Helen of Troy

Zeus pursued Nemesis across the earth and the sea. She changed her form as she fled, but Zeus followed in animal shapes. At Rhamnus in Attica, he disguised himself as a swan pursued by an eagle. He took refuge against Nemesis and forced an embrace upon her. In time, Nemesis laid an egg.

Hermes carried the egg to Sparta. He placed it between Leda’s thighs while she sat on a stool with her legs apart. Leda, the wife of King Tyndareus, received the egg and kept it safe. In another local account, she found it lying in a marsh. It was hyacinth-coloured, and she hid it in a chest.

The egg opened, and Helen emerged from it. Nemesis was regarded as her mother, while Leda suckled and raised her. Helen was later known as Helen of Sparta and Helen of Troy. Zeus placed the figures of the Swan and the Eagle in the heavens to preserve the memory of his ruse.

Other accounts change the birth. Some say the egg fell from the moon. Others say that Leda herself laid an egg after Zeus approached her in the form of a swan. In that version, Helen came from Leda’s egg rather than Nemesis’s. The egg produced by Nemesis was displayed at Sparta, where visitors could see it.

Asphalion, a servant of Menelaus, poured water over the hands of Helen, Telemachus, and the others at dinner in Sparta. They reached for the food before them. Menelaus suggested that they should think again about dinner, since he and Telemachus would have stories to tell each other at length on the following day.

Helen then thought of another matter. She cast an Egyptian drug, nepenthe, into the wine in the mixing bowl. The servants served the wine, and Telemachus drank it. Helen explained that the drug drove away care, grief, sorrow, anger, and the memory of troubles. Whoever drank wine mixed with it would not shed a tear for the rest of that day, even if both parents fell dead, or if a brother or beloved son were killed before his eyes.

Helen had received the remedy from Polydamna, the wife of Thon, an Egyptian woman. Egypt was a land where many herbs grew. Some were suitable for mixing into drink, while others were poisonous. Its people were also skilled in healing, since they were descended from Paeeon. Helen’s addition of nepenthe gave Telemachus relief from grief during the meal.

Odysseus entered Troy dressed as a beggar, looking like a beaten slave. He had avoided recognition by behaving as though he deserved punishment. The young men of Troy heard him and gathered by the wall. Thrasymedes whipped him with a bowstring until he was exhausted. The crowd continued beating him until he fell bleeding. After Thrasymedes kicked him and left, Odysseus lay still, then cursed the Greeks and crawled towards the Scaean gate.

Helen came down from the gate tower because she pitied the man’s treatment. She alone saw through his disguise. She questioned him, but he avoided her questions. She brought him into her house, where Paris was absent, and ordered warm water and new clothes. Helen herself washed the beggar and rubbed him with olive oil, then clothed him. Odysseus told her the Achaeans’ plans, and she swore not to reveal that he was Odysseus before he returned to the Greek ships and huts. He later killed many Trojans and carried information back to the Argives.

Helen gave him a golden phial containing an Egyptian drug and provided meat and wine. When his strength returned, Odysseus put on his old rags again. He took his wallet and staff, hid the phial in his rags, and put the new clothes into his wallet. He said that he must remain in Troy as a beggar for several days. If he escaped from Helen’s house that night, the Trojans might believe that she had disclosed their counsels to the Greeks and might punish her.

Before dawn, Odysseus crept through a quiet lane to the eastern gate, which the Greeks had never attacked. He told the sentinels that he had collected food for a long journey and showed them a bag filled with bread and broken meat. They let him pass. He followed the road used to bring wood from Mount Ida, then entered a dark thicket when no one was watching. There he slept until evening. He took Helen’s new clothes from the wallet, put them on, and prepared to leave the beggar’s disguise behind.

Paris arrived in Sparta after he had judged Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, and he claimed Helen as the prize Aphrodite had promised him. Helen had already chosen Menelaus from among her many suitors, after Tyndareus allowed her to make the choice. Menelaus, the younger brother of Agamemnon, became regent of Sparta through the marriage. Helen and Menelaus had a daughter, Hermione, and she was their only child.

Helen and Menelaus lived in Sparta until Helen left with Paris for Troy. In one telling, Paris abducted her. In another, she left willingly. Hermione was nine years old when Helen departed. Helen left her in the care of her sister Clytemnestra, who was Agamemnon's wife. Agamemnon then called the Greek warriors together to aid Menelaus, because Tyndareus had required Helen's suitors to support the marriage and to come to the couple's assistance when necessary.

As Hermione grew older, she became betrothed to Orestes, the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. The marriage did not take place. One telling connected this failure with Orestes's killing of his mother. Another said that Tyndareus had already given Hermione to Orestes at Sparta while Menelaus was away at Troy, so Menelaus did not know of the arrangement.

A different telling said that Menelaus had promised Hermione to Neoptolemos if Neoptolemos captured Troy. At Troy, Menelaus had first promised her to Neoptolemos, and the gods later brought the marriage about. Hermione's marriage was therefore linked to Helen's departure with Paris and to the war that followed. Helen had no further child after she bore Hermione.

After Helen died, the gods granted her immortality. She did not remain among ordinary mortals. Instead, she went with Menelaus to the Elysian Fields, fulfilling the prophecy that Proteus gave to Menelaus in the Odyssey. The account connects their destination with Helen’s descent from Zeus, since she was his daughter.

The Elysian Fields lay at the ends of the earth, near the western edge of the river Oceanus. They were described as a place without snow or winter’s cold. Breezes from Oceanus and the west wind cooled the land, where mortals lived without hardship. In Homer’s account, Rhadamanthus presided there.

Helen and Menelaus therefore shared an immortal existence beyond ordinary death. Their dwelling was also associated with the Isles of the Blessed. These islands were imagined as a home at the ends of the world for people whom the gods had spared from death. Later traditions placed Elysium in the Underworld. The older account placed it in a distant land beyond the mortal world, where the climate remained mild and the inhabitants lived free from the conditions that afflicted other mortals.

Aphrodite ordered Helen to join Paris. Helen was in Troy because Paris, a Trojan prince, had seduced and taken her from Menelaus, her husband and Agamemnon’s brother. The Greeks had come to Troy under an alliance treaty to recover her. Aphrodite’s order therefore directed Helen back towards the man whose actions had brought her to Troy and helped cause the war.

Helen refused to obey. She reproached Aphrodite for forcing her into the disastrous relationship with Paris. Her response rejected the goddess’s attempt to impose again the union that had separated her from Menelaus. Helen treated Aphrodite as responsible for pressing her towards a man she did not accept as suitable for her.

The demand followed the conflict between Paris and Menelaus. Lambs had been sacrificed and oaths had been taken before the two men fought. Paris threw his spear first, but it failed against Menelaus’s shield. Menelaus pierced Paris’s shield and breastplate, then struck at his helmet with a sword. He seized Paris by the crest of his helmet, but the chin-strap broke. When Menelaus looked again, Paris had disappeared. The Greeks believed that Aphrodite had hidden him in a thick cloud.

After saving Paris, Aphrodite required Helen to join him. Helen refused to accept Paris as worthy of her. She rejected the goddess’s demand rather than acknowledge Paris as a suitable partner. The dispute placed Aphrodite’s command against Helen’s refusal while the Greeks continued their effort to recover Helen from Troy.

Helen dies and joins Achilles as his bride on White Island in the Black Sea. This is a posthumous legend in which Helen is immortal and Achilles has already passed from the world of the living. Their marriage takes place after the deaths of both heroes, beyond the events of the Trojan War.

Achilles’ connection with White Island belongs to a wider account of his fate after death. In the Aethiopis, Thetis, accompanied by the Muses and her sisters, takes Achilles’ body from the funeral fire and carries it to White Island, also called Leuke. There, according to the inferred continuation of the story, she revives him and makes him immortal. The island therefore becomes his dwelling after death, and it is there that Helen is said to join him.

Helen had been the wife of Menelaus before Paris took her away, an act that led to the Trojan War. Another tradition says that she never went to Troy. Stesichorus held that the gods carried her to Egypt, where Menelaus later found her, while a phantom of Helen went with Paris instead. These accounts concern the events of her life, but the story of her end places her with Achilles on White Island.

The White Island tradition also overlaps with accounts that place Achilles among the Isles of the Blessed or in Elysium. Pindar says that Thetis carried him to the Isles of the Blessed. Ibycus and Simonides placed him in Elysium with Medea. Homer instead has Achilles in Hades, where he complains to Odysseus about his fate as ruler of the dead. The marriage of Helen and Achilles belongs to the White Island version of his afterlife.