“And catching sight of Helen moving along the ramparts,
they murmured one to another, gentle, winged words:
“Who on earth could blame them? Ah, no wonder
the men of Troy and Argives under arms have suffered
years of agony all for her, for such a woman.
Beauty, terrible beauty!
deathless goddess – so she strikes our eyes!”

Can a virtue, a gift, become a curse? If the poets who died ragged and forgotten, if the
leaders betrayed and stabbed silently by vicious blades were not enough to give us an
answer, we must simply look at Helen.
By simply looking at her, we would understand that too much of something is always too
much. Even if it is beauty we are observing.

Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, for whom men fought and died like flies
diving into the flame, like hungry wolves scuffling over the bloody corpse of their prey.
Her perfection drove anyone around her mad.
A curse indeed.

Yet a smart woman knows how to use such a curse.
Many depict Helen as a poor victim. They want us to think that she was nothing but an
object, a prize to win for the men, the rightful protagonists of her story.
My master, excellent Virgil, tells us that she was a traitor. She wanted Troy's destruction
all along.
Homer, first among the poets, says that she circled the wooden horse, and with her magic
voice imitated the voices of the wives whom the Greek soldiers had left at home, ten
years before, torturing them.
The two poets wrote this before they joined the ranks of the dead, when their gaze was
still blocked by their mortal state.

I see more now, and I tell you, both were right.
Her beauty did not affect only those around her. It devoured her too. She could bend the
minds of mortals with a smile. How could she not drown in that power?

Perhaps, the fall of Troy was nothing but a whim of hers, a whim approved by the gods.
A test to see how much she could change the world by pulling the strings of lust and
desire.

I believe she is striding toward the deepest circle of Hell for the same reason.
What might become of the cosmos, if Helen the wicked obtains the power of Lucifer, is a
question we might not want to answer.

Life

Once Zeus flew into Leda's room in the form of a marvelous swan. Beautiful Leda, queen
of Sparta, made love with him, and Leda produced an egg from which an incredible
demigoddess was born: Helen.
From a young age, men tried to abduct her – Theseus tried it and paid the price – and the
situation worsened once she reached marriageable age.

Her father did not know how to choose one of the powerful suitors without starting a
war among the unchosen, but Odysseus, still young at the time, came up with a solution:
they should all swear an oath to protect the one who will become Helen's husband.
This alliance is what brought the Achaean army to Troy.

Menelaus was chosen, and she married him and gave him a daughter.
Until Paris arrived in Sparta, and the goddess Aphrodite granted him what she had
promised him: Helen's hand.
Or perhaps, Helen chose to succumb to that passion, because she wanted the war.
We shall never know.

The army arrived, the war ravaged, and the Achaeans won.
Menelaus found Helen, and he was determined to kill her. She undressed and he forgave
her, bringing her to Sparta to live a happy life.

Regalia

The sword that Helen brings with her is proof of her vicious nature. It is the sword of her
third husband, the Trojan who married here after Paris's death. She hid it when the
Greeks stormed Troy, and her husband died unarmed and defenseless.