This tapestry is titled Fall of Troy: Helen boarding ship to return to Sparta, and is believed by the Getty Institute to have been created between 1710 and 1720. In the long timeline of Homer’s recounting of the Trojan War saga, this scene takes place right in the middle of the chronology. It is set just after the fall of Troy, but immediately before the majority of the victorious Greek forces sailed off for their respective homes. In fact, the tapestry depicts the very moment when Helen and Menelaus boarded their flagship to begin their journey back to Mycenaean Sparta. The Spartan royals left earlier than many of their allies. In fact, Menelaus left so quickly that he skirted religious ceremony and failed to offer proper respect to the gods. It is this scene of Helen and Menelaus hurriedly departing from Troy that the 18th-century weavers re-created in the tapestry.
Unfortunately for Helen and Menelaus, they were about to depart on yet another perilous adventure, for nothing good comes from angering the gods before setting sail into the mercy of the winds and waves. Suffice it to say, the journey home did not go smoothly. Homer narrated the scene from the viewpoint of Nestor, who stated:
“’Meanwhile we were sailing together over the sea from Troy, Menelaus and I, the best of friends. But when we were abreast of the sacred cape of Sunium, where Attica juts out into the sea, Phoebus Apollo shot one of his painless arrows at Menelaus’ helmsman and killed him, with the tiller of the running ship still in his hands. This man, Phrontis son of Onetor, had been the world’s best steersman in a gale, and Menelaus, though anxious to journey on, was kept at Sunium till he could bury his comrade with the proper rites. But when he too had got away over the wine-dark sea in those great ships of his and had run as far as the steep headland of Malea, far-seeing Zeus brought disaster on their journey, and sent them a howling gale with giant waves. Then and there he split the fleet in two” (Homer, The Odyssey, Book 3, approximately between lines 270-290).
Such is the peril into which Menelaus and Helen were sailing in the scene depicted within the tapestry. Due to the godly attacks on his ships, the Spartan royal couple was subjected to a seven-year detour of sailing around the southeastern Mediterranean. In a conversation from Book 4 of The Odyssey, Menelaus reported that he visited Cyprus, Phoenicia, Sidon, Arabia, Libya and Egypt during those years of divine punishment before they were ultimately allowed to find their way back to Sparta.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Sources:
- The Odyssey by Homer, translated by E. V. Rieu and edited by D. C. H. Rieu. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009.
- https://primo.getty.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?vid=GRI-OCP&docid=GETTY_OCPFL631731&context=L&tab=all_gri&lang=en_US
- https://rosettaapp.getty.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE631729&dps_file=FL631731&md_pane=hide
