Hector and Iliad VI
Homer?s Iliad is the tale of the ninth year of the Trojan War, narrating events in both the Trojan city and the Achaean camp. The work is grand in its scope and remains character driven; for this reason we still discuss Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, and Paris as if they were real people.
The Menelaion: A Local Manifestation of a Pan-Hellenic Phenomenon
Sparta, the mythological birthplace and home of the Homeric heroine, was alleged to have worshiped her at two sites, at a shrine within the polis and at a shrine several kilometers outside the polis.8 We know very little about the former shrine, but the latter has been archaeologically attested; the partial walls and foundations of a fifth-century BCE monument to Helen of Sparta and her husband Menelaos, known as the Menelaion, have been recovered on a ridge near the west bank of the Eurotas.