Helen, Queen of Sparta

H Pollard John

Description

The HELEN of this story is generally referred to as "HELEN OF TROY". The author has deliberately selected a different title to emphasize the main point of his book - HELEN did not go to Troy. In the book he explains why he thinks this, where she did go, what happened to her afterwards and why the Trojan War was fought.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Seaview
• Date de parution: 10 mai 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908886798
• Langue: English

Extrait

In his first historical novel, John Pollard has applied his life’s experiences to his enduring love of the classics. After winning a scholarship in Classics to Oxford , he then spent almost three years away from his studies doing National Service – as did many of his contemporaries. His original plan of continuing his Classical studies, at least for the first part of his university course, was very reluctantly dropped in favour of Law, and a career as a company secretary and, later, in local government and in the voluntary sector. Early retirement from full-time employment has enabled a return to his first love, visits to historic sites in the Peloponnese and to tackle, as a mature adult, the enigmas embedded in classical mythology. In Helen, Queen of Sparta , John dissects one of the most fascinating stories of all time, puts it in its historical context and produces a well-researched and imaginative commentary. John is planning further books to explain the true meanings of some of the most well known classical Greek legends.
HELEN, QUEEN OF SPARTA
John H Pollard
HELEN, QUEEN OF SPARTA
Copyright © John H Pollard 2004, 2012
All Rights Reserved
 
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First published 2004.
This version published in 2012 by John H Pollard
ISBN 978-1-908886-79-8
 
…but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
 
Tennyson,
‘Ulysses’
Acknowledgement
 
To all those conscientious teachers who introduced me to the history, language and literature of Classical Greece, and particularly to my first teacher of Greek, Father Denis Agius.
To my wife, Shirley, for her constant support and encouragement, without which this book would not have been written.
To my five lovely children, Loveday, Jonathan, Imogen, Anna and Olivia, so that they may have and hold something of me when I am gone.
John H Pollard
Weymouth , Dorset
8 March 2004
Preface
 
Although what follows is fiction, it is based on the facts as we know them. The events in this story took place between 1220 and 1180 BC. The stories of the sacking of Troy , the heroes on both sides, and the long homecoming of Odysseus (aka Ulysses), attributed to ‘Homer’, were lost in the Middle Ages to be rediscovered later. For many years they were considered to be mere legends, but a few believed they were based on the truth. However, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century AD that the old cities of Troy were rediscovered on the coast of Asia Minor near the Bosporus . Since then, twentieth-century excavations have found so much more of relevance to the story of Helen and the events and peoples of her time. Little was known, for example, apart from a few puzzling references in the Bible, about the Hittite Empire, the heart of which lay in what is now known as Asia Minor, until the early 1900s when German archaeologists found traces of what had been a great power threatening the Egyptian Pharaohs at one of the peaks of their power, providing a wife for Solomon and even sending a Crown Prince to marry the widow of a Pharaoh, as she had no sons to continue the dynasty.
One thing we did learn in the twentieth century is that old stories and legends are not, for the most part, fiction. A recent explorer/archaeologist was able to find the route Alexander the Great took in 328 BC through the Hindu Kush by listening to a blind story teller in a local market and consulting the local people. Such an earth-shattering event was kept in the minds of the locals by constant story telling amongst mainly illiterate people. The lack of literacy can be a bonus – there are fewer outside influences to encourage embellishments to an established story and the memory of such people tends to be much more accurate as they have little else to distract them. The listeners, who knew the story, would also pick up ‘unauthorised’ changes to the story and put the story teller back to the original! As Werner Keller says in his book The Bible as History about Arab traditions on the whereabouts of Abraham’s grave: ‘It is one of these apparently inexplicable things that such oral traditions, handed down from father to son, are now receiving scientific confirmation.’ Keller wrote that in 1956. He would be even more positive today.
The truth about Helen ‘of Troy ’ has been a puzzle from antiquity. Homer’s account of the fight for Troy (the Iliad ) shows her in a strange light – as a spy for the Achaeans? The various accounts of her in the Odyssey are even odder: in Book 4, when Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, visits Sparta to enquire on the whereabouts of his father, missing for almost ten years following the fall of Troy, he finds Helen addressed by her husband, Menelaus, as ‘dear lady’, and obviously held in high regard by him! Can this be the same woman who deserted him for Paris-Alexandros, the Prince of Troy, and caused the death of many brave men on both sides and a war which lasted ten years? The great Greek playwright, Euripedes, who wrote a play about Helen in the late fourth century BC, some 800 years after the events, did not believe she could have been the same woman who went to Troy . His explanation can be read in full, as his play is one of the few that have survived intact. This story adopts his view in essence, but sets it in its scene and adds some logical explanations for the momentous events which occurred so long ago. Place names, character names and dates are given in the narrative in the forms recognisable today. A little out of tune with the basic ‘Greek’ approach, Herakles has been given his Latin name, Hercules, by which he is best known.
Contents
 
Prologue
Introduction
The Trade War
Journey to Pylos
Nestor’s Horses
Delphi
Olympia
Return to Amyclaes
The Plot and the Decoy
The Pestilence
Paris at Amyclaes
The Flight
Menelaus’ Return
Mounting the Expedition
At the Gates of Troy
The Death of the Heroes
The Exploits of Odysseus
The Wooden Horse
The Aftermath
Polyxo’s Story
The Return
Polyxo’s Farewell
The Rescue of Helen
Journey to Siwa
Sojourn in Crete
Return From Sparta
Return to Pharos – into the Lion’s Mouth
Rest and Recreation in Crete
Home at Last
Epilogue
Index of People and Places

 
Prologue
 
I remember exactly where I was when the call came through: by the window of my office looking out across the street at St John’s College , Oxford .
‘Nicholaos Constantinides here… I have something important to tell you – and an urgent request. Can you come out here now?’
Nich, I knew, was on an archaeological expedition to Crete, and, as Crete is one of my favourite places, I had half promised to pay him a visit when he was out there. But it was now June and getting a bit hot – and the heat doesn’t like me, which is why I chose to be an academic archaeologist in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, rather than working in the field in the scorching sun – literally at the ‘coal face’ of the profession.
‘Difficult to get away immediately,’ I replied, ‘and I can’t take the sun, but what is it all about?’
‘You know the Diktaion Cave – well, I’ve been digging in one of the side caverns and I have found a cache of papyrus scrolls with some strange writing on them. It’s not Greek, it’s not Latin and it’s not Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it could be an early language that you, as a specialist, would recognise. The only way to resolve this is for you to come out and look at them. I don’t want to tell anyone else at this stage as I have a gut feeling that they are important. What do you think?’
‘Can you describe the characters of this language to me – I might be able to identify it,’ I said.
His description made me very excited: it was almost certainly Akkadian hieroglyphics, the diplomatic language of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries BC of the Middle East used by the Egyptians, the Hittites and the other nations living in or near the ‘Fertile Crescent’, formed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, for communications between the top rulers of the time. It was also the language in which the old Sumerian legends of the Creation and the Flood – so like the Bible stories – had been found written. One of the oldest known languages, it was used in the Kingdom of Akkad, an empire based on a great city on the river Tigris near Babylon about 2000 BC where philologists created the first known grammar and bilingual dictionary. This meant the scrolls could be very old and comprised important diplomatic communications. But why were they in Crete, and in the Diktaion Cave , of all places? The cave was the supposed birthplace of Zeus, and a very holy place to the ancients. But, perhaps, that is why the scrolls were there. As a holy place, it was less likely to be disturbed even than the pyramids, particularly as no one would expect to find valuables there after the cult had been extinguished by Christianity nearly two thousand years ago. This also meant that the scrolls were likely to have been hidden there after the Middle and Late Minoan periods from 2000 to around 1450 BC, at the end of which tidal waves and a deep dust outfall caused by the catastrophic volcanic eruption of Thera (Santorini) hit the island. This destroyed the original palace at Knossos and many other buildings on Crete . We now know the eruption destroyed much of their navy, based in Thera, and destroyed their economy, exposing the Cre