Unveiling Gestures in Colluthus’s 'Abduction of Helen'

This article examines the repeated gestures of unveiling in Colluthus’s 5th-century ce epyllion, The Abduction of Helen. In the ancient Greek psychological framework, veiling is situated within embodied discourses on aidos (sexualized shame), marriage, and rape, and is linked with another repeated image: opened doors. I read Colluthus’s text as a rape narrative that is simultaneously conveyed and complicated through the multivalent symbols of the veil and door. Colluthus uses metaphoric language to express female characters’ responses to Helen’s abduction and to trace an arc through the poem from childlike innocence, to sexualized behavior and shamelessness, to destruction. By linking these contrasting psychological states, Colluthus complicates the poem’s depiction of female sexuality. Furthermore, Colluthus elides the poem’s central crisis – Helen’s abduction and her own response to it – and instead frames it with this imagery to open up interpretative possibilities for the entire poem: does Helen go willingly, or is she raped?