Hmmm...

Curator makes a case for Helen the hero: Helen's face launched a spirit of community among the Greeks

"You have to remember that she was half-divine," Schulz says. "Zeus was her father. There were temples dedicated to Helen. Girls and young women worshipped her, and the cult of Helen lasted for quite a long time."

There also was lots and lots of artwork, including some masterpieces, made of the woman held up as the epitome of female beauty.

It's easy to think of other ancient Greek women whose personal accomplishments might be more palatable to a modern, post-feminist audience. There's Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, that fierce race of warrior women. The princess Antigone was put to death for defying what she felt to be an immoral law that forbade her from burying the brother who'd been slain in war. And the resourceful Penelope kept together a small kingdom and held hostile forces at bay for 20 years while her husband was lost at sea.

Not a weakling among them.

The problem, Schulz says, is that there also isn't a lot of absolutely first-rate artwork among them - at least not in a form that the Walters could get its hands on for the exhibit.

I'm not sure about art availability as the reason for conferring upon Helen the 'hero' accolade (or in her case, it really should be heroine--really, why has our society decided to replace perfectly good feminine forms with the masculine in the name of feminism??? An female poet, editor, author, etc. is a poetess, editrix, and authoress, regardless of modern convention. Otherwise it's the equivalent of emasculating a male in language, in my view, but then I'm rather conservative on this point.) Her aspect as a demigoddess, however, I can see as putting her firmly in the league of someone like Achilles. It sounds like an interesting exhibit; too bad I live nowhere near.