I volti di Elena

The volume offers readers a coherent introduction to the long tradition that shaped the many facets of Helen from Homer to Late Antiquity. Originating from conferences held at Villa Vigoni, it invites a renewed reading of key texts and of their close connection to Helen’s remarkable afterlife, already evident in her first appearance in the Iliad, where tensions between guilt and innocence, responsibility and passivity emerge. Through contributions on lyric poetry, drama, philosophy, and later Greek literature, the volume traces how Helen came to function as a paradigm that spans periods and genres alike.