Helen of Sparta, Helen of Troy, Helen of Rome?: Helen in Augustan Age Poetry

Meredith D. Prince (Auburn University)

In an age which heavily stressed the Trojan origins of Rome and saw legislation publicly punishing adultery and encouraging marriage and children, what place was there for a figure such as Helen, a woman who, whether willingly or not, left behind her family and country for a foreign lover, caused the Trojan war, brought destruction to Trojans and Greeks alike, and yet returned home after the war, un-divorced, unscathed, unpunished? Was she put forth as a negative exemplum, the worst possible excuse for a woman, or were her actions ever viewed in a more positive light? This paper explores how poets of the Augustan age, from the more civic-minded Vergil and Horace to the love elegists Propertius and Ovid (including Ovid’s didactic works on love), portrayed Helen and emphasized or manipulated details of her story to fit their poems’ larger themes or generic considerations.

Helen receives the most negative treatment in Vergil’s Aeneid and Horace’s Odes. Vergil’s Helen is a hated monster, a common Fury whom Aeneas is tempted to kill during Troy’s fall and whom her dead husband Deiphobus ironically describes as his remarkable wife as he explains her duplicity in mutilating him and her treachery against Troy. Horace focuses on her status as foreigner, adulteress, or disreputable woman, at times alluding to Cleopatra. Propertius and Ovid, however, use Helen’s beauty as a standard against which to measure their own mistresses’ beauty. Propertius emphasizes the effect a naked Helen had on Paris in his effort to see Cynthia disrobed and admits he’ll excuse Cynthia’s minor indiscretions, using Helen’s unpunished return from Troy as reassurance. Both elegists associate Helen and Paris with militia amoris and, because of their mistresses’ beauty, better understand and appreciate a woman (or her beauty) as the cause of war. While the elegists approve of Helen as the cause of the Trojan War, Ovid attempts to remove the blame from her; of her several appearances in the didactic works, in his advice to men to stay away from their lovers (but not for too long), Ovid absolves Helen of her guilt, instead blaming Menelaus for leaving Helen with Paris.

From Vergil’s and Horace’s hostility and condemnation to the elegists’ acceptance and Ovid’s exculpation, Helen’s various manifestations illustrate that, although she might be a symbol of the worst of women or a reminder of Cleopatra, without Helen, there might have been no Trojan War, there might have been no Rome. At the same time, as love, adultery, and war are elements of her story, Helen finds herself most at home in the genre of love elegy and Ovid’s instruction manuals on love.