For centuries, Helen of Troy has been portrayed as a woman whose beauty was so great that it caused a war. Revered for her flowing hair and breathtaking features, she eloped with Paris, sparking the siege of Troy after her husband raised an army to take her back.
But, more than 3,000 years after events described in The Iliad, Helen is to undergo a dramatic historical reappraisal. According to a controversial new book, she was more likely to have been a shaven-headed, bare-breasted warrior princess whose appetite for sex was matched only by her insatiable bloodlust.
Sadly, no real specifics of where she got these ideas from so it's hard to judge. We suspect that she wasn't much like the usual portrayals, much as we're beginning to see Cleopatra as much more of a mannish, powerful, intelligent ruler rather than the hot vixen usually shown in the movies.