The Rape of Helen

Nymphs of Troy, daughters of the river Xanthus, you who so often leave behind on your father's sands the veils of your braided hair and the sacred playthings of your hands and make ready for the dance with the dancing-rounds of Ida, come now, and tell me the thoughts of the law-giving shepherd, rising from your sounding river— from what cause he came, driving over an unfamiliar sea from the mountains, knowing nothing of the works of the deep. What need was there of ships, those first authors of evil, that a herdsman should trouble the sea and the land together? And what was the ancient beginning of the quarrel, that herdsmen should pass judgment even upon the immortals? What was this sitting in judgment? Whence did he hear the name of the Argive bride? For you yourselves came and looked on, beneath the three-peaked headland of Idaean Phalacre, on Paris seated upon his lonely shepherd's chairs, and on Aphrodite, queen of the Graces, exulting.

Now upon the high-crested mountains of the Haemonians, while the marriage-songs of Peleus's wedding were being sung, at the bidding of Zeus Ganymede poured the wine; and all the race of the gods came hastening to do honour to the white-armed own sister of Amphitrite, Zeus from Olympus, and Poseidon from the sea. And from Melisseus, from fragrant Helicon, Apollo came, leading the clear-voiced choir of the Muses; and on either side, shaken among his golden locks, his unshorn cluster of hair was buffeted by the west wind. After him followed Hera, the sister of Zeus. Nor did the queen herself, Aphrodite of harmony, delay her coming to the groves of the Centaur. And Persuasion came, having fashioned a wedding-garland, lightly bearing the quiver of Eros the archer. And Athena, laying aside from her brow the heavy helmet, came to the wedding—though she is untaught in weddings. Nor did Apollo's sister, Leto's daughter, Artemis, disdain it, huntress though she is. And as Ares, bearing neither helmet nor deadly spear, comes in his iron to the house of Hephaestus, so, without breastplate, without the whetted iron, smiling he joined the dance. But Strife, left without her portion, neither Chiron heeded nor Peleus regarded. And as a heifer, strayed from the wooded pasture, wanders through lonely thickets, stung by the bloody gadfly, that driver of cattle, so Strife, subdued by heavy pangs of jealousy, roamed about, scheming how she might trouble the gods' banquet. Often, springing up from her jewelled couch, she stood, then turned and sat down again; with her hand she struck the hollow surface of the earth, and did not notice it. She wished to loose the bolts of the dark caverns, to raise the Titans up from the pits of the underworld and blot out the heaven, the seat of Zeus who rules on high. She wished to brandish the roaring thunderbolt of fire, yet she gave way to Hephaestus, resistless though she was, master of unquenchable fire and forger of iron. She planned to clash the heavy-sounding boast of shields together, in case the gods, taking fright, might start up at the din; but even from this latest crafty plan she drew back, fearing Ares, the iron shield-bearer. Now she remembered the golden apples of the Hesperides; from there Strife took up an apple, the herald-shoot of war, and devised the scheme of those notorious sorrows. Whirling in her hand the first-sown beginning of the strife, she flung it into the feast and stirred up the choir of goddesses. Hera, the consort exulting in the bed of Zeus, stood marvelling and wished to take it for her own. And Cypris, born above them all, the mightier, longed to hold the apple, since it is a treasure of the Loves; but Hera would not let it go, nor would Athena yield. And Zeus, seeing the strife of the goddesses, called his son, and to Hermes, seated below him, he spoke these words: “If you hear, my child, of one beside the streams of Idaean Xanthus, a boy, Paris, son of Priam, that splendid youth, tending his herds upon the mountains of Troy, give him the apple; and bid him judge the goddesses by the joining of their brows and the round of their faces. Let her who is judged to bear the famous fruit have the strength of the more excellent and the glory of the Loves.” So the father, son of Cronos, charged Hermes; and he, obedient to his father's commands, led the way upon the road and did not neglect the goddesses. And each sought a fairer and a better form. Cypris of the wily mind, unfolding her veil and fastening the fragrant pin that held her locks apart, bound up her braids with gold, her hair with gold. And looking on her children the Loves, she called to them thus: “The contest is near, dear children; embrace your nurse. Today the beauty of faces decides for me; I am afraid to whom this herdsman will give the apple. Hera they call the holy nurse of the Graces; they say she holds dominion and keeps the sceptre; and they always name Athena queen of wars. Cypris alone among the gods was helpless. No royal dominion do I wield, no warlike spear, no arrow do I draw. But why am I so greatly afraid, when in place of a spear-point I hold, like a swift lance, the honey-sweet bond of the Loves? I have the girdle, I drive the goad, I lift the bow, the girdle, from which women, taking the sting of my love, often travail in pain and yet do not die.” So, following on, rosy-fingered Cypris spoke. And they, hearing their mother's lovely command, the roving Loves, hastened to their nurse.

Now they had just run over the topmost peak of Ida, where beneath the stone-crowned crag of the headland young Paris was pasturing his father's flocks. Herding them on either bank, by the streams of the torrent, apart he counted the herd of gathered bulls, and apart he measured out the flocks of grazing sheep; and behind him the hide of a mountain-dwelling she-goat hung swinging and reached even to his thighs, and his shepherd's crook, the driver of cattle, lay aside. Thus, going a little way into his haunts, he pursued the clear song of the rustic reeds of his pipe; and often, singing in his lonely sheepfolds, he forgot his bulls and took no thought of his sheep. Then, holding his pipe through the fair haunts of the herdsmen, he struck up a dear melody to Pan and to Hermes; the dogs did not bay, and the bull did not bellow, but alone the airy Echo, untaught of speech, answered, sounding back among the mountains of Ida. The bulls, sated high upon the green grass, lay couched and reclining on their heavy-jointed haunches. So, beneath the high-roofed canopy of the trees, from far off, as he piped, he saw Hermes the messenger. In fear he sprang up and shunned the sight of the gods; and propping against an oak the choir of his sweet-sounding reeds, he checked his song, that had not yet laboured much. And to him, thus afraid, divine Hermes spoke: “Fling away your milk-pail and leave your fair flocks, and come here to give judgment, deciding among the heavenly ones; come here and, discerning the more excellent form of beauty, give this apple to the fairer—a lovely shoot.” So he called out; and Paris, turning a gentle eye, softly tried to discern the beauty of each. He gazed at the gleam of grey eyes, he looked at a neck cunningly wrought with gold, he marked the adornment of each, the shape of the heel behind and the very prints of their feet. Taking him smiling by the hand before the judgment, Athena spoke this speech to Alexandros: “Come here, child of Priam; leave the consort of Zeus and slight Aphrodite, queen of the bridal chambers, and praise Athena, the helper of manly valour. They say that you rule, and keep the Trojan city safe; come here, and I will make you the city's saviour for men hard pressed, lest grievous-wrathful Enyo ever bear down on you. Obey me, and I will teach you wars and manliness.” So spoke Athena of many counsels. And white-armed Hera answered her, breaking in: “If, judging, you give to me the more excellent shoot, I will make you lord of all our Asia. Despise the works of battle; what has war to do with a king? A ruler commands both the strong and the unwarlike. Not always do the servants of Athena win the prize; swiftly to death go the underlings of Enyo.” Such dominion did Hera, first-throned, offer. And Cypris, baring to the air her deep-folded robe, laid open her bosom and was not ashamed. Lightly lifting in her hand the honey-sweet bond of the Loves, she bared her whole breast and gave no thought to modesty. And smiling thus she spoke to the keeper of the flocks: “Take me, and forget wars; receive my form and my sceptre, and leave the land of Asia behind. I know nothing of the works of battle; what has Aphrodite to do with shields? Far rather do women win their prize by beauty. In place of valour I will give you a lovely consort, and in place of a kingdom you shall mount the bed of Helen; after Troy, Lacedaemon shall behold you as her bridegroom.” Not yet had she ended her speech, when he held out to her the splendid apple, the offering of beauty, a great treasure for the foam-born goddess, the nursery of war, the evil birth of war. And holding the apple in her hand, she raised her voice on high, mocking Hera and Athena, the rival of men: “Yield to me, you who are used to war, yield to me in victory. I loved beauty, and beauty pursues me. They say, mother of Ares, that in your travail you reared the sacred choir of the fair-haired Graces; yet all of them today have denied you, and you have found not one helper. You are no queen of shields, no nurse of fire; Ares did not aid you, though Ares raves with the spear, nor the flames of Hephaestus, though his breath brings fire to birth. How vainly you exult, Atrytone, you whom no marriage sowed and no mother brought to birth, but a cut of iron and a root of iron made you spring, unbegotten, from your father's head. How you wrap your flesh in robes of bronze, and flee from love and pursue the works of Ares, untaught of harmony, ignorant of concord. Do you not know that such Athenas are the more helpless, these that exult in glorious wars, with their limbs at odds—neither males nor women?” Thus, insulting her, Cypris spoke to Athena. So she won the city-sacking prize of beauty, having driven off Hera and the indignant Athena; and Paris, yearning with desire and pursuing one he had not seen, ill-fated Paris, gathered men and led them to the shadowy wood, men skilled in the toilsome craft of Atrytone. Then the oaks of many-trunked Ida were cut down and fell by the cunning of Phereclus, that first author of evil, who then, to please his frenzied king, built ships for Alexandros with timber-felling bronze. That same day he planned them, and that same day he wrought the ships, the ships that Athena neither devised nor fashioned.

Now he exchanged the mountains of Ida for the sea, and having first appeased with many shore-side offerings Aphrodite, the helper that followed him, the patroness of his bed, he sailed the Hellespont over the broad back of the deep, and to him appeared the signs of much-enduring toils. The dark sea, leaping up on high, girdled the heaven with a band of murky coils, and at once sent down rain from the cloudy air, and the deep was churned as the rowers plied their oars. Then, having passed Dardania and the Trojan land, he left behind the mouth of the Ismarian lake as he sailed, and swiftly, beyond the mountains of Thracian Pangaeus, he saw the rising tomb of husband-loving Phyllis and looked on the nine-fold course of her wandering path, where, pacing to and fro, Phyllis, you bewailed your husband, waiting for the safe return of Demophoon, whenever he should come back from the lands of Athens. Then across the deep-allotted land of the Haemonians there rose up suddenly the flowers of the Achaean country, Phthia, nurse of men, and broad-streeted Mycenae. Thence, going up beside the water-meadows of Erymanthus, he saw Sparta of fair women, the dear city of the son of Atreus, lying along the streams of the Eurotas. And near it, set beneath the shadowy wood of the mountain, he gazed upon lovely Therapne, its neighbour. Not yet was the voyage long from there, nor in the calm was the beat of the plying oars heard for long, and casting on the fair-bosomed shores of the land the ship's cables, they made fast, all who had the works of the sea in their care. But he, having bathed in the snowy river, went on, setting foot carefully in his own footprints, lest his lovely feet should be soiled with dust, lest the breezes, bearing down upon his locks beneath their cap, should toss back his hair as he hastened the faster. Now, gazing on the high-built houses of the hospitable dwellers, and on the neighbouring temples close by, he measured out the splendour of the city; here beholding the golden image of Athena of the land, and there the dear treasure of Carnean Apollo, the house of Amyclaean Hyacinthus, as he turned aside, whom once, while he played as a boy with Apollo, the people of Amyclae admired, thinking that Leto, conceiving by Zeus, had brought up this one too; yet Apollo was not consumed with jealousy, guarding the boy from the envious Zephyr. And the earth, doing a kindness to the weeping king, made a flower grow up, a comfort to Apollo, a flower bearing the name of the splendid youth. Now already, by the neighbouring halls of the son of Atreus, he stood, exulting in his divine graces. Not even to Zeus did Thyone bear so lovely a son; be gracious, Dionysus—and though you are of the race of Zeus, yet he too was fair in the splendour of his face. And she, drawing back the bolts of the hospitable chambers, Helen suddenly passed into the courtyard of the house, and looking out before the flourishing doors, as soon as she saw him, she called him and led him into the inner room, and bade him sit high upon a newly fashioned chair of silver; nor could she have her fill of looking, at one time supposing she beheld the golden chamber-attendant boy of Cytherea—but late she came to know that it was not Eros; she saw no quiver of arrows— and often, in the splendour of his bright-eyed face, she thought she gazed upon the king of the vine-clusters; but it was no ripe vintage of the vines she gazed upon, spread out at the parting of his lovely head. Late, in amazement, she raised her voice on high: “Stranger, from where do you come? Tell us too your lovely race. In splendour you seem like some illustrious king, yet I do not know your lineage among the Argives. The whole lineage of blameless Deucalion I know; you do not hold sandy Pylos, the Neleian land— I have known Antilochus, but I never saw your face— nor lovely Phthia, nurse of the noblest men; I know the whole renowned race of the Aeacidae, the splendour of Peleus, the good fame of Telamon, the ways of Patroclus and the valour of Achilles.” So, longing for Paris, the clear-voiced lady spoke; and he, opening his lips, answered in a gentle voice: “If you have heard of some land at the bounds of Phrygia, Ilion, which Poseidon and Apollo walled with towers; if you have heard of some king most rich in Troy, sprung from the well-born line of the son of Cronos— thence I, the noblest, claim all that is my kindred's. I am, lady, the dear son of Priam rich in gold, and I am of the line of Dardanus; and Dardanus was of Zeus, with whom even the gods from Olympus, companions of men, often serve, immortal though they are— of these, two built the walls of my fatherland, the gleaming walls, Poseidon and Apollo. But I, queen, am the judge of goddesses; for, giving judgment among the grieving heavenly ones, I praised the splendour of Cypris and her lovely form, and she, in return worthy of my deeds, promised to grant me a most renowned and lovely bride, whom they call Helen, the sister of Aphrodite, for whose sake I have endured to cross so great a swell. Come, let us join in marriage, since Cytherea bids it; do not shame me, do not put my Cypris to reproach. I will not speak; why should I teach you who know so much? For you know that Menelaus is of a feeble breed; no such women are born among the Argives, for, grown with frailer limbs, they have the form of men, and became bastard women.” He spoke; and she fixed her lovely gaze upon the ground, long at a loss, and the lady made no answer. Late, in amazement, she raised her voice on high: “Truly, stranger, did Poseidon and Apollo once build the foundation of your fatherland? I would long to behold those works of the immortals, and the clear-breathing pasture of lonely Apollo, where, by the god-built portals of the gates, Apollo often followed the swing-footed cattle. Take me, then, from Sparta and carry me to Troy. I will follow, as Cytherea, the queen of marriages, commands. I do not fear Menelaus, once Troy has beheld me.” Such was the compact the fair-ankled lady spoke. And Night, the rest from labours after the sun's journeys, lightening sleep, brought on the harnessed dawn at its beginning; and she opened the two gates of dreams, the one of truth—a glory of horn shone from it, from which spring up the unerring oracles of the gods— and the other of deceit, the nurse of empty dreams. But he carried Helen to the benches of the seafaring ships from the chambers of hospitable Menelaus, and exulting overmuch in the promise of Cytherea, bearing his freight, he hastened to Ilion and to the battle-cry. But Hermione, flinging her veil to the winds, wept much as the dawn was rising, and often, taking her handmaids outside the chambers, crying most shrilly, she raised her voice on high: “Maidens, where has my much-lamented mother gone, leaving me, she who yesterday, taking with me the keys of the chambers, lay down to sleep and came into one bed with me?” So she spoke, weeping, and the maidens lamented with her. And gathering on either side at the doorways, the women tried to hold back Hermione in her grief: “Child who mourn, lull your lamentation. Your mother, you suppose, will come back again; even while you weep you shall yet behold her. Do you not see? Your mournful eyes are closing, and, as you weep so often, your blooming cheeks waste away. Perhaps to the gathering of the assembled nymphs she has gone, and, straying from the straight path, stands grieving; or, having come to a meadow, she sits above the dewy plain of the Seasons, or, bathing her flesh in her father's river, she has gone and lingers by the streams of the Eurotas.” And weeping, the much-lamenting girl spoke thus: “She knows the mountain, she has learned the river's course, she knows the paths to the rose-bed, to the meadow. Why do you speak to me, women? The stars sleep, and she lies asleep among the cliffs; the stars rise, and she does not come back again. My mother, what region do you hold? What mountains do you dwell in? Did wild beasts kill you as you wandered? But even the beasts themselves tremble before the splendid race of Zeus. Did you fall from your chariot onto the back of the low dust, leaving your body in the lonely thickets? But beneath the shadowy wood of the many-trunked groves, gazing at the trees and even to their leaves, I did not see your body; and I bear no grudge against the wood. Did the calm, on the watery streams of the mournful Eurotas, hide you, swimming, beneath the waters in the depths? But even in rivers and in the seas of ocean the Naiads live, and they do not kill women.” So she lamented; and bending back her neck she breathed in sleep, the fellow-traveller of death; for indeed it was fated that both, allotted all things in common by necessity, should follow the works of their elder sister. Thence, weighed down with grieving eyelids, women often fall asleep, even while they weep. And she, straying in the deceits of dreams, thought she beheld her mother, and the girl cried out, amazed, and grieving though she was: “Yesterday, as I mourned, you fled outside the house and left me sleeping upon my father's bed. What mountain did I let go? What hills did I leave behind? Was it thus, after the lovely-haired harmony of Aphrodite?” And speaking thus, the daughter of Tyndareus answered her: “My grieving child, do not blame her who has suffered dreadful things; the deceiving man who came yesterday carried me off.” She spoke; and the girl started up, and not seeing her nurse, with a far shriller voice she cried aloud: “Birds, fair-winged children of the airy race, go back and tell Menelaus in Crete: yesterday a lawless man, coming to Sparta, laid waste all the splendour of his halls.” So, crying many tears into the air, seeking her mother, the girl wandered in vain. And past the cities of the Cicones and the strait of Aeolian Helle the bridegroom led his bride to the harbours of Dardania. And often she tore her hair, and flung away her golden veil, Cassandra, seeing the new-come woman from the citadel. And Troy, drawing back the bolts of her high-built gates, received him on his return, that townsman who was the first author of evil.