rly part of the Iliad, when the Achaeans are on the point of leaving Troy for Greece without having retrieved Helen, Athene goads Odysseus into remaining to vindicate what she characterizes as the honor of the Greeks:
Odysseus of the nimble wits, are you all longing to run off like this, for Priam and his men to boast about, Argive Helen, for whom so many of her countrymen have died far from their motherland on Trojan soil? (Il. II)
As Valiunas (47) points out, the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles over the former's assertion of a species of droit de signeur over the latter's war prize Briseis, "is the motive force of the story," more exactly the immediate conflict, of the Iliad. But Helen is always in the background, the context in which Achaean honor and Trojan boldness, then honor, are organized.
The text of the Iliad does not say specifically (and mythic sources and commentators on the myth differ about) whether Helen was abducted, raped, seduced, or partner in an elopement. Hegel (125) refers to the rape of Helen as the origin of the war, positioning her as victim of Paris's deliberate violation of spiritual community that the Greeks cannot ignore. Priam, who has affection for Helen, accepts her presence in Troy as a fait accompli. Refusing to blame her for the war (and failing to blame his headstrong son), Priam decides that the gods "brought this terrible Achaean war upon me" (Il. III 8). Whatever the details of her arrival, Helen is installed in the royal household at Troy at the time of the Iliad. In the Odyssey, Helen is safely back at Sparta with Menelaus, the details of her return ambiguous. In each royal household, Helen occupies herself chiefly with domestic activities, supervising embroidery of cloaks and pillows in Troy (Il. VI 125) and the spinning of thread on a distaff (Od. IV 62), as well as general household management.
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