Helen of Troy
Okay, first my Professors name was Dr. Joan O'Brien. She was a Classics professor at SIU-C. No one has ever cared what her name was before. It was great that y'all were interested enough to ask.
The class was called Myth and Reality in the Golden Age of Athens. After having studied Greek society for so long she had developed a theory that you couldn't fully understand their writings and mythology unless you had a better grasp of their history. So I'm going to give y'all a very brief run down of what Dr. O'Brien thought was important to understand about Helen of Troy.
Okay here is the gist of it. The people we think of as Greeks aren't the original people who settled there. The people who were there got pushed out and enslaved by a very war like male centric culture. The culture that had existed previously from all available archaeological evidence did not commit a great deal of violence.
(Part of the evidence is the homes and palaces that still exist from that time. We are unable to read any writing left behind. No one has any idea what the alphabet means. The homes and the very important looking palaces have zero defenses built into them strongly suggesting that they were peaceful. The other evidence she based this one was the incredibly intricate art and designs for statues and sundry that is found. Most war like cultures do not value art. All anecdotal evidence sure but in totality a fairly good assumption until someone cracks the alphabet.)
Okay with that in mind thinking about Helen of Troy. She considered it interesting as it was written by the Greeks (the war like ones) but it really portrays Troy as the people most wronged. It is the Greeks who come to lay waste to this city that really did next to nothing. They come on the pretext of the most beautiful woman in the world and make innocent people pay and pay very dearly. Also they leave what has to be the worst gift in the world. It is a sneaky and underhanded way to win. They simply could not defeat the Trojans in an up front way.
So it was her conclusion that at least in part this was a way to talk about the Greeks who swept up the original Greeks and enslaved them. (See Spartan history. Those jerks.)
I had fun. Really fun. I can't wait for the next one. I thought this way would be easier and I would answer any questions about this later on when we talk. Any errors in this are definitely my fault and the fault of my terrible memory. My prof from this class was awesome.
Dee