Helen

The most beautiful woman in the world. Helen of Sparta was better known as Helen of Troy. So she was really Greek, not Trojan. Helen (Ἑλένη) had two main possible mothers:

One version says that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis, goddess of retribution, who in the form of a goose was ravished by Zeus in the form of swan. Nemesis laid a blue and silver egg which somehow came into Leda's possession. When the egg hatched, Helen was born. Leda brought the girl up as her own daughter.

Another version claimed that Nemesis was in her natural form. Aphrodite aided her father through a clever deception where the love goddess in the form of an eagle pursued Zeus, who was in the form of swan. The bogus swan sought protection from the eagle, in Nemesis' arms. When the Nemesis slept, the swan (Zeus) raped the goddess. Like the previous version, she laid an egg, which was found by Leda.

A more popular version was that it was Leda, daughter of Thestius, whom Zeus had seduced in the form of a swan. Helen was born from one of several golden eggs laid by Leda. This would make her the sister of Polydeuces and half-sister of Castor and Clymnestra, whose father was Tyndareüs (Tyndareus), king of Sparta. She was also a half-sister of Timandra, Phlionoë (Phlione), and Phoebe.

There is yet another version, found in the Catalogue of Women; it says that Hesiod believed that neither Nemesis nor Leda was Helen's real mother. It says that Helen was the daughter of an unnamed Oceanid who was seduced by Zeus.

Regardless of which one was her mother, authors still see Helen as the sister of Dioscuri (Castor and Polydeuces), and they were her protectors.

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While Helen was only a twelve-year-old girl, a much older Athenian hero Theseus intended to marry her. Aided by his companion Peirthoüs (Peirithous), they abducted her instead of seeking her hand in marriage from Tyndareüs. Theseus left her in the care of his mother, Aethra.

As a sister of the famous twins, Dioscuri (Castor & Polydeuces), they were more than a match for Theseus. The Dioscuri and their army attacked Athens and brought their sister back to Sparta. The Dioscuri took Aethra as a captive and used her as a slave of Helen.

Some say that Iphigeneia was a daughter of Helen and Theseus, but because of her age, Iphigeneia was brought up by Clytemnestra, as if Clytemnestra were her real mother. (See Theseus.)

Other authors say that Iphigeneia was really the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

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As she reached marriageable age, she had so many powerful suitors that Tyndareüs feared that any suitor she chose would offend the others. Odysseus solved this problem by advising the Spartan king that all suitors must swear oaths not only to accept whoever she chose, but also to render any aid to her future husband, in regard to Helen. She chose Menelaüs (Menelaus), son of Atreus and brother of Agamemnon. Menelaüs became king of Sparta. She bore him a daughter, Hermione.

When the Trojan prince, Paris came to court of Sparta, Menelaüs entertained him for a week, before leaving for Crete to attend his grandfather's funeral. During Menelaüs' absence, the goddess made Helen fall in love with Paris. Helen ran off to Troy with Paris and married him (See Judgement of Paris). This resulted in a war between the Greeks and Trojans that would last for ten years. She had the face that launched a thousand ships (1227 to be precise).

In one of the earlier scenes of Homer's Iliad, Helen watched Greeks and Trojans marshalling forces on the plain of Troy, with her father-in-law, King Priam of Troy. She identified the leaders of Greek forces for the Trojan king, such as Ajax and Odysseus. And while she looked, she wondered where her twin brothers were, not realising that they had died while she was in Troy for the last nine years.

Before the end of the war when Paris was killed, Paris' two brothers fought over her: Helenus and Deïphobus. Deïphobus won and forced her to marry him. Helenus left Troy after losing to his brother, hoping to reach Mount Ida, but Odysseus captured Helenus, who was a seer. When Troy fell to the Greeks, Menelaüs killed Deïphobus. He would have also killed Helen for her unfaithfulness and causing the long war. Though she was no longer young, she was still beautiful such that Menelaüs immediately fell under her charms again.

Either because of Menelaüs' impatience to get home or his anger at the gods for allowing the war to last so long, he neglected to sacrifice to the gods. The storm that killed the Lesser Ajax may have been the same storm that drove Menelaüs' ships off course. Of the eighty ships Menelaüs had brought to Troy; only five ships survived the storm sent by Poseidon. Menelaüs and Helen remained stranded in Egypt for seven years, before the gods allowed him to return to his kingdom.

A few years after Menelaüs and Helen returned to Sparta, a guest had arrived to find news about his father's fate. This guest was named Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. Menelaüs told Telemachus that according to the sea-god Proteus, Calypso held Odysseus captive on her island.

According to Apollodorus, he mentioned another legend that said that Helen had never been to Troy. When Paris abducted Helen, Zeus sent Hermes to spirit his daughter away to Egypt. Hermes created a phantom made of cloud, to resemble Helen. So both Greeks and Trojans had fought over an apparition. So the real Helen never committed adultery with Paris, and later Deïphobus.

This was the reason why Menelaüs was sent to Egypt after the war, so he could be reunited with his real wife. Apollodorus had derived his source from Euripides' play titled Helen.

The tragedian Euripides also wrote that the real Helen was living in Egypt when the Trojan War was fought; Paris had only carried off a phantom to Troy. Menelaüs arrived in time because Theoclymenus, the king of Egypt, wanted to force Helen to marry him. Theonoe came to their aid; it was she who arranged it so that Menelaüs and Helen escaped from her brother – King Theoclymenus. In a rage, Theoclymenus would have murdered his sister except for the intervention of a messenger and the appearance of Helen's brothers, the Dioscuri.

Upon their return, Menelaüs gave his daughter Hermione to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, in marriage. The marriage did not last long, when Orestes' madness and persecution from the Erinyes ended.

In the Euripides' play, Andromache, Orestes wanted to marry his cousin (Hermione). Menelaüs together with his daughter Hermione and his nephew Orestes, plotted the assassination of his son-in-law, Neoptolemus.

According to the Library, Apollodorus wrote that when Helen and Menelaüs died and were buried at Therapne, Hera bestowed immortality upon Menelaüs because he was the son-in-law of Zeus. Helen and Menelaüs lived their afterlife on the Isles of the Blessed (Elysium). This was in accordance with Proteus' foretelling in Egypt of Menelaüs' life, which Homer had alluded to in the Odyssey.

Some said that Helen didn't have a son by her husband Menelaus, but according to Hesiod and Apollodorus, they had a son named Nicostratus after their return from Troy.

But according to Pausanias, Helen had to flee from Sparta when Menelaüs died because Menelaüs' two illegitimate sons by a slave woman Pieris - Megapenthes and Nicostratus - had seized power in Sparta. Helen went to Rhodes, as suppliant to Polyxo, who was the widow of Tlepolemus. Tlepolemus was the son of Heracles and Helen's former suitor. So Tlepolemus had fought and died in Troy; Sarpedon, the Lycian leader, had killed Tlepolemus. Polyxo pretended to befriend Helen, but she, with the help of her maids, exacted revenge for her husband's death by hanging Helen from the tree.

Which ever way that Helen died, she was worshipped as a goddess. In Pausanias' version, she was known as Helen of the Tree; so she was a tree goddess. According to one account, when Helen went to the Blessed Isles (White Island), she was given in marriage to the hero Achilles (though, according to other sources, Achilles married Medea instead of Helen).