Helen

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.

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?

Concerning these things, then, Tyndareus took counsel with his sons.

And concealing this absurdity, Homer represented Helen wondering at it;

For Tyndareus said it was enough for him to be allied by marriage with him;

Then Zeus’ daughter Helen bethought her of another matter.

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

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

Helen:

Helen:

Helen:

Helen:

Helen:

Helen:

So he carried off Helen.

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

Brought from Sidon, crossing the broad sea,

Peleus:

’Twas not I that slew him, but Helen that mother of thine.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Her choice fell on Menelaus;

Phoebe, Clytemnestra my wife, and Helen;

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

you have lost countless men for the sake of one woman and her hateful bed.

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

That Zeus was never father of yours I boldly do assert, bane as you have been to many a Hellene and barbarian too.

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.

Chorus:

Did you take Troy and capture the famous Helen?

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

Has Helen come back to Menelaus’ home?

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.

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?

And she displayed her own power to the poet Stesichorus also;

All these personages Helen surpassed in proportion as she excelled them in the beauty of her person.

And I can produce the city of the Spartans, which preserves with especial care its ancient traditions, as witness for the fact;

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 the voices of poets made known the youthful excellence of Achilles to those who had been unaware of it—Achilles, who stained the vine-covered plain of Mysia, spattering it with the dark blood of Telephus, and bridged a homecoming for the Atreids, and freed Helen, cutting with his spear the sinews of Troy, which had once tried to keep him from marshalling on the plain the work of man-slaying wa …

From there we have received the feast with its many sacrifices, and at your banquet, Carneian Apollo, we honor the well-built city of Cyrene, which is held by foreigners who delight in bronze, the Trojan descendants of Antenor.

He himself died, the heroic son of Atreus, when at last he returned to famous Amyclae, and he caused the destruction of the prophetic girl, when he had robbed of their opulent treasures the houses of the Trojans, set on fire for Helen«s sake.