the face that launched a thousand ships

Helen of Sparta was reckoned the most beautiful woman in the world — beautiful enough that kings had come from every corner of Greece to seek her hand, and her father, fearing the war that jealousy might bring, made every suitor swear an oath to defend whichever man she chose.

She married Menelaus, king of Sparta, and for a while there was peace. But Aphrodite had already promised Helen to another — to Paris, the shepherd-prince of Troy — and when Paris came as a guest to Menelaus' own hall, he carried her away across the wine-dark sea.

Then the old oath came due. King after king remembered his vow, and from every harbour in Greece the black ships slid down into the water — a thousand of them, so the poets said, their sails filling with wind, every prow turned toward Troy for the sake of one woman's face.

Ten years of siege and slaughter followed, heroes falling in the dust beneath the great walls, the whole vast machinery of it set in motion by a single beauty an ocean away. Centuries later Marlowe gave her the line that fixed her for ever: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?

We say it still of anyone whose beauty — or whose sheer power to move the human heart — is great enough to set armies marching and whole worlds turning on their account.