The Encomium of Helen

Gorgias’s Helen is one of the earliest and most enigmatic Greek philosophical texts. An epideoxis, or set-piece speech, it’s a pioneering argument about moral responsibility and a fascinating Sophist argument for the power of language [logos]. In it, Gorgias attempts to show that the beautiful Helen of Troy, whose adultery and flight with Paris was the proximate cause of the Trojan War, should suffer no unjust blame for the war nonetheless.