#but not only they loved them dearly. they're also victims of kidnapping or SA

[nysus-temple]

[Helen/Paris] and [Odysseus/Calypso(and/or)Circe] similarities

I shouldn't have actually written this down? Probably. Am I still gonna do it anyways? Yeah. 8 years in the Trojan Cycle thingy and people are still discussing the interactions between this characters, damn, I thought it was clear enough.

Anyways. Onto the similarities and why I keep thinking until this day that both Helen and Odysseus were held captives. It's a short essay, since i'm just dumping my thoughts and other people's thoughts after seeing the ammount of bullshit that goes around here.

Were you kidnapped or seduced?

Agh, jeez.

So can we, you know, start from the part that it's Aphrodite the one who does literally everything? DO NOT demonize Aphrodite, this IS NOT what i'm telling you to do.

She had to do her part of the deal, that's why she gave Helen to Paris as a prize for choosing her. She's a goddess, we know how this works.

The thing is... Okay, Aphrodite forced everything since she promised it to Paris, but was Helen okay with this?

*checks notes* so Gorgias, a sophist philosopher (oh that explains why people never talk about him) said "but if Helen was raped by violence and illegally assaulted and unjustly insulted, it is clear that the raper, as the insulter, did the wronging, and the raped, as the insulted, did the suffering." ... Well, that's interesting.

I mean sure, we can EVEN still think that somehow she was seduced or whatever, but then in the Iliad, when Aphrodite tells her to go and comfort Paris, she refuses and fights with her. Helen literally fought with a goddess, explaining that she did not want to go with Paris.

But Aphrodite is a goddess, you cannot question the will of the gods, they're GODS for a reason. So she goes in the end, with fear.

(We even have... Whatever the hell Euripides' tragedies where. Since according to him, Helen was never in Troy, instead it was an ilussion made by Aphrodite, the real Helen was in Egypt. psjdksjfkd what. I kind of like it tbh, it's fun. But since Helen says in the Iliad that she's been 20 years in Troy already, that version just doesn't feel right. ANYWAYS-)

... Wait, 20 years? Why does that sound familiar? Ah, right, the other member of this essay. Odysseus.

Helen was kept against her will in Troy for 20 years, just like Odysseus was away from Ithaka for 20 years. Dude !!

I'll go with Calypso first since people defend her less than Circe (kind of) SO, you know the deal with translators acting as anything except translations? I believe that might have been the problem, at least in English, I don't recall an Spanish translation saying that he stayed with her for 7 years because he wanted too, lmao.

I myself haven't reach that far in my degree to translate the Odyssey nor the Iliad, but I still have copies of them in the original Greek. So you see, there's some small things that I have enough level to understand and translate by myself and realize how blind we all are.

Did he want to?

You know the whole deal with people not giving words from other languages the proper definition? In this passage of the Odyssey, the word used when saying that Odysseus "slept" with Calypso was anágke (ἀνάγκῃ). Which means, HEAR ME OUT, force, it means FORCE. And this next thing is more me being risky because as I said, I'm not that far in terms of translation levels, but in the text, it's in dative, the dative is used, in a simple definition, for denote the person or object affected.

He stayed with Calypso BY FORCE !! Shock. Wow. And I mean, he literally cries everyday because his only way to cope with the fact that he's trapped is by thinking about Penelope and Ithaka while crying looking at the sea. How can you see him staying willingly being like that? And the "he just left because he got tired of her" ... So you're saying that (trying to have the most mysognistic way of thinking ever) he got tired of an inmortal gorgeous nymph who would not age? You're telling me he preferred to leave, even if it was risky, than staying in an island that was considered a paradise? Yeah, no, sorry, not buying it. HIS ASS DID NOT WANT TO BE THERE, just like how Helen did not want to be in Troy. Move on. And now and quickly because the more I talk about this topic the more tired I grow out of Circe...

Odysseus just... Never says that he wants to? That he's fine with it? He literally just saw a sorceress trap his men and planning on killing them, so what was he gonna do against that? Hermes to the rescue... More or less ! He pretty much just told him to obey what he was told to, and that if he wanted to save his men from Circe, he had to do what she asked him too, after making her swear she wasn't gonna hurt them. So what gives, you're told BY THE GODS that you have to stay there for a little while if you want to keep your men safe and convince Circe of showing you your way out of the island.

Remember? Helen did what Aphrodite told her to because you can't question the will of the gods, same goes with Odysseus and Hermes. You do what they tell you to do because they're gods... And, I mean, Circe is Helios' daughter. Do you really think you could hurt the daughter of the Sun and move away with it? No. Just look at what happened with the cows !

And now, a nice similarity to end this.

In the Odyssey, it is clearly stated that Menelaus and Helen are FINE. They still love and care for eachother, they're still husband and wife. If you truly believe Menelaus didn't believe Helen... Then read the Odyssey?

20 years appart they were, following what Helen said in the Iliad, just how Penelope and Odysseus were 20 years appart and they still loved eachother and recognized their tricks despite the time.

Both Helen and Odysseus were trapped by people who had power over them, they couldn't do anything to be freed from them unless the will of the gods stated otherwise.

So, if after this you keep believing that Helen didn't love Menelaus anymore and that she's the culprit of the Trojan War; and that Odysseus didn't care for Penelope at all and he stayed with Circe and Calypso because he wanted too... Maybe you should start wearing glasses, since apparently you can't read well?