Herodotus's Scapegoat For The Trojan War

Historians have always found the fine line between narrative as myth or history problematic, an issue that Herodotus, one of the great ancient Greek historians, attempts to deal with by rationalizing myth, so as to still incorporate it into his accounts, and actively distinguishing myth from history. Rationalization boils myth down into its most fundamental components, supporting the argument that myth is simply history spun out of proportion or misremembered by exposing myth’s basis in real life events. Recognizing this, Herodotus rationalizes the Helen myth to strip away the embellishment of more poetic retellings and reveal at the myth’s core larger scale motivations for the Trojan War – attitudes towards women and past conflicts – in order …show more content…
A guest in Helen’s husband’s house, Paris’s abduction of Helen, “a deed of unjust men,” violates two of the very principles the Greeks hold sacred – the sanctity of marriage, hospitality (Helen of Troy, 145, 152). Furthermore, Herodotus’s complete removal of gods in his interpretation of the myth places the full accountability of abducting Helen on Paris and not the gods; in Herodotus’s Histories, Paris kidnaps Helen for a wife after hearing of previous unpunished abductions of women – both Greek and Persian – instead of judging a beauty contest of three goddesses and choosing Aphrodite’s offer of Helen’s hand in marriage as he does in Homer’s traditional account. Herodotus thus places Paris at fault rather than Helen by shifting the focus from Helen’s transgression to the injustice done to her husband by another man, suggesting “that the fall of Troy was the god’s punishment of Paris” (Helen of Troy, 151; Myth, truth, and narrative in Herodotus …show more content…
Just as how Herodotus humanizes Helen, Herodotus transforms Proteus into a completely mortal king, quite different from Proteus the shape-shifting sea-god and seer in the Odyssey. Herodotus also depicts Proteus as not a tyrant but a benevolent ruler, thus creating a father figure under whose care Helen is placed until Menelaus arrives (Helen of Troy, 150-152). Humanizing Helen, Paris, and Proteus eliminates embellishment of the myth’s characters, allowing Herodotus’s account to solely focus on events and personal relations rather than getting swept away with its fantastical characters. Plausibility is thus paramount in that Herodotus can present his interpretation but must ultimately convince his audience to accept it in order to fully exonerate Helen and make his contribution to ever-evolving