Helen of Troy (Faust)

.Helen of Troy is the ideal of beauty in Classical Greek culture and one of the main characters in Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. In the Iliad she is kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, and for her husband, the Greek chieftain Menelaus, raises a great army to recover her. In Faust, however, Helen and her culture of the good, the beautiful, and the true have long since departed from the world. Faust summons the phantoms of Helen and Paris to the Emperor’s court and, though no one else present truly perceives Helen’s beauty and nobility, the magician himself does, powerfully.