What Role Does Helen Play In The Iliad

The role of women in "Iliad" varied, the gods had a high position in life, like Athena who was god of wisdom of art, as compared to mortal women, who were sometimes reduced to a prize for men at a fighting war. For example when Agamemnon (leader of Achaeans) captures Chrysies, though he has to eventually give her back to her father. In "Iliad" Helen's position seems to be higher than the maidens Achilles and Agamemnon captured. She was originally Greek Menelaus' (Brother of Agamemnon) wife, but later captured by Paris, who is on the Trojan side. She is the whole cause of the Trojan war. However, in Aeschylus's Agamemnon, women seem to be moving with stealth. For example, Clytemnestra is plotting on Agamemnon's death, with his cousin …show more content…
The women of emotional power in the "Illiad" are numerous. You have Hector's wife Andromache, you have Helen, and then you have the war prize of Achilles, that starts the whole grudge between Achilles and Agamemnon who is Briseis. She feels bad when Patrocolus Achilles' best friend, and she comes out to lament his death. She says in a speech, and mourns him, and said that Patroclus would make her Achilles' wife. The fate of women, the fate of children of Troy, are in the hands of men fighting before Troy, and that includes are non combatants. However the role of women of" The Odyssey" is different. It was because of evil Helen that the Trojan war began in the Iliad. In the "Odyssey, "Odysseus' love for Penelope is what made him come back to Ithaca. Athena was an immortal goddess that made his voyage home possible. Odysseus was one of the soldiers that left his home, risking his life, and risking the fact that he might never see his wife again, because of some war that Helen had caused in Troy. ( Beaconschool) The Iliad and Odyssey are not the only poems were fate plays a role, in "Oedipus the King", the oracle predicts that it his fate that he will kill his father Lairties , and have sex with his mother Jocasta, and it was true, there is no way escaping your fate, is what I observed from reading these Greek poems. There was even a goddess of fate Eumindes refernced in …show more content…
When Helen joins Paris in his bedchamber, she teases him that he is a "coward" and tells him to go back to the battlefield, then immediately adds "no, better not, you would probably get killed." Achilles himself has a mother, the sea goddess Thetis, who may not exactly urge her son on to fight, but it is also his destiny to beat back the Greek forces. In all their roles the female characters of the Iliad are being used by the poet to comment on the world of war and the values of the fighting men. The happens in both the narrative and the society which women do not seem so important, and outside of the main business functions of the Trojan