Helen’s mother was a Greek and Zeus seems to be Greek in myths where he takes on human forms, so it makes a lot of sense for Helen to be portrayed as Greek
It's mythology. It's different from fiction. The Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that it was real. In fact, the Epic Cycle of the Trojan wars was seen as an account of historical facts until the Middle Ages/Renaissance.
And even today, scholars debate whether those epics have some degree of historicity or not.
The Ancient Greeks and Roman’s believed that the Trojan war was real—they didn’t believe that the writings of someone they knew to be an epic poet, not an historian.
Hellenic scholars, Alexandrian critics, and Romans like Herodotus and Thucydides did not necessarily take Homer seriously, since they could look to inconsistencies in details pertaining to genealogies, topography, and so on.
The average Greek probably looked at it the way we look at the writings of Chopper Read: “never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.”
I commented in order to underline that fiction and myth are two very different concepts.
Besides, the historicity of numerous aspects of the Trojan wars has been debated even today by specialists that now much more about this than either one of us.
And the same can be said about the Bible, particularly about the New Testament. I'm agnostic, leaning atheist, and I don't really believe in miracles, but that doesn't mean I don't think that Paul, Jesus or Pontius Pilate weren't real people.
Well, I have read The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. Have you?
And mythology is indeed different from fiction. The cultural weight of myths is completely different when compared to a work of fiction. The relationship the Ancient Greeks had with their myths was completely different from our relationship with some fictitious reality, such as Harry Potter.
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u/OscarMMG 13d ago
Helen’s mother was a Greek and Zeus seems to be Greek in myths where he takes on human forms, so it makes a lot of sense for Helen to be portrayed as Greek