Helen

But Hera said to Athena, "Alas, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus, unweariable, shall the Argives flee home to their own land over the broad sea, and leave Priam and the Trojans the glory of still keeping Helen, for whose sake so many of the Achaeans have died at Troy, far from their homes?

for he longed to avenge the toil and sorrow that he had suffered for the sake of Helen.

therefore let none make haste to go till he has first lain with the wife of some Trojan, and avenged the toil and sorrow that he has suffered for the sake of Helen.

And besides, I think it not right to pass over the matter of Helen, who, called the daughter of Zeus, through the unjust report became infamous for her shame, but through her own power was held a goddess among the Greeks.

"And you," he said, "are so ridiculously disposed because of these things that you say a poet who was persuaded by Homer and composed everything the same about Helen, Stesichorus, I think, was blinded by Helen, as having lied, and again recovered his sight when he had composed the contrary.

and later, when Alexander had died, of whom she is said to be enamored, that she lived with Deiphobus, as though, I think, Aphrodite had promised her to him too, and that she would not go to her own husband nor would the Trojans give Helen back by force, until the city was taken.

While he was thus in two minds Helen came down from her high-vaulted and perfumed room, looking as lovely as Artemis herself.

Helen wept, Telemakhos wept, and so did Menelaos, nor could Peisistratos keep his eyes from filling, when he remembered his dear brother Antilokhos whom the son of bright Dawn had killed.

In this disguise he entered the city of Troy, and no one said anything to him.

Hera and Kypris, and the virgin daughter of Zeus, wishing to have the judgment of their loveliness decided.

if ever I should come home, I would be shut out by barred doors, for people would think I was that Helen of Troy, coming back with Menelaos.

and also the one whom Artemis once drove from her chorus, as a deer with horns of gold, the Titan girl, daughter of Merops, because of her loveliness;

Helen, your sister, sends you these libations as her gift, fearing herself to approach your tomb from terror of the Argive mob and bid her harbor kindly thoughts towards me and you and my husband;

Beside his wretched corpse I sit, sleepless—for corpse he is, so faint his breath— not that I reproach him with his sufferings;

and yet I am truly sorry for the death of my sister Clytemnestra, whom I never saw after I was driven by heaven-sent frenzy to sail as I did to Ilium;

but the Greeks, for the sake of a Lacedaemonian woman, recruited a great armada, came to Asia, and destroyed the power of Priam.

So he carried off Helen.

I guess this is a temple of Helen, daughter of Tyndarus, partly because I have heard the story of Helen 's abiding with Proteus, and partly because it bears the name of the Foreign Aphrodite:

Helen’s trouble was not of her own choosing, but sent by heaven, and it proved a great benefit to Hellas;

’Twas no bride Paris took with him to the towers of Ilium, but a curse to his bed when he brought Helen to her bower.

Helen might have asked thee this, seeing that she said goodbye to thy affection and tripped off with her young gallant to a foreign land.

Helen, your mother’s sister, is the cause of many evils to the Hellenes and to your house.

For though your beauty, and Helen’s, is worthy to bring you praise, yet you two were born true sisters, both frivolous, not worthy of Castor.

But as for your mother, Menelaus, who has arrived at Nauplia only now after capturing Troy, will bury her, with Helen helping him;

He should have demanded Helen as a victim at his tomb, for she it was that proved his ruin, bringing him to Troy;

to see that Spartan woman, Helen, sister of the sons of Zeus, in such a plight;

Woe and tribulation were made my lot in life, when Alexander first cut his beams of pine in Ida’s woods, to sail across the heaving sea in quest of Helen’s bed, loveliest woman on whom the sun-god turns his golden eye.

Now when they had once pledged their word and old Tyndareus with no small cleverness had beguiled them by his shrewd device, he allowed his daughter to choose from among her suitors the one towards whom the sweet breezes of Aphrodite might carry her.

for our husbands tell us that fair-haired Menelaus and high-born Agamemnon are leading them to Troy on a thousand ships in quest of Helen, whom Paris the herdsman carried off from the banks of reedy Eurotas, his gift from Aphrodite, when that queen of Cyprus entered beauty’s contest with Hera and Pallas at the gushing fountain.

and he, finding Menelaus gone from home, carried Helen off, in mutual desire, to his steading on Ida.

To Helen bear at dawn of day!

A lightsome dawn to hear her wail

Her brother sworn, her King who came

and with them Spartan Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, justly counted among the captives.

But I, for all my frenzy, will so far rise above my frantic fit, that I will prove this city happier far than those Achaeans, who for the sake of one woman and one passion have lost a countless army in hunting Helen.

Never, never let me see Eurotas’ swirling tide, hateful home of Helen, there to meet and be the slave of Menelaus, whose hand laid Troy waste!

The right course is therefore to feel towards pleasure as the elders of the people felt towards Helen, and to apply their words to her on every occasion;

and to the expedition of the Amazons against Athens and the rape of Helen by Theseus, nine years.

A sorry expedition yours, to have sailed to the land of Phrygia for the sake of one woman!

Are ye the men who visited on Ilium, that bordereth on Scamander’s wave, the rape of Helen, worst of women?

Did you take Troy and capture the famous Helen?

Would that, by my mistress’ prayers, Helen, Leda’s dear child, might happen to leave Troy and come here, where she might die, crowned over her hair by the bloody water, her throat cut by the hands of my mistress, and so pay her requital.

But no breeze from Zeus ever came, or a boat, bringing Helen here, through the rocks of the Symplegedes—Helen who destroyed me, with Menelaus, so that I might avenge myself on them, setting an Aulis here against that one there, where the Danaids overpowered me and were going to sacrifice me like a calf, and my own father was the priest.

Has Helen come back to Menelaus’ home?

Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake:

Thus in Homer, in the agreement between Paris and Menelaus, that Helen should be given up to the conqueror, when compared with what follows, it is evident that by the conqueror is meant the combatant, who killed the other.

They championed one lone woman wronged, but he staved off from all Greek women the violence coming upon them, aided by these men who now are being buried with him.

heroes whom he so far excelled, though his exploits were akin to theirs, that they with all Greece at their side took but one city, while he with his native town alone brought low the whole power which held Europe and Asia beneath its sway?

This is the reason why, of those who have wished to discuss a subject with eloquence, I praise especially him who chose to write of Helen, because he has recalled to memory so remarkable a woman, one who in birth, and in beauty, and in renown far surpassed all others.

As for Helen, daughter of Zeus, who established her power over such excellence and sobriety, should she not be praised and honored, and regarded as far superior to all the women who have ever lived?

While he was devoted most of all to the son of Alcmena and to the sons of Leda, yet his preference for Helen, as compared with Heracles, was so great that, although he conferred upon his son strength of body, which is able to overpower all others by force, yet to her he gave the gift of beauty, which by its nature brings even strength itself into subjection to it.

For he conceived of his mission in terms so lofty that he was not satisfied with making up his army from all the men in private station whom he desired to have from each of the cities of Hellas, but even persuaded men of the rank of kings, who were accustomed to do in their own states whatsoever they pleased and to give orders to the world at large, to place themselves under his command, to follow …

Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack

Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment

And are not the pleasures with which they dwell inevitably commingled with pains, phantoms of true pleasure, illusions of scene-painting, so colored by contrary juxtaposition as to seem intense in either kind, and to beget mad loves of themselves in senseless souls, and to be fought for, as Stesichorus says the wraith of Helen was fought for at Troy through ignorance of the truth?

They send envoys to the Trojans, demanding back Helen and the treasures;

And after this Achilles conceives a desire to behold Helen, and Aphrodite and Thetis brought them together to the same place.

Meanwhile Aphrodite brings Helen together with Alexander;