Introduction

“Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--"

So wrote Christopher Marlowe of one of the most famous names in history: Helen of Troy.  But who was Helen and what was life like for women of that era?"  

Join us as we talk to again with Max Dashu, noted scholar of women in history, about Helen of Troy and women in that portion of the Bronze Age.  Were there still strands of matriarchy in these highly phallo-centric cultures? How did women express their power in the time of the Trojan War?  What about Cassandra and Antigone and the other women immortalized in the Epic Cycle of the Trojan War?  

Of course, at the center of it all is the question: Who was this Helen, the woman whose faced launched a thousand ships?

Sean Marlon Newcombe and Dawn "Sam" Alden co-host.