Toward the Characterization of Helen in Homer

Appellatives, Periphrastic Denominations, and Noun-Epithet Formulas

Lowell Edmunds

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110626483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This monograph lays the groundwork for a new approach of the characterization of the Homeric Helen, focusing on how she is addressed and named in the Iliad and the Odyssey and especially on her epithets. Her social identity in Troy and in Sparta emerges in the words used to address and name her. Her epithets, most of them referring to her beauty or her kinship with Zeus and coming mainly from the narrator, make her the counterpart of the heroes.

1Appellatives and Periphrastic Denominations

Helen is addressed as νύμφα φίλη “dear bride,” φίλον τέκος “dear child,” and γύναι “lady.”58 Both Paris and Menelaus use the last of these appellatives of Helen (Il. 3.438; Od. 4.148, 266). Ηelen likewise uses the appropriate appellatives in addressing Priam (3.172; §3 below) and Hector (6.344, 355; §4 below). All of these terms emerge, then, within family or marital relationships. Further, Helen’s terms for her Trojan in-laws to some extent overlap with the ones that she uses to refer to her family in Sparta (§4). In addition to the terms used by Helen herself and others addressing her, there is a group of words for Helen as wife: γυνή in cases other than the vocative and three other words (§5). The word γυνή refers specifically to Helen as a prize by capture, a finding corroborated by the verbs referring to her abduction (§6). Finally, while all of the words that have been mentioned might be called “periphrastic denominations” of Helen, this chapter distinguishes this phenomenon from appellatives used by persons addressing Helen directly.59

1.1The voca
tive γύναι “lady”

Both of Helen’s husbands address her as γύναι, Paris when he asks her not to rebuke him for his failure in the single combat (3.438), Menelaus twice, deferring to something that she has just said (Od. 4.148, 266). (Ηector addresses Andromache as γύναι at Il. 6.441 and Priam thus addresses Hecabe at 24.300.) Antenor’s γύναι “lady,” when he addresses Helen at Il. 3.204 on the wall of Troy, comes from the xenos of the Achaeans. As he recalls, he entertained Menelaus and Odysseus when they came to Troy on an embassy before the fighting started (Il. 3.204–24; cf. Apollod. Epit. 3.28; Herodotus 2.118).60 Further, his son is the husband of Laodicē, one of Priam’s daughters, thus a sister of Paris and the sister-in-law of Helen (Il. 3.121–24). (For Laodicē as sister-in-law see §2.) His form of address assumes some degree of acquaintance.61

1.2νύμφα φίλη “dear bride”

Assuming the guise of Laodicē, Iris addresses Helen as νύμφα (Il. 3.130). The narrator, expressing Helen’s point of view, calls Laodicē γάλοως (Il. 3.122).62 Eustathius remarks on the distinction between the two terms for sister-in-law: γάλως τε γὰρ νύμφης ἐστὶ γάλως καὶ ἡ νύμφη γαλόῳ ἐστὶ νύμφη (I.617.23). “The sister-in-law is the ‘sister-in-law” of the bride and the bride is the ‘bride’ to the sister-in-law.” Homeric Greek has, then, two different, non-synonymous words for the two women’s relations to the man through whom they are related, one for his sister, used by his wife, and one for his wife, used by his sister. νύμφα occurs only twice in Homer, the other time in the Odyssey, where Eurycleia thus addresses Penelope (4.743).63 From these two examples it can be concluded that the word is a “form of address used (by another woman) of women married into a household.”64 (Cf. νύμφα of Helen in Stesichorus fr. 209 PMG / PMGF = fr. 170 D-F.)

1.3φίλον τέκος “dear child”

Priam twice calls Helen φίλον τέκος (Il. 3.162, 192). It is a common term of affection for a child, either parental or on the part of an older person speaking to a younger person.65 The adjective φίλον as used by Priam has another connotation, too. It applies not only to family members but also to in-laws, as when Oedipus, apropos of his expulsion from Thebes, says to his brother-in-law Creon: τὸ συγγενὲς τοῦτ’ οὐδαμῶς τότ’ ἦν φίλον “This family relationship was then in no way dear to you” (Soph. OC 771). (For that matter the word φίλος can be extended to friends, guests, and servants in one’s household.66) Thus Helen’s addressing Priam as φίλε ἑκυρέ “dear father-in-law” (Il. 3.172) is symmetrical with his addressing her as φίλον τέκος.67 (The word ἑκυρός is used in Homer only by Helen speaking to or about Priam [Il. 24.770].)68 Priam’s form of address to Helen is not, then, merely formulaic, as might appear from an unanalyzed collection of examples of the phrase.69

1.4Helen’s terms for her Trojan in-laws and for her family in Sparta

Of the appellatives for Helen five, then, occur in Book 3 of the Iliad, and two in Book 4 of the Odyssey. Those in the Iliad, except for Antenor’s use of γύναι, all have to do with her family relationships in Troy, as does Helen’s appellative for Priam (§3). In Book 6 she addresses Hector as δᾶερ “brother-in-law” (344, 355), and he addresses her as “Helen” (360), the only time in the Iliad and the Odyssey that her name appears in the vocative (see ch. 4§2.2). In Book 24 she is the third woman, after Hecuba, his mother, and Andromache, his wife, to lament over the body of Hector (762–75).70 In this lament, she addresses him as δαέρων πολὺ φίλτατε πάντων “by far the dearest of all my brothers-in-law” (762). She recalls that he was kind to her, in spite of the fact that her husband (noun πόσις, 763) is Paris, who brought her to Troy (and, implicitly, brought the war along with her).71 Not only did she never hear a harsh word from him, but, if any of her in-laws reproached her, he restrained them. She specifies brothers-in-law (noun δάηρ), sisters-in-law (noun γάλοως, cf. Il. 3.122, discussed above), wives of brothers-in-law (noun εἰνάτερες), and mother-in-law (noun ἑκυρή), adding that her father-in-law (noun ἑκυρός) was always kind to her (769–70).72 Although she does not refer to any particular reproach, the list of affines in itself, with the distinction between father-in-law (always kind) and mother-in-law (by inference not always kind), suggests that anyone of them might have reproached her in the long period in which she was at Troy (765–66).73 Helen’s lament is a personal reminiscence.74

In Book 3, she is equally concerned about the family that she left behind in Sparta. She uses four kinship terms: αὐτοκασιγνήτω (238, of her brothers), δάηρ (180, of Agamemnon), μήτηρ (238, of Leda; cf. 6.345), παῖς (175, of Hermione), and also πόσις (429, of Menelaus).75 The second and the last in this list of four overlap with the terms for her Trojan family. Although she does not express fear of reproach from her Spartan family (it could be taken for granted in the case of Menelaus), she surmises that her brothers, who she wrongly assumes are present at Troy, have withdrawn from the fighting because they dread the many reproaches that are hers (αἴσχεα δειδιότες καὶ ὀνείδεα πόλλ’ ἅ μοί ἐστιν, 3.242).76

1.5γυνή in the nominative and in oblique cases; Helen as ἄκοιτις and ἄλοχος

The vocative of γυνή was discussed above (§1). This word is used of Helen also in the nominative and in oblique cases five times, all in Book 3 (and also in Hector’s indirect reference to her in line 48, on which see §7 below). In all these places this word refers to Helen as a prize by capture, implicitly a bride by capture, and disposable as such according to the captor’s wishes.77 The word ἄλοχος (“the one sharing the same bed”; < ἄ-λοχ-, in which the alpha is copulativum) has the same sense.78 Menelaus, invoking Zeus Xenios, refers to the Trojans as “you who recklessly carried off my wedded wife and many of my possessions” (οἵ μευ κουριδίην ἄλοχον καὶ κτήματα πολλὰ / μὰψ οἴχεσθ’ ἀνάγοντες, 13.623–27; see §6 below on ἀνάγοντες). Of course it was not the Trojans who carried Helen off but Paris and he did in fact violate xenia.79 He will not, however, return Helen to Menelaus for that reason, although he can be persuaded by his brother Hector to make Helen the stakes in single combat with Menelaus. The herald announces the duel to Priam: μαχήσοντ’ ἀμφὶ γυναικί· / τῷ δέ κε νικήσαντι γυνὴ καὶ κτήμαθ’ ἕποιτο (“They will fight over the woman, and, whoever is the winner, the woman and the possessions will ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• 1 Appellatives and Periphrastic Denominations
• 2 Epithets of Opprobrium
• 3 Ἀργείη
• 4 The Name Helen Unmodified
• 5 δῖα γυναικῶν “noble among women”: The Public Figure (1)
• 6 τανύπεπλος “long-robed”: The Public Figure (2)
• 7 Other Epithets for Beauty (1): ἠΰκομος
• 8 Other Epithets for Beauty (2): λευκώλενος
• 9 Epithets for Beauty (3): καλλίκομος, καλλιπάρῃος
• 10 Kinship Epithets
• 11 εὐπατέρεια
• 12 Reflections on Kinship Epithets and Epithets of Beauty
• 13 Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Helen’s Epithets in Homer in Order of Occurrence
• Appendix 2: The Name of Helen without Epithets
• Appendix 3: The “On account of” Motif
• Appendix 4: Helen’s epithets in lyric
• Works Cited
• Index nominum et rerum
• Index locorum