Traveling with Helen: The Itineraries of Paris and Menelaus as Narrative Doublets

Abstract

The journey of Paris from Sparta to Troy and the journey of Menelaus from Troy to Sparta are narrative doublets that feature in the Epic Cycle. Both men follow a typical and historical pattern of mobility between Greece and the Levant before reaching their destination. These similarities constitute a proleptic doublet, where Paris’s journey is a less elaborate iteration of a story pattern that appears again in the nostos of Menelaus. In our known epics, the doublets appear near the beginning of the Cypria and at the very end of the Nostoi.