Immobility and Motion in Colluthus’ The Abduction of Helen

Abstract The poets of that time seek to find a way to engrave their names on the wall of immortality through their works. One way of achieving this was by “filling in the gaps” Homer left in his poems, or continuing through them the stories he started. Colluthus, a Greek poet of Egypt, who lived under the reign of Anastasius (5th-6th centuries AD), is known as the author of the short poem The Abduction of Helen. This “prequel” to the Iliad comes after a very long tradition of legends concerning the beginning of the war of Troy. In the present paper I will study how Colluthus uses his characters’ immobility and motion in The Abduction of Helen. I will show that motion always causes a catastrophe, whereas immobility is a synonym for forced inaction or imprisonment.