While appreciative of his demi-divine prize, Paris recognizes that the affair isn’t such a good idea. But who would wish it otherwise?” They would, and their time comes when Menelaus’ discontented wife gets her wish and heads for Troy with a prince of the city, Paris. It’s no help to their egos when Clytemnestra chimes in, “you will have to content yourself with cattle raids and minor skirmishes. George ( The Memoirs of Cleopatra, 1997, etc.) honors that convention here, imagining that at least part of the misery wrought by and upon Agamemnon and Menelaus owes to their juvenile longing for a new age of heroes. Greek tragedy warns that you should always be careful what you wish for. A spirited appendix to one of literature’s greatest stories, in which the face that launched a thousand ships is supplied with a brain and a voice to match her legendary beauty.
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