Well, wwh, you will be pleased to know that I read in Fagles' translation tonight about Telemachus' visit to Menelaus' home. He meets Helen there--the initial cause of all the following disasters--and in Fagles' translation, she refers to herself as a 'whore'--no joke. Ha! Well, not exactly. She says she was once a 'whore.' I read the section to my daughter, and she was pretty much shocked by Fagles' word choice there. I just got a good laugh out of my daughter's reaction when I read the passage and didn't prepare her for it--just to see the full impact of the word coming out of Helen's mouth.

Oh, what the heck. Here's the passage:

[Helen, speaking about Telemachus, who has at this point not identified himself to Menelaus and Helen]: "To the life he's like the son of great Odysseus-surely he's Telemachus! The boy that hero left a babe in arms at home when all you Achaeans fought at Troy, launchng your headlong battles just for my sake, shameless whore that I was."

I wonder whether the other famous translators also used the word whore?