In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle looks at a common line associated with Helen of Troy
Who said, ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ Most people know it was Doctor Faustus. Or rather, Christopher Marlowe, who gives Doctor Faustus these words in his play about the magician who sold his soul to the Devil (or rather to the Devil’s messenger, Mephistopheles):
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle visits Egypt courtesy of H. D.’s response to the epic poem
Helen of Troy was a mere phantom conjured by the goddess Hera. The real wife of Menelaus, the woman we know as ‘Helen of Troy’, spent the duration of the Trojan War in Egypt, having been taken there by Hermes and kept out of harm’s way, while some pretender was used back in Troy as a stand-in for the real Helen. The Greeks and the Trojans both went to war over what was, effectively, an illusion.