Wednesday, May 13, 2026
White-Armed Helen
Homer, Odyssey 22.226-230 (Athena speaking; tr. A.T. Murray):
Detail of Jacques-Louis David, Les Amours de Pâris et d'Hélène (Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 3696):
Lupita Nyong'o, cast as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan's upcoming movie The Odyssey:
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Odysseus, no longer hast thou steadfast might nor any valor,On the epithet λευκώλενος (white-armed) applied to Helen, see Lowell Edmunds, Toward the Characterization of Helen in Homer: Appellatives, Periphrastic Denominations, and Noun-Epithet Formulas (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), pp. 92-102. See also Th. Vlachodimitris, entry for λευκώλενος, in Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, Bd. 2, Fasc. 14 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), cols. 1672-1673.
such as was thine when for high-born Helen of the white arms
thou didst for nine years battle with the Trojans unceasingly,
and many men thou slewest in dread conflict,
and by thy counsel was the broad-wayed city of Priam taken.
οὐκέτι σοί γ᾽, Ὀδυσεῦ, μένος ἔμπεδον οὐδέ τις ἀλκή
οἵη ὅτ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ Ἑλένῃ λευκωλένῳ εὐπατερείῃ,
εἰνάετες Τρώεσσιν ἐμάρναο νωλεμὲς αἰεί,
πολλοὺς δ᾽ ἄνδρας ἔπεφνες ἐν αἰνῇ δηϊοτῆτι
σῇ δ᾽ ἥλω βουλῇ Πριάμου πόλις εὐρυάγυια.
Detail of Jacques-Louis David, Les Amours de Pâris et d'Hélène (Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 3696):
- The Dead, Then and Now
- Pale Women and Dark Men
- Perusta Solibus
- Pale Skin
- Pallor
- Umbrellas
- White Lead
