Helen of Troy

[damariscain]

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

Comments

[prozacpark]

One of the things that most interests me about the Trojan War myths is what seems to be a matrilineal descent pattern inherent in the myths of Helen, Klytemnestra, and even Penelope. Helen and Klytemnestra both have brothers, but it's Helen's husband who inherits the kingship through Helen. Klytemnestra is the queen of Mycenae before Agamemnon kills her husband and gains kingship through marrying her. And Penelope's suitors know that they will get the kingship through marrying Penelope, instead of the kingdom passing on to the grown son of Odysseus. This certainly suggests that these myths are older than the Greeks and possibly the product of a less male-centric culture

[granamyr]

Klytemnestra was a Spartan princess. Agamemnon was king of Mycenae through his father Atreus. It was brother Menelaus who gained the Spartan kingship by marrying Helen, as Helen's father apparently thought it was politically more advantageous to ally himself and Sparta with Mycenae than let Castor or Polydeukes inherit (they were twins, anyway, and rather quarrelsome). Some Mycenaean societies could have co-opted customs of female inheritance from the Minoans, although it isn't clear yet that this actually was the case in Crete. However, we do know that Mycenaean priestesses held property in their own right; princesses might have done the same.

[prozacpark]

In the popular version, yes, but in more obscure (and possibly older) versions, Klytemnestra is the queen of Mycenae before she's the wife of Agamemnon. She was married to Tantalus, son of Thyestes and king of Mycenae. Agamemnon killed Tantalus and took Klytemnestra as his wife in an attempt to regain Mycenae. So it seems to imply that the kingship is at least partly related to marrying Klytemnestra? I would go with the usual war bride interpretation if we didn't have the examples of Penelope and Helen to go with this myth. So I do think that some Mycenaen inheritance laws are coming through these stories.

And while in myth, there are reasons for why the kingdom passes on through the woman, what we're seeing is a pattern of matrilineal inheritance, which I find interesting.

[granamyr]

Thyestes was king at Mycenae when Agamemnon and Menelaus fled to Sparta, and it was with Tyndareus's help that they drove Thyestes and young Aegisthus out. Klytemnestra would never have been queen by marrying Tantalus, only through her marriage to Agamemnon.