HELENA, the daughter of Leda (wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta), and of Jupiter, who, under the form of a swan, had obtained the favours of the queen. In consequence of this amour she produced two eggs, from one of which sprang Castor and Clytemnestra (both mortal, as being children of Tyndareus), and from the other Pollux and Helena, who were considered immortal, as the offspring of Jupiter.
From her infancy she possessed that dazzling beauty which became in the course of time so fatal to her admirers. About the age of ten she was carried off by Theseus, who concealed her at Aphidæ, in Attica, under the protection of his mother Æthra. She was rescued by her brothers, Castor and Pollux, who discovered her place of concealment by means of Academus. They carried off at the same time Æthra, who henceforth remained the captive slave of Helen. This adventure did not prevent her from being sought in marriage by all the young princes of Greece. The most celebrated of her suitors were Menelaus, Diomedes, Philoctetes, Idomeneus, Merione, Amphilochus, Patroclus, the two Ajaxes, Teucer, Antilochus, Ulysses, with others to the number of thirty. Her father, Tyndareus, was alarmed at the number of her suitors, believing that the preference he showed to one would bring on him the displeasure of all the rest. He was relieved from this dilemma by Ulysses, on condition he should receive the hand of his niece Penelope in marriage. His advice was to bind all the princes by an oath that they would yield implicitly to the will of the princess, and that they would unite to defend her if any attempt should be made to carry her off from the arms of her husband. The rivals consented, and Helen decided in favour of Menelaus, who thus became the heir apparent, and soon afterwards possessor, of the throne of Sparta. By her he had a daughter, Hermione, and two sons, Morrhaphius and Diethus.
Venus had promised to Paris the possession of the most beautiful of women. At her instigation, he proceeded to Sparta during the absence of Menelaus, and succeeded in gaining the affections of Helen, and in inducing her to quit her husband and her country. It was in vain that Menelaus sent to Troy to demand back his wife, in vain that the sons of Atreus threatened that all Greece would march against
Troy. During the celebrated Trojan War she remained faithful to Paris, and had by him Bunichus, Agane, Idæus, and Corythus. On the death of Paris she married Deiphobus, the bravest of the sons of Priam after Hector; and on the taking of Troy, she is said to have betrayed him in order that she might gratiate herself with Menelaus. It appears that Menelaus forgave her, and that they proceeded on their way to Sparta, where, according to some, they did not arrive till the space of eight years had elapsed. Here they received the visit of Telemachus, who had been sent by his mother in search of his father Ulysses. And here the legend of Homer ends. According to Euripides, she was killed by Orestes, her son-in-law, or she was banished by her step-sons, Megapenthes and Nicostratus, when she retired to the island of Rhodes, where she was suffocated in a bath.