Alt-Hist; the reality. (ATTN: This is not a Timmy like thread)

[Ideologue]

You might be disappointed.
Helen would probably look ugly and hairy to our modern eyes.
Not to mention too fat and too old.

Interestingly, if you add up the dates--and bearing in mind that her, Klytemnestra, Castor, and Polydeuces form a quadruplet set--Helen winds up being like 40 or 50 by the time of Homer's Iliad.  I worked it out once, but she had to be way older than Paris.  She'd also had five children.   All of whom died except for Hermione, but I forget what happened to her (she was Menelaus' only child iirc).  (Of course, according to some traditions she was also a demigoddess, daughter of Zeus like Polydeuces, so maybe that too fat/too old shit doesn't apply in the first place.)

Of course, the other part is the Spartan monarchy passed through her bloodline from Tyndareus, and was Menelaus' only by marriage/what seems to be in the context of what happened to Helen's sister and the fact that Tyndareus is still very much alive when Menelaus becomes king, very thinly veiled threat of force.

[Razgovory]

Ide, those myths don't have dates.  They didn't really happen.

[Ideologue]

Ide, those myths don't have dates.  They didn't really happen.

Duh.  But it's fun to connect them and see how they fit in the context of the whole.

[Razgovory]

The Greeks themselves couldn't agree upon a chronology for their heroes.

[Ideologue]

The Greeks themselves couldn't agree upon a chronology for their heroes.

Not the point.  The point is choosing the stories I like best, and which, for me, best form a coherent and interesting narrative.  And the idea of the Atreides killing, raping, and threatening their way into hegemonic status, and the Trojan War being largely about neutralizing Helen and Paris as a threat to that hegemony, is coherent, plausible, and interesting to me.  And I don't think it's too much to imagine a thruline to the Bronze Age stories of Helen and Klytemnestra trying to achieve their goals and ultimately losing to the villains.  I mean, the Oresteia is literally about Agamemnon's line's ultimate triumph, a completely unjust matricide vindicated by the gods.

[jimmy olsen]

I am pretty sure that Tyr doesn't know how to make any of those things or even begin to design them.  For that matter, does anyone on here?

I'm sure a few of us remember our courses in thermodynamics, electromagnetism, chemistry and the like. Enough to make a huge difference anyway.

Depends when how far you go back, doesn't it?  If you go back one hundred years, a few college courses in Physics and Chemistry aren't likely to be enough.  Go back too far, and they probably won't do you that much good either.  You may know what elements make up a chemical compound, but finding those materials in large quantities might be difficult in say 8th century Germany.

So 1750s Britain is just right

[Razgovory]

Uh, I guess.  Depends on what you want to do.  Also, you are about my age, so you probably haven't had a Small Pox inoculation.