv Albert? but regardless, Sparta was a place where women had a hell of a lot more rights and control than at least Athens, if not more regions. We don't have much in the way of evidence of women beyond Sparta and Athens, unfortunately, so it's tough to say. Still, at least in this world of the Iliad, Sparta was matrilineal and matralocal, meaning that whoever Helen married got to be king of Sparta. Menelaus moved to Sparta to take the kingship when he married her. He was the one changing his life for his marriage, rather than the woman. This also suggests that the motivations for the war itself
1:01:46 Liv Albert? might have been more than just a man's wounded ego and its inherent ties to toxic masculinity. It could have been that Menelaus's kingdom was at stake. Would he have been allowed to remain king of Sparta with his Spartan wife off-married to another man?
1:02:07 Liv Albert? Still, Pomeroy's points about this also extend to Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra came from Sparta, she's Helen's sister, and though she did move to Mycenae when she married Agamemnon, she still held more power than the other women of the story. Agamemnon left a man to watch over Clytemnestra while he was gone, and she promptly removed that man from his post and took up with Agisithis, Agamemnon's rival. Of course, this was because Agamemnon had killed their daughter, Iphigenia, for that bit of wind that we all well remember, but that she had the right to do this says something about her rights as a Spartan woman. So what about real Spartan women, then? I would love to devote more on this, I need to find a guest to come on and talk Spartan
1:02:51 Liv Albert? women, but in the meantime, Bettany Hughes makes some interesting points in her book on Helen. Spartan women, at least from the period when we have evidence, I'm assuming that's all classical, because that tends to be the case, were given the same food rations, they were allowed to drink unwatered wine, they were trained and strengthened like the boys, they could control their own lives economically, they got to marry later in life than women of Athens, they were trained in music and poetry, basically, they could do and have everything that Athenian women couldn't. They even worshipped Helen as a symbol of the strength and sexuality of women.
1:03:31 Liv Albert? Most of what we have from Ancient Greece comes from Athens, and because of that, our viewpoint is often entirely skewed towards Athenians. They're the ones who had a democracy, yet so often it's attributed to all of Ancient Greece. They're the ones who treated their women like possessions and objects, and honestly, I'm personally often guilty of connecting all women of Ancient Greece with the Athenian ones. Who knows how the others got to live, but at least we know that Spartan women had a hell of a lot more power and control and skill. Spartan women were fucking badass. Helen was a fucking badass, even if so much of how
1:04:11 Liv Albert? we see and think of her was likely influenced from elsewhere. I mean, who knows what the Athenians changed when they finally wrote the Iliad down. I will happily think of Helen as a woman who just wanted to follow her own path, whatever that meant. She was strong and independent and a Spartan ancestor whose badassery would pass through the ages.
1:04:50 Liv Albert? Ugh, nerds. Thank you so much for listening. Helen is so fascinating and honestly, I feel as though I've only scratched the surface. Bettany Hughes has an entire enormous book on her and I've only been able to read bits and pieces of it to prepare for these two episodes. There's just so much more. So I hope to revisit Helen eventually and to cover the play about her by Euripides. But for now, we'll leave Helen to rest, having at least taken some of the blame off of her. Truly, it's only misogyny and toxic masculinity that could take a story like this and manage to blame her for the entirety of the Trojan War and all the horrors that it caused. Yes, one woman doing what she wanted could surely be the ultimate cause for the fall of an entire
1:05:33 Liv Albert? culture, as if these men wanted to give women that much power. The goddess of love, meanwhile, if we've learned anything, it's that Aphrodite wields more power than she's ever given credit for. Still, she didn't cause it either. The fragility of these men, that's what caused the fall of Troy, not a pretty face and not the goddess of love.
1:05:55 Liv Albert? Next week, I'm bringing you a couple of reading episodes in place of narrative one, so that I have time to prepare the wild ride that is this Atlantis series. In addition to, well, maybe hopefully, being able to enjoy a bit of the holiday season, too. I've read "Heeseeds Theogony," a thing I've quoted so many times in bits and pieces, but reading it out loud, I realized how much of it I haven't shared with you at all. And it's just fucking bananas, bonkers. It is amazing. It was so much fun. Nothing will compare to reading Paris's Heroides letter, though. But this came close. But first, on Friday, I've got a conversation coming that's all about the Kallan Kakkon, the beautiful evil, and how it's applied to women in Greek myth, including Helen herself.
1:06:40 Liv Albert? Please don't forget to ask your questions for the New Year Q and A episode, both because I want to answer your questions and because I won't be able to write a 5,000-word script in time. Atlantis episode one, just the first one, is over 7,000 words, so I've got my work cut out for me. Questions can be submitted at mythsbaby.com/questions. There's a super easy form for you to fill out. Thank you all. As always, this has been a very incredible year for me and the podcast. It's grown so much, it's becoming something so incredibly cool and fun and educational with the growth of my conversation episodes. And fuck, I couldn't be more happy to be bringing you all of this fascinating knowledge and these incredible stories. I have the coolest job in the world, and I have it all thanks to you guys. So truly, thank you all so much for listening.
1:07:25 Liv Albert? I'm really so grateful. You are all the absolute best, for real. I'm Liv, and I love this shit.
1:07:43 Speaker 03 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone, and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.
1:07:57 Speaker 07 Everybody, listen up.
1:07:58 Speaker 03 Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
1:08:14 Speaker 01 Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend.
1:08:19 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Molly Graham, host of Work Life, a podcast from TED. The most important lessons about work usually aren't the ones anyone teaches you. They come from experience, from uncertainty, from figuring things out as you go. On this show, my expert guests and I explore how careers really unfold, through change, through doubt, through the decisions that shape who we become over time. Because those moments aren't the exception, they are the work. Listen to Work Life wherever you get your podcasts.
1:08:52 Speaker 01 Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
1:09:43 Speaker 03 Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome. The much awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart. And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.
1:10:27 Speaker 03 Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait. Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.
Previous ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: Women Are Human Too (Women's 'Health & Medicine') Next Liv Reads Homer: The Odyssey (A Modern Translation!) Books 16 and 17 Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated