Helenus

Also Known As: Greek Ἕλενος, Helenos; called by Homer far the best of the augurs among the Trojans, and the twin brother of Cassandra
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He reads the future accurately and, unlike his twin sister, people act on what he tells them.
Role in Mythos: He is Troy’s own seer who ends up telling the Greeks how to take the city, then outlives the war, marries his brother’s widow and builds a small replica of Troy in Epirus.
Relation to Humans: He is mortal, and the most useful man on either side of the war. He is also the only member of Priam’s household who gets old somewhere pleasant.

There is a moment in the lost epic Cypria, preserved only as a one-line summary, where the two of them prophesy in the same breath. Helenus tells Paris what is going to happen if he sails. Cassandra foretells the events of the future. Two children of Priam, twins, both correct, described in the same sentence with nothing to separate them.

One of them spends the rest of literature screaming at people who will not listen. The other gets listened to constantly, and no ancient source ever explains why.

That is the interesting fact about Helenus and it is easy to miss because he is scattered thinly across a lot of texts. Homer calls him by far the best of the augurs, and puts him to work. In the sixth book of the Iliad it is Helenus who tells Hector to go back inside the walls and have the older women take a robe to Athena’s temple, and Hector goes, immediately, without arguing. In the seventh book Helenus overhears Apollo and Athena settling between themselves that the fighting should pause, and he tells Hector to challenge the best of the Greeks to single combat, and Hector does that too. He is not a mystic figure standing apart from the action. He is a staff officer with unusually good intelligence, and the commander does what he says.

He fought as well, which people forget. In the thirteenth book he puts an arrow into Menelaus, and Menelaus puts a spear through his hand, and he goes off the field with his fingers ruined.

Then Troy runs out of time, and the story does something to him that it does to nobody else.

The summary of the Little Iliad is blunt about it. Odysseus lies in wait and catches Helenus, and Helenus prophesies as to the taking of Troy. That is all it says, and everything after it follows: Diomedes is sent to Lemnos to fetch Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles, Neoptolemus is brought from Scyros and given his father’s armour, and the Palladium is stolen out of the citadel. The conditions for destroying Troy came out of the mouth of a son of Priam, under capture, and the Greeks went down the list and satisfied them one at a time. Philoctetes then killed Paris, his own brother, with the bow he had been sent for.

Whether he was tortured, bargained with, or had simply had enough of a war his family started, the sources do not agree and mostly do not say. What they agree on is the outcome. He talked.

He is one of the very few people in the whole cycle for whom things afterwards get better. In the third book of the Aeneid, Aeneas puts in on the coast of Epirus and finds a small city there that stops him where he stands, because it is Troy. Not the real one. A little Troy, with a copy of Pergamum and a dry stream bed somebody has named Xanthus. Andromache is at a cenotaph outside the walls, pouring offerings to a Hector who is not buried there. Neoptolemus took her as a slave, then set her aside for Hermione and was killed at his own father’s altar by Orestes, and part of the kingdom came to Helenus along with the widow. So the seer of Troy is now a king in Greece, married to his dead brother’s wife, in a scale model of the city he helped bring down.

He is still perfectly accurate. He tells Aeneas the route: not the short crossing, the long way round Sicily; Scylla on the right and Charybdis on the left, and the chasm that swallows the sea three times a day; find the Sibyl at Cumae; and you will know the place to stop when you find a white sow lying under the oaks with thirty piglets. Aeneas does all of it. The last thing Troy’s prophet does in the surviving literature is give accurate directions to the man who will found Rome.

His gift has no ceremony attached to it. He reads birds and he overhears gods, and the second is the rarer talent: the Iliad shows him catching a conversation between two Olympians that was not addressed to him. What makes him effective is not the seeing but the credibility, and the credibility is the thing nobody accounts for. Cassandra was cursed by Apollo so that her true words would never be believed. No source gives Helenus a corresponding blessing. He simply is believed, by his brother, by his father, by the Greeks who captured him, and finally by Aeneas, and the silence around that asymmetry is louder than an explanation would have been.

The limit is the obvious one, and it is the limit on every seer in the tradition. Knowing does not help. He knew what would happen if Paris sailed, and Paris sailed. He knew Troy would fall, and it fell, and the only thing his knowledge ever actually changed was the schedule of the fall, in the wrong direction, once he was on the other side. He ends up safe and prosperous in a copy of a city, which is either the happiest ending anyone in this story gets or a fairly exact description of what it costs to be right.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Helenus in Greek mythology?

Helenus was a son of Priam and Hecuba, the twin brother of Cassandra, and a prophet whom Homer calls by far the best of the Trojan augurs. He advised Hector during the war, was captured by Odysseus, and told the Greeks the conditions under which Troy could be taken.

Is Helenus the same as Cassandra?

They are twins with the same gift and opposite fortunes. In the summary of the lost Cypria both of them prophesy in the same sentence, but Cassandra was cursed by Apollo never to be believed while Helenus is believed by everyone who hears him. No ancient source explains why the two were treated so differently.

What did Helenus tell the Greeks?

After Odysseus ambushed and captured him, Helenus prophesied about the taking of Troy. The Greeks acted on it directly: Diomedes fetched Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles from Lemnos, Neoptolemus was brought from Scyros, and the Palladium was stolen from the citadel. Philoctetes then killed Paris, who was Helenus’s own brother.

What happened to Helenus after the Trojan War?

He ended up ruling part of Epirus and married Andromache, his brother Hector’s widow, after Neoptolemus abandoned her and was killed by Orestes. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas finds the pair living in a small replica of Troy, complete with a miniature Pergamum and a stream renamed Xanthus.

What prophecy does Helenus give Aeneas?

He tells Aeneas to take the long route around Sicily rather than the short crossing, warns him about Scylla and Charybdis, instructs him to consult the Sibyl at Cumae, and tells him he will know where to settle when he finds a white sow lying under oaks with a litter of thirty. Aeneas follows the instructions and they prove correct.