[blam]

GGG Ping.

[MineralMan]

And here she is. I'm certain she's old enough, and matches the description, sorta: ===========================

[SlowBoat407]

It was all the Greeks' fault.

[Graymatter]

"Women were mothers at twelve, grandmothers at twenty-four, dead before they were thirty," she wrote.

That's very misleading.

[Styria]

The Greeks had fairer hair previously.

[proxy_user]

"While Greeks generally have dark hair, frescoes dating to Helen's era around 3,500 years ago reveal at least one woman with "tawny red hair and blue eyes."

But Homer describes Menelaos as 'xanthos', admittedly as a poetic formula, while not mentioning Helen's hair coloring at all.

[wideawake]

"Women were mothers at twelve, grandmothers at twenty-four, dead before they were thirty," she wrote.

I hate this ahistorical crap.

Women in ancient Greece were not dead by thirty. What these idiots fail to realize is that low life expectancy back then was due to high infant/child mortality.

Out of every ten people born in those times, three or four would die before they made it to age 3.

If you survived childhood diseases and lived to adulthood in ancient Greece, you would generally live to 65-70.

There were nonagenarians and centenarians in ancient Greece.

Also most Greek women, given the state of nutrition back then, would not have been able to become mothers at 12. Women were generally married off as soon as they could have children and in ancient Greece that was generally 15-16.

[socal_parrot]

the shimmer came from linen clothing soaked in perfumed olive oil

Hey, that's pretty slick.

[Paradox]

It is unclear what happened at the site, but Hughes thinks Helen's life was short, since the average lifespan for Mycenaean females was 28 years.

I hate it when they say things like this. Average lifespan includes the child mortality rate, which was terribly high "back in the day". Once you got out of childhood, you could live to a relatively ripe old age.

[wideawake]

I'm not aware of Homer describing Helen as "shimmering" and the ancient Greeks were not physically identical to modern Greeks.

The Greeks of Homer's world were descendants of several waves of Northern invasions. Blondism and green and blue eyes were quite common among ancient Greeks.

Greeks today are descendants of a variety of nationalities - urban Greece in the 1st century AD was the rough equivalent of NYC today - a broad mixture of ethnicities.

[SunkenCiv]

BTDT. ;')

Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore
PRNewswire | Sep. 14, 2005 | Melanie Pope of Renault Communications
Posted on 10/09/2005 8:29:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1499699/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[CatoRenasci]

Ah, truth to the basis of the FPI!

Feminine Pulchritude Index: a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being Medusa and 10 being Helen of Troy. 5 is average by definition.

[Cicero]

Most likely there was a Helen of Troy, since there is good reason to think that the basic facts about the Trojan War described in the Iliad and the Odyssey are historical. You could fiddle with the minor figures, but figures like Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Helen are unlikely to have been sheer inventions.

The Achaeans were newcomers to Greece at the time of the war, who conquered and ruled over the Greeks who had lived their earlier. The usual theory is that they came down from the north. Achilles and Odysseus are both described as red-haired or blond, and so is Menelaos. Fair hair may have been fairly common among the kings and nobles of that time.

I don't see any reason to believe that this particular woman was Helen, though, and not some other noble or royal lady. It's sheer speculation, a good way to get on TV and sell books.

[jgorris]

Illium By Dan Simmons. On Earth, a post-technological group of humans, pampered by servant machines and easy travel via "faxing," begins to question its beginnings. Meanwhile, a team of sentient and Shakespeare-quoting robots from Jupiter's lunar system embark on a mission to Mars to investigate an increase in dangerous quantum fluctuations. On the Red Planet, they'll find a race of metahumans living out existence as the pantheon of classic Greek gods. These "gods" have recreated the Trojan War with reconstituted Greeks and Trojans and staffed it with scholars from throughout Earth's history...

[Billthedrill]

Sappho is not a historical source for Helen of Troy - Helen was the subject of one of her poems, to be sure, (Fragment 16) but that image of Helen was as much a fantasy as ours is today.

Another brick in the Wymyn's Studies wall...

[Savage Beast]

If women were mothers at twelve, it's little wonder that they were dead before they were thirty.

BTW, if I recall correctly, according to the Iliad, Achilles had red hair.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Hughes should find a different line of work.

[bert]

Of course.

I am indebted to a Phd friend for recounting the following.

Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world and was responsible for the launching of 1,000 ships to save her honor and bring her home.

The result was what has come to be known as the milihelen system. A woman's beauty can be expressed in millihelens. Just how many ships would be launches to save her?

Helen was of course 1,000. Her name sake the reporter Helen Thomas would rate about a mere 5 or perhaps 7. Bo Derrick would also rate 1,000 since a modern 10 is but a refinement of the ancient system.

Poor Ann Coulter, formerly rated at about 875 mhlns, her rating has dropped as a result of poor political writing. In the future, Deanna Troy LCDR SFC will also rate about 980 mhlns that rates 10 on the current les complex scale.

[mywholebodyisaweapon]

See The World According to Student Bloopers, by Richard Lederer:

"Actually, Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that name."