From right to left: Eros, Helen, Phylonoe, Polydeuces' wife Phoebe, then a tiny bit of Clytemnestra.
From right to left: an unnamed woman (possibly Timandra), Phylonoe, and a Cleopatra. This is probably Helen's Phylonoe since Leda and Tyndareus are depicted elsewhere here.
Apollodorus' Library: Tyndareos and Leda had Timandra, whom Echemos married, and Clytaimnestra, whom Agamemnon married, and also Phylonoe, whom Artemis made immortal.
Hesiodic Ehoiai: Leda [...] bore Timandra and cow-eyed Clytemnestra and Phylonoe who contended in beauty with the immortal goddesses. [... Artemis] made her immortal and ageless all her days.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
-her hair is naturally completely straight, she curls those two strands. -comes from thrace
-bi
-3 years younger than Alcibiades
-knows the entirety of homer by heart as well as a ton of other poetry and songs.
-very experienced with herbal medicine
-always up to tattoo anyone for free
-tries very hard to keep her feelings for alcibiades within the professionally acceptable range.
So, this is for the person who asked me about my view on the relationship between Helen, Penelope and Clytemnestra (sorry I deleted your ask by mistake).
To me, it makes sense to believe that they cared very deeply about each other. I think it's the most rewarding and interesting way to interpret their relationship and the effects they have on each other's lives. Here, have some examples:
In Aeschylus' Agamemnon, there is a moment when the chorus accuses Helen and Clytemnestra defends her. I honestly think about it all the time:
CHORUS: Alas, alas, infatuated Helen, who alone destroyed the many, the very many lives which were lost at Troy! CLYTEMNESTRA: Do not be oppressed by this and invoke on yourself the fate of death; and do not turn your wrath against Helen, and say that she is a murderess, but she alone destroyed the lives of many Grecian men and wrought this crushing grief.
Now, to be clear, Clytemnestra not accusing Helen is contradicted in lphigenia in Aulis:
If any man should ask you why, why do you kill your daughter? What answer wil you make? Or must your words come from my mouth? I kill her, you must answer, that Menelaus may win Helen back. And so our child, in her beauty, you pay as price for a woman of evil. So you buy with our best beloved a creature most loathed and hated.
But personally, I find it very psychologically plausible, and I have no trouble seeing the two moments as coherent with each other: when CIytemnestra is confronted with the imminence of her daughter's sacrifice, Helen's choice suddenly touches her directly and impacts her own life, and she sees its most selfish side. To me it's very interesting to think that, as the years go by, CIytemnestra comes to realize that Helen made a choice (very similar to the one she herself will later make), but it was the men who waged war and killed lphigenia.
Moving on, In Euripides' Orestes, we learn that Helen is devastated by CIytemnestra's death and she sends Hermione to make libations at her tomb. Beautiful and very very important to me:
And yet I do lament my sister's death, CIytaemnestra, whom I never saw after I sailed off to Troy, driven there by that fated madness from the gods. Now I've lost her, I weep for our misfortune.
About Helen and Penelope: In the Odyssey we see them talk about each other, even if only briefly. The Odyssey makes no mention of them being cousins (and in my opinion, there are good reasons to believe that this tradition actually came later). Nevertheless, to understand something about their relationship it might be useful to look at the very famous speech Penelope delivers to Odysseus when she finally decides to recognize him, in which she mentions Helen:
Helen of Argos, daughter of Zeus and Leda, would she have joined the stranger, lain with him, if she had known her destiny? known the Akhaians in arms would bring her back to her own country? Surely a goddess moved her to adultery
This speech has been widely debated over the years, because it's not straightforward. Is Penelope placing herself above Helen here? Or, on the contrary, is she empathizing with her, suggesting that she too might have done something like what Helen did, out of ignorance of the circumstances? I think it can be both at the same time, and perhaps this can partially help us reconstruct Penelope's very opaque character, as well as her (not particularly positive) view of the gods.
Unfortunately there's nothing about Penelope and Clytemnestra. I'd be happy to be proven wrong if anyone knows of a myth in which they interact in any way or comment on each other, but I don't think it exists. It's interesting, because in the Odyssey they're constantly compared and set up as opposites, yet they never tell us what they think of each other. What we do have, and what I find relevant, is that in Pausanias' Description of Greece it is actually one of Penelope’s brothers who brings the accusation of matricide against Orestes:
his accuser was not Tyndareus, who no longer lived, but Perilaus, who asked for vengeance for the mother's murder in that he was a cousin of Clytemnestra. For Perilaus, they say, was a son of Icarius, to whom afterwards daughters also were born.
This may lead us to wonder what Penelope thought about this. Would she have sided with her brother and therefore with Clytemnestra? And if not, why not?
So, now that I've said what I wanted to say about the sources and the evidence, If you'd like, below the cut you can enjoy a set of my very personal headcanons, in case that's something that might interest you.
VERY PERSONAL HEADCANONS:
As some versions imply, I imagine Clytemnestra as older than Helen, not her twin. Helen and Penelope, on the other hand, are roughly the same age, since they are presumed to enter the marriage market at the same time.
To me, they have a very close relationship from a young age. Penelope relies on them a great deal, partly due to the fact that she grows up surrounded by male siblings and with an almost nonexistent maternal figure. There's also little Iphthime, but she is much younger.
Clytemnestra is the most fiery, and her being the eldest makes her by far the most protective, especially toward Helen.
Helen is somewhat everyone's favorite and can get away with (almost) anything: she is used to wandering wherever she wants, even without permission, and usually Penelope has to unwillingly cover for her (Inspired by Colluthus, who offers a very interesting portrayal of Helen and, among other things, says that she knows Sparta extremely well and moves around it freely as an adult).
Helen is the one with the least stable mood. She is usually the most sociable and lively, but she is also the kind of person who carries an enormous amount of melancholy. Her partly divine nature contributes to her feeling almost disconnected from the world, as if she were watching her life as a spectator rather than acting within it. And if Helen feels in low spirits, there is no way she will address it. In some ways she isn't even able to put her feelings into words, because they are bigger than she is. Clytemnestra cannot stand this and does everything she can to drag out the reasons for Helen's distress. Penelope is more patient with her and tries to resolve the issue by indirect means.
In general, Helen is not good at handling conflicts at all, whereas Penelope and Clytemnestra are quite quarrelsome and often bicker.
Penelope is 100% affectionately teased because she "cries too much" and because she is the most sensitive of the three (don't worry girl, your man gets you).
When they are young, Helen, Clytemnestra, and Penelope are often openly set in competition with one another by those around them. This is one of the downsides of the Spartan environment, where everyone expects excellence. It is not, however, something they experience serenely, and it is one of the factors that will make Penelope so willing to leave. Despite the affection between them, a trace of underlying competition remains even when they are adults.
As girls the three of them are quite mean and snooty to their other cousins (the daughters of Leucippus in particular). They grow out of it eventually.
SMALL ASIDE ON TIMANDRA (Helen and Clytemnestra' sister) BECAUSE I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT:
Clytemnestra actually finds it easier to confide in Timandra, who is (realistically) the oldest of them all. She is also the one who sets the "bad example" for her sisters, since she is the first of the three to leave her husband for another man. But unlike Helen and CIytemnestra, her scandal remains contained, given the excellent reputation of her new husband (that Phileus was considered a great guy is true, I'm not making that up) and the two of them are accepted as a legitimate couple within the family.
Clytemnestra is the first person Timandra confides in about wanting to leave her husband for Phileus, and she tells her it's a terrible idea.
As girls Timandra and Clytemnestra are often allies against Leda, whom they perceive as a very demanding maternal figure. I really love the idea that Clytemnestra promises herself to be a better mother than the one she had. And then after Iphigenia we know how it goes (but it's deeply tragic that grief leads her to detach from a role that had surely once brought her joy).
AFTER THE TROJAN WAR:
I don't see anyone talking about this, but to me it is obvious that the relationship between CIytemnestra and Penelope is irreparably ruined after the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Clytemnestra hates Odysseus with a passion, which doesn't necessarily mean she must hate Penelope too, except that she knows perfectly well that Penelope shares the same mindset as her husband and would always defend him.
Penelope, on the other hand, still loves her cousin, but she absolutely must distance herself from her and from everything negative she comes to represent once Penelope finds herself alone in Ithaca after the end of the war. No one must be able to think of comparing her to her cousin if she wants to continue to rule legitimately.
Despite this, in my view, Penelope will support her brother Perileus when he sides against Orestes with the charge of matricide.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Vaguely thinking about Timandra, Helen and Klytemnestra again, and the whole THING in how they're all three joined by committing adultery. (And I do think that in going with this, there is more punch to it if it is indeed adultery and everyone leaves with (or invites in) the lover willingly.)
No matter who is first, Helen or Timandra (though Timandra might be first by quite a bit if she should be counted as either the mother of Meges - a participant in the war - or the mother of a daughter who begot... two participants in the war!). Either way, Timandra and Klytemnestra are the ones still in Greece, while Helen leaves it entirely. Timandra doesn't seem to cause any uproar - except of course there must have been SOMETHING, but surviving tradition has nothing for us. Klytemnestra, of course joins herself to Aigisthos while Agamemnon is away, and then when he's dead; Agamemnon gets no real chance to react to this state of affairs.
And then there is three men they leave their husbands for...
Paris and Aigisthos are known as effeminate, and more or less "dominated" by their wife (not literally, of course alas, but lol). Phyleus is called dear to the deathless gods by Hesiod in the Ehoiai. He comes in for the least amount of negative description there, where Aigisthos is explicitly called a "worse mate" for Klytemnestra, though Paris isn't described at all - there's merely the "Helen dishonoured the couch..." line.
(Helen and Klytemnestra sharing some tastes in men lol, they both have some fondness for softness and effeminacy apparently!)
