Helen of Troy
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In Greek mythology, Helen, better known as Helen of Sparta or Helen of Troy, was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta and sister of Castor, Polydeuces and Clytemnestra. Her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. Helen was described by Christopher Marlowe as having "the face that launched a thousand ships."
The sublime and the beauty of women
The Sublime cannot identify itself only to what is simply beautiful, but also to what is so upsetting to cause “bewilderment” (ΕΚΠΛΗΞΙΣ), “surprise” (ΤΟ ΘΑΥΜΑΣΤΟΝ) and even “fear” (ΦΟΒΟΣ). It could be said that Helen of Troy will surely have been the most beautiful woman in the world, but she has never been sublime in Greek literature, although Edmund Burke cites the scene of the old men looking at Helen's "terrible" beauty on the ramparts of Troy -- he regards it as an instance of the beautiful, but his imagination is captured by its sublimity. Hecuba in Euripides’s The Trojan Women is certainly sublime when she expresses her endless sorrow for the terrible destiny of her children.
