Helen of Troy- Greek DemigodDemigod"Divine Among Women"

Divine Birth

Zeus came to Leda, wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, in the shape of a swan. That same night Leda also lay with her husband, and from the double coupling she bore two eggs. Helen and Polydeuces hatched from Zeus's egg. Castor and Clytemnestra came from the mortal one. An alternative genealogy in the Cypria names Nemesis as Helen's true mother: Zeus chased Nemesis across land and sea, both of them shifting shapes, until he caught her as a swan. Nemesis laid an egg that a shepherd brought to Leda, who raised the child as her own.

Helen was stolen before she was old enough to marry. Theseus, king of Athens, wanted a daughter of Zeus for his bride and took her while she was still a child. Her brothers Castor and Polydeuces invaded Attica, rescued Helen, and carried off Theseus's mother Aethra as a slave in retribution.

The Suitors and the Oath

When Helen reached marriageable age, every prince and king in Greece came to Sparta. Odysseus and Ajax came, Diomedes and Idomeneus, and dozens more. Tyndareus faced an impossible choice: selecting one would make enemies of all the others.

Odysseus offered a solution. In exchange for help securing Penelope's hand, he proposed that every suitor swear to defend the chosen husband against anyone who wronged him regarding the marriage. All swore. Tyndareus chose Menelaus, brother of the powerful Agamemnon. The oath seemed a diplomatic safeguard. It would drag all of Greece to war.

Paris and the Abduction

Menelaus and Helen married and had a daughter, Hermione. Menelaus became king of Sparta through Helen's inheritance, and their early years were prosperous. The peace ended when Paris, prince of Troy, arrived as a guest.

Paris had been promised the world's most beautiful woman by Aphrodite, his reward for judging her lovelier than Hera and Athena on Mount Ida. He came to Sparta to collect. In the Iliad, Aphrodite's power swept Helen away against her own will. In Euripides' Trojan Women, Helen chose freely, following desire. Herodotus preserves an Egyptian tradition in which Paris was blown off course and King Proteus detained Helen, so that only her phantom reached Troy.

Helen departed Sparta while Menelaus was away in Crete attending his grandfather's funeral. She left behind Hermione, her household, and a substantial portion of the royal treasury. Menelaus returned to an empty palace and invoked the suitors' oath. Agamemnon summoned the kings of Greece, a thousand ships gathered at Aulis, and the war began.

Helen at Troy

For ten years the Greeks besieged Troy. Achilles fell to Paris's arrow guided by Apollo. Hector was dragged behind a chariot. The dead on both sides grew past counting, and at the center of all of it sat Helen, weaving.

In the Iliad she weaves a great purple tapestry depicting the battles fought for her sake. When Priam summoned her to the walls to identify the Greek champions, she came reluctantly, pointing out Agamemnon and Odysseus while calling herself a "shameless whore" and wishing she had died before following Paris. Old Priam told her gently: "I do not blame you. The gods are responsible."

She loathed Paris and berated him when he fled from Menelaus in single combat. Aphrodite had to threaten her to compel her back to Paris's bed. Helen resisted the goddess herself, calling Aphrodite a procuress and daring her to go share Paris's couch. Mortal defiance of a goddess can only go so far. Helen yielded, going to Paris in bitter tears.

She delivered the final lament over Hector's body. Of all the Trojans, he alone had never spoken a harsh word to her in twenty years. His kindness, she said, was what she would grieve.

The Fall of Troy and the Return

When the Greeks poured from the wooden horse and Troy burned, Menelaus went to find Helen with his sword drawn. He meant to kill her. But when he saw her face, still impossibly beautiful in the light of the burning city, his sword fell from his hand. Helen bared her breast, and desire conquered vengeance. She had already turned on Deiphobus, her latest Trojan husband. She took his weapons before the Greeks emerged and signaled from the walls with a torch.

The voyage home took eight years. Menelaus and Helen were stranded in Egypt, and Menelaus had to wrestle the shape-shifting sea god Proteus on the island of Pharos to learn the way back. When they finally returned to Sparta, the Odyssey shows them reconciled. They entertain Telemachus with courteous hospitality. Helen drugs the wine with nepenthe, an Egyptian herb that banishes grief and anger, and tells stories of Troy with practiced composure. Menelaus adds his own, less flattering version.

The Phantom Helen

The poet Stesichorus composed a poem blaming Helen and was struck blind. He then wrote his famous Palinode, recanting: "That story is not true. You never sailed in the benched ships. You never came to the citadel of Troy." His sight was restored. This tradition found its fullest expression in Euripides' Helen, where she waits in Egypt for seventeen years, untouched and loyal, while Greeks and Trojans slaughter each other over an empty image fashioned by Hera.

Egyptian priests told Herodotus the same story from their side: Paris was blown to Egypt, where Proteus confiscated Helen and the stolen treasure. The Greeks besieged Troy in vain because Helen was never there.

After Death

Helen was worshipped as a goddess at Therapne near Sparta, where she and Menelaus shared a hero shrine, the Menelaion, with offerings dating to the eighth century BCE. Young Spartan girls danced for her in choral rites described by Theocritus. At Rhodes she bore the cult title Dendritis, "of the Tree," and a plane tree was sacred to her.

Pausanias records two fates for her. In one, Zeus granted her immortality and brought her to Olympus. In another, she went to Leuke, the White Island in the Black Sea, wedded to Achilles. Sailors passing the island reported seeing two figures walking the shore.