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THE LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN 
 
THE LEGEND OF 
 FAIR HELEN 
 
 t 
 
 AS TOLD BY HOMER, GOETHE, 
 AND OTHERS 
 
 A STUDY BY 
 EUGENE OSWALD, M.A., Ph.D. 
 
 SECRETARY TO THE ENGLISH GOETHE SOCIETY 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 
 1905 
 
|\ \'A%v\o 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 PRELUDE - - - vii 
 
 PROLOGUE - - - ix 
 
 I. homer's HELEN OF TEOY - 1 
 
 II. IN SPARTA AND TROY 35 
 
 III. THE EGYPTIAN VERSION - 101 
 
 IV. HELENA IN THE MIDDLE AGES - - 126 
 V. FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE - 136 
 
 VI. GOETHE's HELENA - 152 
 
 EPILOGUE - - - 188 
 
 INDEX - - - 198 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 ' Bewundert viel und viel gescholten, Helena.' 
 
 Goethe : Faust. 
 
 ' A daughter of the Gods, divinely tal], 
 And most divinely fair.' 
 
 Tennyson : A Dream of Fair Women. 
 
 ' Die ewig bliihende Helena von Sparta.' 
 
 Heine : Elementargeister und Ddmonen. 
 
 ' Fayre Helen, floure of beauty excellent.' 
 
 Spenser : Faerie Queene, book iii., ch. 9. 
 
 ' Her whom, we know well, 
 The world's large spaces cannot parallel.' 
 
 Shakespeare : Troilits and Cressida, II. ii. 
 
 ' The fairest woman that the poet's dream 
 Or artist hand has fashioned.' 
 
 Sir Lewis Morris : Epic of Hades. 
 
 ' Unendlich bedeutungsvoll ist die Erscheinung der 
 schonen Helena in der Sage vom Doctor Faust.' 
 
 Heine : Der Doktor Faust. 
 
 ' And from his lips broke forth a mighty cry of "Helen ! 
 Helen! Helen!"' 
 
 William Morris : The Death of Paris. 
 
 ' Death ends all tales, but this he endeth not.' 
 
 Andrew Lang : Helen of Troy. 
 
PROLOGUE 
 
 DEDICATED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ENGLISH 
 GOETHE SOCIETY 
 
 In Goethe's Helena — which Heine called 'the 
 most splendid statue that ever left the sculptor 
 Goethe's studio ' — the poet handles a treasury of 
 old, partly contradictory fables, adding some of 
 his own more modern fancies and thoughts. The 
 magician may be said to play with the whole 
 inventory, bringing before us the old as well 
 as the new precious things in rapid and unex- 
 pected intermingling, and with a total disregard 
 of time and place, but striking out from the 
 combination new sparks of light and beauty in 
 a phantasmagoria — that is his own expression — 
 of infinite enjoyment for those of us who are 
 not bound in pedantry or party spirit, who can 
 free themselves from the fetters of the antique 
 and from the new fetters of the modern so-called 
 realism. 
 
 Does Goethe's second Faust allegorize his 
 hero's excursion into the passion of the Renais- 
 
X PROLOGUE 
 
 sance for classical beauty? So the Encydo- 
 pcedia Britannica (9th edition) : 'Goethe (i^aw*^, 
 Part II.) introduces Helena--apparently to^^ 
 bolize the Greek spirit acting on th e mode m 
 mind.' Is Goethe's poem the intermingling of 
 the classic poetry with that of the Middle Ages, 
 of Achilles and King Arthur, of Helena and 
 Brunhild, of Virgil and Tasso, of the Siege of 
 Troy and the Crusades, of Homer and the spirit 
 of the Minnesingers, whence the New Spirit is 
 born, figured forth as Euphorion-Byron ? Let it 
 be this, but it is much more besides. No formula 
 seems to exhaust the riches of Goethe's words, 
 the dignity and harmony of his verse, ^ the gallery 
 of pictures he unroUs before our eyes, his praise 
 of pathetic beauty. 
 
 People find symbolism and allegory in the 
 poem. Carlyle calls it 'fantastic and figura- 
 tive ; not an allegory, but a phantasmagory — 
 properly speaking, a Mdrchen.'"^ 'The whole 
 piece has a dream-like character,' he says else- 
 where, ' and in these cases no prudent soothsayer 
 will be altogether confident.'^ 
 
 1 ' In none of Goethe's works are the marvellous beauty 
 and finish of his style carried to a higher point' (Sir 
 Theodore Martin, preface to ti-anslation o£ Faust, ii.,1886). 
 
 ^ ' Une feerie ' is the expression of the French critic 
 Lichtenberger {Faust de Goethe, Paris, 1905). 
 
 ^ Essays, vol. i., pp. 126-171. 
 
PROLOGUE xi 
 
 Helen of Troy, then, is our subject — one of 
 those beauties who stand out in history and 
 legend eternally for both the admiration and the 
 pity of mankind.^ 
 
 Listening to what I hope to have the pleasure 
 of saying to you about fair Helen, and the 
 various accounts of her, it wUl be for you to 
 decide for yourselves whether she was a real 
 person, typical of beauty, charm, failings, and 
 sufferings, such as she appeared to generation 
 after generation — a sister to Cleopatra, to Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, perhaps to Marie Antoinette 
 of France ; or was she altogether a creation of 
 fancy, or, again, a symbol or embodiment of 
 the moon — a myth, and a mere phantom of 
 beauty ? 
 
 Let me not prejudge, but go with you through 
 the charming and widespread maze, the fairy- 
 tale of fortune and misfortune. 
 
 In so doing, I shall have to say many things 
 which to a great number of my audience will 
 be as well known as to me, or better. Let them 
 
 1 ' Aber solche Zauberbilder sind verschieden von den 
 Traumen, und nicht ohne einen verborgenen Grund realer 
 Wahrheit' (Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, 1811, i. 149). 
 
 And Andrew Lang, more especially on the Song of 
 fioland : ' The theme rests on a remote historical fact, 
 altered and magnified by legend' (Homer mid the Epic, 
 1893, chap. 17). 
 
xii PROLOGUE 
 
 show kindly patience at the repetition of their 
 own knowledge for the sake of others, who may 
 be less well at home in these regions. 
 
 One more introductory remark, to disarm the 
 learned critics : I shall indiscriminately use the 
 names of Zeus and Jupiter, of Aphrodite and 
 Venus. Virgil will be with us, as well as 
 Homer. 
 
THE 
 
 LEGEND OF FAIR HELEN^ 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 Once upon a time — do not most Mdrchen begin 
 like that ? — the Earth came before the throne of 
 Zeus to complain of men, and to ask to be rid of 
 the human race. ' He had given her as a dweU- 
 ing-place to man. But the men had increased 
 and multiplied, and were wrangling and oppres- 
 sive, and generally unholy, and the Earth — 
 full-bosomed Gaia^ — though she be a powerful 
 woman, found them unbearable. In similar 
 circumstances, the Divinity sent a cleansing 
 flood, the Noachic one, that recorded by the 
 Assyrians ; and at another period, even in 
 Greek mythology, that of which Deukahon 
 and Pyrrha were the survivors. But on the 
 present occasion Zeus bethought him of another 
 
 ^ Hesiod, Theogony, verse 117. 
 
 1 1 
 
2 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 remedy. He created Nemesis^ the spirit of 
 revenge, in the second instance ; in the first, 
 that of equity. It may have done jsam_e good 
 to chasten men. Not enoughs- -Then Zeus 
 went a step farther. He created^ Helen. 
 Nemesis and Helen together .seemed-.. en ough 
 to occupy men — Nemesis, by stirring up discord 
 and retaliation ; Helen, indirectly, by her fatal 
 beauty. ^ 
 
 So we are told in the Cyprian verses^ — an 
 
 ^ Helena was generated by Zeus with Nemesis — thus 
 begins the summary of Proclus — Momos (or Prometheus, 
 or Thesis), advises Zeus to create a beautiful daughter, 
 through whom and the son of Thetis war arose between 
 Hellenes and Barbarians, which would lighten the Earth, 
 by taking many away from it. Welcker, Der epische 
 Cyclios, vol. ii., 2 Aufl., pp. 85-88. He remarks that 
 from the beginning Achilles and Helen are meant to be 
 the two principal figures, finally writing : ' So stellte also 
 das Epos den Achilleus und die Helena als Hauptpersonen 
 gleich Anfang heraus, die es gegen Ende auch zusammen- 
 fiihrt.' However, Welcker mentions also Eris in the 
 place of Nemesis, on the ground of a statement by a 
 grammarian (pp. 86, 87). Cf. also De Helena dea, by 
 Th. Heicks, Sigmaringen, 1863. Other and more widely 
 accepted legends represent Leda as the mother of 
 Helena. A middle term is found by making her merely 
 the nurse. 
 
 ^ Welcker, Der epische Cychis, vol. i., pp. 279-290, 
 refers the name to the island of Cyprus, where the cult of 
 Aphrodite prevailed, whose action in the rape of Helen 
 story is in the foreground. The Cyprians would naturally 
 give a preference to such rhapsodes as sang the praises or 
 
THE CYPRIAN VERSES 3 
 
 old poem which perhaps was as old as Homer, 
 perhaps, or probably, older. Some of the 
 Ancients ascribed it to him, and tell us that 
 when he had a daughter to marry, and possessed 
 in his old age no other riches, he gave the manu- 
 script, instead of a dowry, to Stasinus^ the 
 Cyprian, his intending son-in-law, who was 
 content with the bargain. Herodotus, the 
 father of history^ — some ungraciously add, ' and 
 of lies ' — who flourished about 450 B.C., stiU had 
 the poem, 2 and did not believe it to be Homer's. 
 Aristotle, a century later, ^ equally refers to these 
 Cypriacs.* Pausanias,^ again, who wrote his 
 survey of Greek works of art between 160 and 
 180 A.D., certainly still knew the Cyprian verses. 
 To us they are lost, save some fragments, which 
 
 legends of their island. To them the Cyprian verses were, 
 so to speak, dedicated. 
 
 1 iElian, Var. Histor., ix. 15. He mentions Pindar as 
 already having referred to this story of the dowry. 
 jElian has several times obtained his material from the 
 Cypria. In book x. 2. he refers to a poet Oroibantius, 
 and to Dares of Phrygia, whose Phrygian Iliad is 
 represented as older than Homer's. 
 
 2 Herodotus, ii. 117. ^ 334, ^g 322 b.c. 
 
 * Bracketing them with the 'Little Iliad' (Poetics, 
 part iii., The Epic Poem). 
 
 ^ Pausanias, book x., chap. 26. He also knew the 
 ' Little Iliad ' and Lesches as well as the Destruction of 
 Troy, by Stesichorus. 
 
 1—2 
 
4 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 form part of a survey preserved by two 
 Byzantine writers : Proclus, ^ in the fifth cen- 
 tury A.D., and after him, in the ninth, Photius,^ 
 in his Myriobiblon, or Bibliotheca, excerpts from 
 280 Greek writers, most of whose works are lost, 
 A modern French writer^ calls the Cyprian 
 verses ' a program to Homer, but a program 
 written after the performance.' It may be men- 
 tioned that these Cypriacs are reckoned one of a 
 number which are called the Cyclic poems,* 
 
 1 Born at Constantinople, 410; residing, very wealthy, at 
 Alexandria and Athens, highly honoured, 485 (vide Victor 
 Cousin, Prodi pMlosophi opera, 1864). Whether what is 
 published under his name {Scriptores metrici grceci, ed. 
 Westphal., 1866) of excerpts from the Cyclics is really by 
 him, or perhaps by a grammarian of the second century, is 
 represented as doubtful {Meyer's Encyclop., 5th ed., 
 1897, vol. xiv.). Observe, however, that Welcker speaks 
 of him as ' the grammarian of the second century.' 
 
 ^ Died, after a very chequered life, in a monastery 
 in Armenia, 891 (Th. Wright's D'lctionary-CyclopcEdia, 
 1862-1867). 
 
 ^ Larousse. 
 
 * On these Cyclics compare Professor Mahaffy's Classical 
 GreeTi Literature, London, 1895, pp. 101-106. Here is a 
 list of the Cyclics : 
 
 1. The Cypria, as above. 
 
 2. The JSthiopics, by Arctinus of Miletus. 
 
 3. The ' Little Iliad,' by the poet Lesches. 
 
 4. TTie Nostoi — the stories of the return of the 
 
 besiegers. 
 
 5. The Telaa:onia. 
 
THE CYCLIC POEMS 5 
 
 complementing or continuing the work ascribed 
 to Homer — poems which form, as it were, a 
 circle round the Iliad and Odyssey, and may be 
 contemporaneous, or older or younger than 
 these. Although of these books but a few lines 
 have descended to us, their contents, however 
 modified by the later Greek poets, have in out- 
 line not been altogether lost, forming as they do 
 the substructure of numerous tragedies. They 
 also seem to have been known to a writer of the 
 fourth century, Quintus Smyrnseus, of whom 
 further on. 
 
 Other .sources, too, of our information, or, 
 rather, testimony to the belief in the legendary 
 facts, exist in pictures on vases, and elsewhere, 
 in bas-reliefs and statues^ — or credible reports 
 on such, in later prose and verse writings. And, 
 as usual in legendary lore, there are many 
 variants, of which one is generally followed in 
 
 Welcker, Der epische Cyclus, vol. ii., p. 3, mentions 
 thirteen great epic poems. 
 
 1 F. G. Welcker, Le Jugement de Paris, 1846, gives a 
 long descriptive catalogue of 68 vases, 6 wall-paintings, 
 17 bas-reliefs, also 22 medals, cut stones, and mirrors on 
 that subject alone. He adds : ' Au milieu de cette 
 richesse de figures que nous presentent les vases . . . il 
 est bien etrange que ni dans Pline, ni nulle autre part, 
 nous ne trouvions le jugement de Paris mentionne parmi 
 les chefs d'oeuvre d'aucun des plus celebres artistes.' 
 
6 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 preference, others not entirely discarded, but at 
 times less readily remembered by the general 
 public. The Edda legends, the Nibelungen, the 
 Graal legends, the various accounts of the found- 
 ing of Rome,^ are striking instances. As to 
 Helen, Homer has generally been followed by 
 the Ancients and Moderns. Generally, not 
 universally, as we shall see. 
 
 Thetis and Peleus. 
 
 The legend leads us on to the famous quarrel 
 of the goddesses, whence spring many issues, 
 among them the birth of the hero Achilles, 
 whom it is well at once to recognise as the 
 great male counterpart to Helena. Not that the 
 poet fills up this parallel, or gives all the de- 
 velopments which the judgment of Paris after- 
 wards brought about. But this is anticipating a 
 little. 
 
 Once upon a time, Jupiter fell in love again — 
 it was a way he had — with the goddess Thetis, 
 one of the daughters of the sea-god Nereus. 
 But he was informed by Momos^ — who seems to 
 
 1 Compare a survey of them in Niebuhr, 1811, vol. i., 
 pp. 142-158. 
 
 ^ Prometheus, the fore-seeing one, would seem to have 
 made a better warner. Goethe, in his Jchille'is, distinctly 
 
THETIS AND PELEUS 7 
 
 have been a sort of Court-fool, or satirically wise 
 jester in the Celestial Court ^ — that the Fates 
 had decreed the son of Thetis should become 
 greater than his father. Zeus, who would re- 
 collect how he and his brothers treated their 
 father Saturnus, or Kronos, subverting his king- 
 ship, and how he, Saturn, had given the example 
 thereof towards his father Uranus — Zeus gave 
 up his courtship of Thetis, and favoured that of 
 Peleus. That man was not immortal, nor to 
 become so by his marriage ; he was a good 
 fighter, what they call a hero. If from his 
 marriage with the goddess Thetis there sprang a 
 son, he might easily be greater than his own 
 father — and Achilles, the son, became so ; more 
 brUliant, one may suppose, by having a divine 
 mother, but that could not enable him to subvert 
 Jove's kingdom. 
 
 Other was to be the destiny of Achilles, as yet 
 
 places on the lips of Hera, still jealous of Thetis, the name 
 of Prometheus, as the one who hindered the union of Zeus 
 and the daughter of Nereus (AcMlk'is, verse 179). 
 
 Welcker, Der epische Cycliis, pp. 86, 87, says : ' Dass 
 Zeus sich mit Thetis berath, nicht mit Momus, und zwar 
 sowohl wegen der theilweisen Zerstorung der Menschen, 
 als auch wegen der Verheirathung der Thetis. Und durch 
 Thetis wird auch dem Zeus empfohlen, eine schone Tochter 
 selbst zu erzeugen.' 
 
 ^ Lucian, in his Dialogue 33. 
 
8 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 unborn ; he it was, not Menelaos nor Paris, that 
 was ultimately destined to be mated with 
 Helena^ — the acme of heroic manhood with the 
 acme of womanly beauty and gracefulness. 
 When, at the end of all their adventures, these 
 two high types are united mystically beyond the 
 limits of Time and Place, there springs from 
 them the graceful, strong child Euphorion, 
 whose name you hear ringing out from Goethe's 
 verses. But this, again, is anticipating. 
 
 So those two, Peleus and Thetis, were united, 
 and Catullus ^ could sing their epithalamium, or 
 bridal hymn, and the pair could be made to 
 speak in Landor's high prose — later on, and for 
 ever. 
 
 But on the wedding-day those that belonged 
 to Olympus all came — the gods and goddesses, 
 from the high Zeus and Hera, down to the 
 smallest that yet had a spark of divinity in 
 them. AU but one. And they brought presents 
 to the wedding on Pelion. Chiron gave the long 
 ash-tree which he had cut into a lance, Athene 
 gave it the proper shape, and Hephaistos — 
 Vulcan — added the metal. It was with this 
 
 •^ Welcker, Der epwche Cyclus, vol. ii., p. 87. 
 
 ^ See Sir Theodore Martin's translation of Catullus, 
 2nd ed., 1875, pp. 99-122. In the song of the Parcae, at 
 the banquet, the birth of Achilles is foretold, as well as 
 his victories before Troy, also the sacrifice of Polyxena. 
 
ERIS AND THE GOLDEN APPLE 9 
 
 god-given lance that Peleus conquered in battle, 
 and his son Achilles ^ after him. 
 
 But one there was they had forgotten to 
 invite. Does it not remind you of the forgotten 
 fairy at the christening in Grimm's Mdrchen ? 
 The forgotten Eris^ — that is, Strife and Envy — 
 came uninvited, and threw a golden apple^ among 
 the women gods, with the inscription ' To the 
 Fairest.' Then a storm broke loose about the 
 interpretation of the inscription. Whence to 
 this day we have the expression, 'the Apple of 
 Discord.' 
 
 To decide who was truly the fairest, the ladies, 
 after long wrangling, or Zeus, the head of the 
 family, fell upon the strange device to remit the 
 decision to a handsome shepherd called Paris,* 
 and sometimes Alexandros, but not then other- 
 wise known, who fed his flock on Mount Ida.^ 
 
 ^ Welcker, Der epische Cyclus, vol. ii., p. 88. 
 2 ' the abominable 
 
 That uninvited came 
 Into the fair Peleian banquet-hall, 
 And cast the golden fruit upon the board.' 
 
 Tennyson : (Enone. 
 ^ ' A fruit of pure Hesperian gold 
 That smelt ambrosially.' — Ibid. 
 * Bias, xxiv., verses 22-30 ; but the genuineness of the 
 passage is disputed. 
 
 ^ ' In the time of Strabo — contemporary of Augustus 
 and Tiberius — the locality of the famous judgment of Paris 
 
 2 
 
10 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 That was near the city of Troy, and overlooking 
 that Hellespont where Phryxos, on his flight, 
 lost his sister Helle, and which loving Leander 
 swam across so many times to meet his love. 
 Hero, and where he was finally drowned because 
 he could not see her signalling torch. 
 
 The Judgment of Pakis. 
 
 Paris at that time had no acquaintance with 
 the celestial ladies : he was to get it, fatally. 
 His earthly goddess was still the ' beautiful- 
 browed ' (Enone,^ whom you know, if not 
 otherwise, from Tennyson's fine verses.^ 
 
 We need not dwell at any length on the judg- 
 ment of Paris, represented as it is in many a 
 picture. It is alluded to by Homer in a passage^ 
 
 was still shown, on a hill, then called Alexandria. — 
 Wieland's note to Lucian, vol. ii., p. 131 (1788-1789). 
 
 ^ Apollodorus, book iii. The history of (Enone is told, 
 briefly and with distinctness of detail, by Parthenius, in 
 the Paris edition, introduced by Villemain, of Aventures 
 cF Amour, 1822. Vide also Quintus Smyrnaeus, infra. 
 
 2 Tennyson's Qinone. The first time he treated the sub- 
 ject in his earlier poems; he returned to it in his last book. 
 
 * Iliad, in the twenty-fourth and last book, verses 22-30. 
 Paris's decision is briefly referred to in this passage, not 
 without implying blame as to the unappeased Juno and 
 Minerva. This comes singularly late in the story of the 
 siege and in the course of the poem. Welcker says of 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS 11 
 
 the genuineness of which is disputed. The story- 
 is related in verse and prose by Lucian,^ in 
 the second century, whilst the two Antonines 
 flourished ; by Apuleius, who died 190 B.C., 
 giving the story towards the end of the tenth 
 book of his Golden Ass va & vivid and detailed 
 relation of a pantomime produced, with much 
 eclat, at Corinth, distinctly, but in a general 
 way only, referring to Homer, then apparently 
 
 these verses that they ' paraissent avoir ete intercales dans 
 ce chant, compose lui-meme posterieurement au reste du 
 poeme !' Le Jtigement de Paris, etc. Firmin Didot, 1846 
 (Extrait des Annales de I'lnstitut Archeologique) . 
 
 Duruy, in his vast book on Greece (MahafFy's transla- 
 tion, vol. i., p. 142), says that the judgment of Paris and 
 its consequences are 'a fable, later than Homer and Hesiod.' 
 This might explain the lateness of the introduction of the 
 story in Iliad xxiv. Of course, the account might be older, 
 might be in the Cypriacs, and only be forgotten at the 
 time when the bulk of the Iliad arose. 
 
 We must not lose sight of the fact that there is another 
 tradition, giving for the appearance of Paris, in Greece, 
 not the instigation of Venus, but his father Priam's at- 
 tempt to obtain the liberation of Hesione, Priam's sister, a 
 prisoner in the hands of the Greeks. 
 
 ^ Dialogues of the Gods, xx. One cannot but regret 
 Miss Emily James Smith's not having included this bit in 
 her charming Selections from Liwian (New York, 1892). 
 
 It is prettily rendered by L. C. Gail in his Mythologie 
 dramatique de Lucien (Paris, 1798, pp. 63-79). Paris 
 appears also, passingly, with reference to the consequences 
 of his judgment, in the Dialogues of the Dead {ibid., 
 pp. 223, 224). 
 
 2—2 
 
12 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 not yet doubted ; by Coluthus Lycopolites,^ a 
 poet from Thebes in Egypt, who flourished 
 under the Emperor Anastasius, about 500 a.d., 
 and wrote many poems, of which this one has 
 come down to us. In the Middle Ages the tale 
 was repeated, amongst others, by the two authors, 
 Lorris and Meun (Mehung), of the very long 
 Romaunt of the Hose.^ The monk Lydgate^ 
 followed at great length ; after, a French poet ; 
 in modern times by Congreve,^ by Wieland,^ 
 
 ^ Translated by Mr. C, in Poets of Great Britain, by 
 R. Anderson, 1793 et seq., vol. xiii. 
 
 2 1328-1400. Once very popular, but passed by with 
 but little esteem by Hallam. Chaucer translated a portion 
 of it. Many editions : a curiously illustrated one, in 
 Lyons, incomplete, confining itself to the Destruction of 
 Troy, 1544 ; a complete one in 5 vols., by Pierre Masteau, 
 with grammar and glossary, Paris. Paul Daffis, 1878-1880. 
 
 ^ Born about 1370, in Suffolk, near Newmarket. A 
 Benedict monk, he opened a school of rhetoric in his 
 convent of Bury St. Edmunds. In his Reson and Sensual- 
 lyte, a translation and amplification of a French version 
 of the Italian Colonna's (temp. Edward I.) Historia 
 Trojana, itself based on Dares; verses 993 to 2116. 
 Early English Text Society, Extra Series, xxxiv. ; ed. E. 
 Sieper, 1901. Second and concluding volume, 1903. 
 
 * William Congreve, 1672-1729, with music by Purcell 
 and others. The little play is mentioned in Henry Morley's 
 ' Sketch,' but omitted in subsequent editions. The editions 
 1701, 1753 (in the Works) and 1777 are in the British 
 Museum. The piece is not reproduced in G. S. Street's 
 editions of the comedies (Methuen, 1895). 
 
 " 1733-1813. 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS 13 
 
 by Leopold Schefer,^ 1858, and recently by 
 Tennyson.^ 
 
 In Leconte de Lisle's sonorous and finely- 
 chiselled verse Paris relates to Helen herself his 
 adventure with the goddesses. ^ 
 
 Walter Savage Landor, in wishing to exalt 
 Helena, says : ' Goddesses contended for the 
 apple. Helen was afar.'* 
 
 The goddesses offered bribes : Juno (Hera), 
 dominion over the lands of Asia ; Minerva 
 ( Athense), great wisdom ; Venus (Aphrodite), the 
 fairest woman as a most loving wife ; and other 
 arguments may have been used.^ 
 
 The shepherd Paris decided in favour of Venus 
 (Aphrodite), who directed his course to Sparta, 
 where lived ' the lovely-haired Helen,' of whom 
 Pindar^ sings, and with him sing so many 
 others, the wife of King Menelaos. 
 
 ^ Leopold Schefer; rather diffusely in Cantos 10, 11 
 and 12 of his Homer's Apotheose, 1858. The judgment 
 episode (or poem) was supposed to be a publication by 
 itself, and seemed lost ; the pages have only just now been 
 discovered and cut, for the present study, in the British 
 Museum. 
 
 2 1809-1892. 
 
 ^ This original turn of the story first appeared in 
 Poemes antiques, Paris, 1852. 
 
 * Landor in Achilles and Helena. ^ Wieland. 
 
 ® Odes. Olympian. III. For Thereon of Akrogas (the 
 second of the two). Reference is made to Tyndareus 
 
14 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 The anger of the rejected goddesses remained. 
 When at length the fall of Troy, the home of 
 Paris, appeared near, there was a council of the 
 gods of Olympus, in which moderate advice was 
 given, and the Trojans were not to suffer the 
 worst. But the ladies showed their anger. In 
 the text ascribed to Homer, and in Lord Derby's 
 translation : ^ 
 
 ' The Counsel pleased the rest, but Juno still. 
 And Neptune, and the blue- eyed maid retained 
 The hatred unappeased, with which of old 
 Troy and her king and people they pursued ; 
 Since Paris to the rival goddesses. 
 Who to his sheepfold came, gave deep offence, 
 Preferring her who brought him in return 
 The fatal boon of too successful love.' 
 
 How far the story of the judgment of Paris 
 penetrated into other or subsidiary subjects we 
 may see in a play of Calderon (1600-1681). 
 Odysseus, the poet of the Iberian peninsula, 
 follows naturally the Latin name-form, impressed 
 as it is, too, on the town of Ulysses, Lisbon. 
 Ulysses, then, on his homeward wanderings, has 
 come to the island of Circe, where his com- 
 
 ' hospitable sons and lovely-haired Helen.' E. Myer's 
 translation, p. 10, 1874. Others prefer to translate ' the 
 golden-haired.' ' In sonnenhellen Haaren,' says Uhland. 
 
 ^ (Stanley's) Edward, Earl of Derby's translation of the 
 Iliad, 6th ed., 1867. 
 
THE MOTHER OF GODS 15 
 
 panions are exposed to the wiles and wilfulness 
 of the beautiful witch, changing men into beasts. 
 It is suggested to him to make an appeal to 
 Juno, seeing that he was a leader among those 
 Greeks who avenged the injury done by Paris on 
 Mount Ida to the beautiful mother of gods. 
 Surely the just and wholesome burning of Troy 
 gives some claim to being aided in this conjunc- 
 ture. So, in the Jornada, or Act I., Ulysses 
 prays : 
 
 ' Juno, if through scorn of thee 
 Venus thus the Greeks oppress ; 
 Why, resenting this her scorn, 
 Dost thou not in turn defend them ? 
 Oh ! remember when thou wert 
 Wroth with Paris, to avenge thee. 
 Thou didst trust thee to our swords : 
 And that bloody deed remember, 
 How it was for thee we burnt 
 Ilium down, whose living embers 
 Raise sad monuments of smoke 
 O'er its ashes still unquenched ; 
 If, for wreaking thy revenge, 
 Such unnumbered ills have centred 
 All in us, O Juno fair. 
 Against Venus be our helper !' ^ 
 
 ^ ' Love the Greatest Enchantment (and two other 
 plays) attempted strictly in English assonants and other 
 imitative verse, by Denis Florence MacCarthy, with a (very 
 learned) introduction, notes and the Spanish text.' Long- 
 mans, 1861. 
 
16 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 And, indeed, Iris is despatched by Juno to 
 comfort the Greeks and promise help. ^ 
 
 As to the treatment of this legend by the 
 plastic arts, it behoves us Londoners to go, in 
 the first instance, to the National Gallery, where 
 we find the judgment of Paris depicted by no 
 less an artist than Peter Paul Rubens (No. 194). 
 The Wallace Collection (Gallery XIX., 444 and 
 475) presents us with two pictures on the subject, 
 by Fran9ois Boucher (1704-1770), and by Charlin, 
 probably the former's pupil. Nearly every con- 
 siderable gallery contains one or more paintings 
 of the Judgment ; it has several times occupied 
 the much-regretted great artist, George Frederick 
 Watts. The earlier of his pictures on this sub- 
 ject is dated 1874, and shows three unclothed 
 figures standing in a landscape. The one in the 
 centre, with her back to the spectator, may 
 remind one of Rubens' treatment. At a more 
 advanced age he twice reverted to the tale : 
 both pictures were (1885) called ' Olympus on 
 Ida,' the three, more idealized, standing on a 
 cloud. 2 A recent English painting by Mr. 
 
 ^ Later on, in Jornada, III., Achilles, too, comes forth 
 from his tumulus to converse with Odysseus ; but he says 
 nothing on that occasion about Helen, or in confirmation of 
 the statement, to be cited further on, of Apollonius of Tyana. 
 
 ^ The older picture is in the hands of Watts' executors, 
 the two newer ones in those of Sir Alexander Henderson 
 
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS 17 
 
 Solomon is familiar to most of us by its fre- 
 quently-found photographic reproductions. 
 
 A very beautiful statue of Paris, with the 
 fatal apple in his hand, is figured, front and 
 back, in the splendid book on Canova (Rome, 
 1820).! 
 
 Thorwaldsen made a fine statue, or statuette, 
 of Venus at the Judgment of Paris, for Lord 
 Lucan in 1815. The decision has been given ; 
 Venus is holding the apple in her right hand, 
 contentedly looking at it ; she seems, not 
 haughtily (as the explaining Itahan author 
 says),^ but, rather, modestly to appeal to the 
 other goddesses for their assent.^ 
 
 Similarly, Flaxman has chosen the moment 
 immediately after the judgment. Venus, now 
 not whoUy unclothed, receives the apple from 
 Paris, Cupid by her side. The other goddesses 
 are fully dressed.* 
 
 and William R. Moss {Catalogue of the Royal Academy's 
 Winter Exhibition, 1905). 
 
 1 Recueil de statues, groupes, bustes, mausolees, colosses 
 et monuments de tout genre, executes par Canova, dessines 
 et gi'aves sous les yeux d'auteur. 
 
 ^ The Abbate Missirini in Thorwaldsen: Intera col- 
 lezione, Roma, 1831-1832. 
 
 3 As to representations of the judgment of Paris on vases, 
 in mural paintings, and bas-reliefs, see Welcker, ut supra. 
 
 * Flaxman's splendid illustrations to the Odyssey ap- 
 peared in 1793, to the Iliad in 1795. Professor Sidney 
 
 3 
 
18 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 Achilles. 
 
 It may have been about that time that two 
 other events took place, of great moment in this 
 story. The happy mother, Thetis, was rejoicing 
 in her newborn beautiful baby boy. But she 
 knew that this ' cherished and only son of silver- 
 footed Thetis'^ would be mortal like his father. 
 Fearful of the dangers which would be sure to 
 wait on him when he should have become a man, 
 seeing how readily men threaten one another, 
 she resolved to make him at least invulnerable, 
 so that he might hope to be spared suflFering, and 
 to pass away at last peacefully, after having in 
 his old age filled the span of life granted to us. 
 So, holding the boy Achilles by one heel, she 
 plunged him into the waters of the Styx, the 
 river leading to the Lower Regions, or into her 
 own element, the Sea. Either was to have the 
 desired effect. And invulnerable he became, 
 except in that heel. ^ 
 
 Does not the story remind you of Siegfried, 
 of his bath in the dragon's blood, the leaf of 
 
 Colvin's Drawings of Flaxman m the Gallery of University 
 College, London, 1876, form a superb work. 
 
 ^ Walter Savage Landor, Peleus and Thetis. 
 
 ' His mother may not have informed him in what spot 
 he was vulnerable. When, a man, he first meets Helen 
 
ACHILLES 19 
 
 the linden falling on his neck, and there alone 
 leaving him vulnerable? And because of that 
 unprotected spot they both fell, when their hour 
 had come, by the hand of the worse man. 
 
 Let us allow ourselves a digression into the 
 East. A somewhat parallel story appears in the 
 Mahabaratha, that immense collection of matters 
 referring to Ancient India. 
 
 Gandhari, the mother of Duryodhana, was a 
 woman of great sanctity. Her husband was 
 born blind, and therefore she used to keep her- 
 self bhndfolded. One day she said to her son : 
 ' Come and stand entirely unclothed before me ; 
 I wiU look on you for one second, and your 
 whole body will become as strong as steel.' But 
 Duryodhana, feeling a natural delicacy, wrapped 
 a scrap of cloth round the middle part of his 
 body, otherwise altogether naked, with the result 
 that that part of his body remained vulnerable. 
 Bhima, his enemy, knowing of this fact, hit him 
 on his thighs in battle, and thus killed him. 
 
 And now return to the far Northern mytho- 
 
 not far from Troy, and takes leave of her, Lander makes 
 him say : 
 
 ' My mother is reported to have left 
 About me only one part vulnerable ; 
 I have at last found where it is. 
 Farewell.' 
 
 3—2 
 
20 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 logy. There is a fourth almost invulnerable 
 man or god — Balder. His safety, however, rests 
 not upon his skin being favourably influenced, 
 but upon an oath which his mother Frigga has 
 obtained from all things not to hurt when thrown 
 at him. Balder fell through the mistletoe which 
 his mother had forgotten, or, on account of its 
 insignificance, disregarded, and which his blind 
 brother threw at him. 
 
 Is it not delightful to find that, in three out of 
 four stories, it is the mother's care which, although 
 ultimately unavailing, extends such loving pro- 
 tection over the child ? 
 
 Young Paris. 
 
 Meanwhile, away in Troy, Hecuba, or Hekabe, 
 the wife of King Priam, had had a dream, tell- 
 ing her she was going to bring forth, not a child, 
 but a torch that would sere the stately Ilium.^ 
 So when the baby Paris was born, imagination 
 dwelt on the dangers that had risen with 
 him, and it was resolved not to bring up the 
 child. He was exposed in the woods.^ But, 
 
 1 Apollodorus. 
 
 ^ Welcker, Der epische Cyclu^, vol. ii., p. 90, refers to 
 Proclus, and to many pictures on vases, as to the exposing 
 of Paris. 
 
YOUNG PARIS 21 
 
 as in similar tales, the plan failed — Romulus 
 and Remus are an instance ; (Edipus, another ; 
 Cyrus, a third; Tom Thumb, a fourth. It is 
 in the nature of the Mdrchen that children 
 so treated by human beings shall be somehow 
 saved, often by creatures of a lower rank. The 
 English Babes in the Wood form an exception. 
 Yet even their innocent bodies are lovingly 
 covered by the birds of heaven. But Romulus 
 was suckled by a she- wolf ; Telephos, the son 
 of Hercules, by a doe ; and Paris by a bear.^ 
 Human beings helped them farther on. Thus, 
 Paris became a shepherd, and his life was graced 
 by the love of (Enone, a nymph who possessed 
 the knowledge and art of magic healing powers, 
 whereof we are to hear more. 
 
 It is not always easy to establish in these* 
 legends a satisfactory succession of events ; the 
 time mentioned or alluded to as intervening is 
 sometimes too short, at other times too long. 
 StiU, we must suppose that it was soon after 
 the visit of the goddesses that the elderly 
 couple, the unknown young shepherd's parents, 
 bethought themselves that perhaps they had 
 been rash in rejecting that son. And having 
 
 ^ JElianus, book xii., chap. 42. He also mentions the 
 nursing of Pelias, a son of Neptune and Tyre, by a mare ; 
 of ^gistheus, by a she-goat. 
 
22 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 by their own fault lost him, they ordered a 
 sort of memorial festival in his honour. It 
 was somewhat like the Olympian games, or a 
 tournament in the Christian Middle Ages. To 
 these jousts, and lance-throwing, and running 
 and wrestling, the young men from the environs 
 came. Paris, too, was admitted ; he overcame 
 all the King's sons, was recognised and installed 
 with them as Prince — the real Prince Beautiful ! 
 Cassandra warned and prophesied that evil would 
 arise — as usual, in vain. 
 
 And after awhile Prince Paris, or Alexandros, 
 guided by his patroness Aphrodite, sailed for 
 Greece and Helen, leaving CEnone weeping, 
 forgetting her in his new intoxication, as 
 Siegfried, at the Burgundian Court, forgot 
 Brunhild.^ 
 
 In Spakta. 
 
 But it is time now to revert to the childhood 
 and the young- womanhood of Helen herself. 
 
 King Tyndareus ruled over the broad lands 
 of Sparta, and Leda was the name of his Queen. 
 
 ^ The parting of (Enone and Paris is a scene worth 
 reading in Thomas Heywood's play of The Iron Age, 
 Act I., scene i., Works, 1874, vol. iii. Most readers will 
 remember Tennyson's youthful poem ' (Enone.'' 
 
IN SPARTA 23 
 
 Herself very beautiful,^ she became, by Jupiter 
 the Swan, the mother of Helena.^ Another 
 daughter was Clytemnestra, who was to become 
 the unhappy spouse of great Agamemnon. But 
 long before the days of storm and stress, let us 
 
 ^ Leda and the swan have often been represented by 
 poets and statuaries. Thus in Zahn's great work, Oma- 
 mente und GemaMe aus Pompei, etc., 1828-1863, we have, 
 in the ' House of the Tragic Poet,' Leda with the ' nest ' 
 of the three children, Helen, Castor, and Pollux, the first 
 very prominent (I. 23). The picture III. 11 repeats the 
 subject, Helen less prominent. 
 
 The beautiful work Les dieux et demi-dkux, which 
 Theophile Gautier, Arsene Houssaye and Paul de Saint- 
 Victor brought out in 1885, contains a very fine head of 
 Leda, looking, however, more attractive than elegant, and 
 ascribed to Leonardo Vinci. Sir Edward Poynter and 
 Percy Head, in Classic and Italian Painting, in the same 
 year, do not support this; p. 137 contains a list of all 
 that remains to us of Leonardo : Leda is not in it ; and 
 on p. 150 the destruction of a Leda by Michael Angelo 
 is mentioned. Correggio is reported by Lubke, in his 
 Kvnstgeschichte, to have painted several Ledas, one of 
 which is in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. 
 
 2 Pausanias, apropos of a statue by Phidias which he 
 seems still to have seen, says : ' According to the Greeks, 
 Helen was the daughter of Nemesis, and Leda was her 
 nurse. But they all agree in naming Zeus as her father, 
 not Tyndareus.' Phidias, following this tradition, has 
 represented on the base of his monument Leda leading 
 Helen to (her mother) Nemesis (Pausanias, book ii., 
 chap. 32). Homer knows Helen, indeed, as the daughter 
 of Zeus {vide Flias, iii. 237, 246 ; Odyssey, iv. 184) ; but 
 the generation in the swan-form he knows not (Voss, 
 
24 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 see the sisters at play, as Meleager and our poet 
 
 Swinburne saw them : 
 
 Meleager. 
 
 One swan-white, 
 The little Helen, and less fair than she 
 Fair Clytemnestra, grave as pasturing fawns 
 Who feed and fear some arrow ; but at whiles. 
 As one smitten with love or wrung with joy. 
 She laughs and lightens with her eyes, and then 
 Weeps ; whereat Helen, having laughed, weeps too, 
 And the other chides her, and she being chid, says nought 
 But cheeks and lips, and eyelids, kisses her. 
 Laughing ; so fare they, as in their bloom) ess bud 
 And full of unblown life, the blood of gods. 
 
 Alth.ea. 
 Sweet days befall them and good loves and lords, 
 And tender and temperate honours of the hearth. 
 Peace, and a perfect life.^ 
 
 Two sons of Leda, the ' Heavenly Twins ' of 
 that remote age, were Castor and Pollux, or 
 Polydeukes.^ These Dioscuri appear in electric 
 
 note 14! to Odyssey, iv.). Apollodorus relates how a 
 shepherd finds an egg in the woods, takes it to Leda, 
 who encloses it in a box, and in the proper time Helen 
 comes out of it, and is brought up by Leda as if she were 
 her own daughter. This is a combination of the two 
 legends : Zeus = Nemesis (as in the Cyprian verses), and 
 Jupiter = Leda. Thus Apollodorus or his abbreviator 
 (Bihlioihlque d'Apollodore. Texte et traduction par E. 
 Clavier. Paris, 1805, iii., 10). 
 
 ^ Atalanta in Calyden, 1865. 
 
 ^ In Pindar's Olympian Ode iii. the Dioscuri are called 
 'Tyndareus' hospitable sons' and ' deep -girdled Leto's 
 
FAIR HELEN 25 
 
 fires on the masts of ships, and that is considered 
 a favourable omen. But when only one light is 
 seen, it is called Helen's light, or, briefly, Helen ; 
 and this is an unfavourable omen, because Helen 
 was the cause of the grievous Trojan War.^ 
 Helen loved her brothers much. ' O my sweet 
 brothers !' she exclaims in Walter Savage 
 Landor's prose poem, ' how they tended me I 
 How they loved me !' And in Homer a pang 
 shoots through her when, looking out from the 
 top of the Skaean gate in Ilium, she sees below her 
 all the Greek leaders, only her brothers wanting. 
 
 children' (E. Myer's translation, p. 13, London, 1874)). 
 Vide further on the essay De dea Helena, where Helen is 
 apparently identified with her mother Leda, with Leto 
 (the mother, by Zeus, of Apollo and Artemis-Diana), and 
 with Diana-Artemis. Helen, then, would be the daughter 
 of the Leto of the ode. The paternity is divided between 
 Zeus for Polydeukes, and Tyndareus for Castor (Pindar's 
 Nemean Ode x. ; Myer, pp. 140, 141). — Yet both are 
 occasionally called, now the sons of their dear father Zeus, 
 now of Tyndareus. When Castor has fallen in fight, 
 Pollux, rather than be altogether of celestial race, and 
 abide continually in heaven, shares his own privilege and 
 the destiny of his brother on alternate days and nights 
 with the latter. They dwell one day with Zeus, and the 
 next in the secret places under the earth (Myer, ut supra). 
 Theocritus makes both brothers sons of Zeus (Idyll xxii., 
 'The sons of Leda,' Calverley's translation, 1883). 
 
 1 Creutzer speaks of the Dioscuri and Helen as ' protec- 
 tive deities ' {Symholik, vol, ii., p. 343). 
 
 4 
 
26 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 ' Have they alone not been willing to come ? 
 Have they been kept away on account of my 
 lost honour ?'^ Alas ! she knows not yet that 
 the soil of their common country already covers 
 their bodies. 
 
 Let us hear Swinburne on the brothers, too : 
 
 Althaea. 
 Who are these shining like one sundered star ? 
 
 Meleageu. 
 Thy sister's sons, a double flower of men. 
 
 Alth^a. 
 
 O sweetest kin to me in all the world, 
 O twin-born blood of Leda, gracious heads 
 Like kindled lights in untempestuous heaven, 
 Fair flower like stars in the iron foam of fight, 
 With what glad heart and kindliness of soul, 
 Even to the staining of both eyes with tears 
 And kindling of warm eyelids with desire, 
 A great way ofl^ I greet you, and rejoice, 
 Seeing you so fair and moulded like as gods.^ 
 
 Here we may introduce from the Homeric 
 Hymns, in Andrew Lang's translation : 
 
 XVI. Of Castor and Polydeuces do thou sing, shrill 
 Muse, the Tyndaridie, sons of Olympian Zeus, whom 
 Lady Leda bore beneath the crests of Taygetus, having 
 been secretly conquered by the desire of Cronion of the 
 
 ^ Vide the touching passage in the Iliad, iii. 236-244. 
 2 Atalanta in Calyden. 
 
CASTOR AND POLYDEUKES 27 
 
 dark clouds. Hail, ye sons of Tyndarus, ye cavaliers of 
 swift steeds ! 
 
 XXXII. Sing, fair glancing Muses, of the sons of Zeus, 
 the Tyndaridse, glorious children of fair-ankled Leda, 
 Castor the tamer of steeds and faultless Polydeuces. 
 These, after wedlock with Cronion of the dark clouds, she 
 bore beneath the crests of Taygetus, that mighty hill, to 
 be the saviour of earthly men, and of swift ships when 
 the wintry breezes rush along the pitiless sea. Then men 
 from their ships call in prayer with sacrifice of white limbs 
 when they mount the vessel's deck. But the stormy wind 
 and the wave of the sea drive down their ship beneath 
 the water ; when suddenly appear the sons of Zeus rushing 
 through the air with tawny wings, and straightway have 
 they stilled the tempests of evil winds, and have lulled 
 the waves in the gulfs of the white salt sea: glad signs 
 are they to mariners, an ending of their labour : and men 
 see it and are glad, and cease from weary toil. Hail ye, 
 Tyndaridae, ye knights of swift deeds ! anon will I be 
 mindful of you and of another lay.^ 
 
 Helen's descent from the father of the gods 
 set a seal of distinction on all her life, and 
 seemed propitious even in misfortune, never 
 allowing hope to be entirely lost. A gleam 
 of that light would fall on others, too, near to 
 her. When, later on, Menelaos, her lawful 
 husband, on his way back from Troy, appeared 
 to be in deep and seemingly irremediable trouble, , . < 
 the sea-god Proteus prophesies him a happy f ( \ 
 death and a quiet rest in the Elysian fields ; ' ' ! 
 
 ^ The ' Homeric Hymns,' a new prose translation ; and 
 essays, literal and mythological, 1899. 
 
 4—2 
 
 
28 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 that could not fail, for, says he : ' Thou hast 
 Helen, and Zeus honours you as his son-in- 
 law.'i 
 
 Theseus and Helen. 
 
 In earliest youth already Helen attracted the 
 desires of men. We hear of her as being forcibly 
 abducted by Theseus, King of Athens. She was 
 then dancing in the temple of Diana Luna.^ 
 Different accounts speak of her as being then of 
 the age of seven or eleven or fourteen — at any rate, 
 very young.^ Even so, some say that a daughter 
 was born of this connection — no less a person 
 than our Iphigenia, the strong-born, the swift- 
 born — and that Helen's sister, the married lady 
 Clytemnestra, adopted the child as her own, not 
 to compromise Helen.* Or, again, Racine, in 
 
 ^ Odyssey, iv. 561-570. 
 
 ^ F. Creutzer, Symbolik imd Mythologie, vol. iv., 
 p. 150. Ersch und Gruber, Theseus. 
 
 ^ Larcher, in his essay on chronology, disposed to take 
 much as law and gospel, gives Theseus the age of fifty, 
 ' lorsqu'll enleva Helene qui n'etait pas encore nubile ' 
 (Herodote, vol. ix., pp. 292, 293). 
 
 * Pausanias, book ii., chap. 22, relates : The Dioscuri 
 took Aphidnae, and brought Helen back to Lacedaemonia. 
 She was then approaching motherhood, according to the 
 statement of the people of Argos ; and having given birth 
 there, she built the temple of Ilythya, and entrusted her 
 girl-child to Clytemnestra, who was already married to 
 
THESEUS AND HELEN 29 
 
 his play, has sho-wn us that the daughter of 
 Helen and Theseus is Eriphyle, who ends by 
 being sacrificed, or, rather, sacrifices herself, in 
 the place of the real Iphigenia, the daughter 
 of Clytemnestra. 
 
 Whilst King Theseus was away from Athens, 
 Helen's brothers came to her rescue.^ But the 
 King's men pursued them, and the fugitive 
 party might have been drowned or stifled in 
 the morasses of Eleusis. However, Chiron, the 
 man-horse, appeared — as you can read in the 
 pretty scene in Goethe's classical Walpurgis- 
 naclit^ where the adventure is related — and bore 
 
 Agamemnon. Subsequently she married Menelaos. The 
 poets Euphorion of Chalkis and Alexander of Pleuron, 
 agreeing on this point with the Argos people, repeat the 
 statement of Stesichorus of Himera — viz., that Iphigenia 
 was the daughter of Theseus. 
 
 Grote, speaking of the poet Stesichorus, of whom more 
 later on, says that Stesichorus also affirmed that Iphigenia 
 was the daughter of Helen by Theseus, and was born at 
 Argos, before her marriage with Menelaos, and made over 
 to Clytemnestra (vol. i., pp. 282, 283). 
 
 ^ Creutzer, Symbolik, vol. iv., p. 147. 
 
 ^ Faust, II., Act II. Perhaps, or probably, this flight 
 and rescue, related by Chiron to Faust, is figured forth 
 in an important picture by a modern, justly famous, 
 German artist, Boecklin, painted for and exhibited by the 
 Berlin National Gallery. He had an open commission, 
 and chose not to give a name to his rich composition. 
 The critic G. Hauck, 1884, has called it 'The Elysian 
 
30 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 Helen on his back through the obstacles. It is 
 curious to note that they managed to carry off, 
 probably as a hostage during the flight, the 
 mother of Theseus, Aithra, whom we shall 
 meet again, long afterwards. 
 
 Helen was young then — how many the years 
 it matters not to calculate^ — in the days when 
 Theseus made her his own. She learnt to love 
 him, or the memory of him. Long years after 
 the poet interprets her feeling. He makes her 
 say burning words as she stands alone on the 
 walls of Troy, shortly before their fall. Not with 
 regret, but with pride, she looks back at the time 
 
 ' When that great lord, the one man worshipful, 
 Would grace his triumph, strengthen his large joy 
 With splendour of the swan-begotten child, 
 Nor asked a ten years' siege to make acquist 
 Of all her virgin store. No dream that was. 
 The moonlight in the woods, our singing stream 
 Eurotas, the sleek panther at my feet, 
 And on my heart a hero's strong right hand. 
 O draught of love immortal ! Dastard world. 
 Too poor for Theseus and for Helena.'^ 
 
 Fields' (Die Gefllde der Seligen), and the artist has not 
 protested. This name, however, can cover only one- 
 third of the large canvas, and in how far it applies at all 
 to Chiron, bearing the very fine and ripely developed 
 young woman, is not apparent. That the painter was 
 fond of fabulous animals explains nothing here. Compare 
 the scene in Faust, II. : ' Rege dich, du Schilfgefliister.' 
 
 ^ ' Den Poeten bindet keine Zeit.' — Goethe, Faust, II., 
 Act II. 2 E. Dowden, Poems, 1872. 
 
THE WOOERS— ACHILLES 31 
 
 The Wooers — Achilles. 
 
 The renown of Helen's beauty being spread 
 wide abroad after this adventure, suitors came 
 from all parts of Greece. ApoUodorus, a later 
 writer, about 140 B.C., gives the whole list, and 
 they aU promise to defend, if need be, the one 
 that shall be chosen. 
 
 A much later writer, Dion Chrysostomos,^ a 
 contemporary of the Emperor Trajan,^ adds 
 Paris himself to the suitors ; he gains the prize 
 by virtue of his great riches, marries Helen, and 
 sails away with her. This gives the whole 
 matter another aspect ; but we need not dwell 
 here on this troublesome critic of the Homeric 
 tradition ; we shall meet him again later on. 
 
 In Thomas Heywood's remarkable play, The 
 Iron Age, Helen, when Paris comes to Sparta, 
 regrets his not having been among the suitors : 
 she would have preferred him to Menelaos.^ 
 
 ^ Not to be confounded with the celebrated Father of 
 the Church and orator, John Chrysostomus, 347-497 a.d. 
 
 2 96-117 A.D. 
 
 ^ ' Had you then sett sayle 
 When . . . 
 
 A thousand gallant princely suitors came, 
 Had I beheld thee first, I here proclaim 
 Your feature should have borne me from the rest. 
 You came too late.' 
 
 Works, vol. iii., p. 279. 
 
32 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 In Apollodorus, Patroclus is the last name on 
 the list, which does not contain that of Achilles. 
 
 Helen herself admits favouring Patroclus,^ 
 who was the friend of Achilles, and afterwards 
 fell, before Troy, in the armour of the greater 
 man. She frankly declares her preference,^ and 
 strengthens or justifies it with the friend's perfect 
 likeness to Achilles.^ But King Tyndareus 
 decides in favour of Menelaos, the brother of 
 Agamemnon, both being sons of Atreus, the 
 King of Mycenffi, whose historic existence 
 seems proved by the excavations of Schliemann.* 
 The marriage is consummated.^ It has given 
 
 1 Paul de Saint- Victor, in his charming Hommes et Dieux, 
 says that, after the Theseus episode, ' Achille Tentraine 
 ensuite dans sa violente existence, puis il la cede a Patrocle, 
 comme un butin partage.' Where are the sources, if any, 
 of this statement ? 
 
 ^ ' Doch stille Gunst vor Allen, wie ich gern gesteh ; 
 Gewann Patroklus, er des Peliden Ebenbild.' 
 
 Goethe : Fawt, II., III. 
 3 Pausanias, ii. 24, says that Achilles did not come to 
 ask of Tyndareus the hand of Helen ; Patroclus was one 
 of the pretendants. Homer says in the beginning of the 
 Iliad (I. 52) that Achilles came to Troy to please the 
 Atrides ; he was not bound by any oath to Tyndareus. 
 * ' Doch Vaterwille traute Dich an Menelas, 
 
 Den kiihnen Seedurchstreicher, Hausbewahrer auch.' 
 
 Goethe : Faust, II. 
 ^ Landor makes the wooing of Helen the subject of one 
 of the five posthumous conversations, ' The Marriage of 
 Helen and Menelaos,' which J. Forster published as an 
 
HELEN AND MENELAOS 33 
 
 rise to the beautiful Epithalamium, or Wedding 
 Hymn, of Theocritus, translated into English 
 by Calverley.^ The father at the same time 
 abdicated, and from an apparently happy life — 
 scarcely a love-match t- springs a daughter, 
 Hermione.2 This, according to most accounts, 
 or, at any rate, to the one most generally ac- 
 cepted, is Helen's only child.'' Others also 
 mention a son in Sparta, and also a son, or 
 several sons, in Troy.* 
 
 appendix to the biography (Works, vol. i., p. 533 et seq. 
 Here we have some pretty touches of Helen's appearance 
 on that occasion. We are told of ' Helen's rosebud face,' 
 and the girls addressing Menelaos speak of 
 
 ' Helen, in wh^ge eyes 
 The loves for ever play.' 
 ^ ' The Bridal of Helen ' in Calverley's Theocritus. 
 Into German by Arnold Ruge : Helena's BrautTcammerlied 
 in Wanderbuch, Leipzig, 1874. Cf. also the allusion in 
 ' A Countryman's Wooing,' by Calverley, and Die Hirten- 
 hochzeit, by Ruge, as above. A much older translation of 
 the Epithalamium is found in the Teutsche Merkur, 1775, iii. 
 
 2 ' Die Tochter gab er, gab des Reichs Bestallung ihm. 
 Aus ehelichem Beisein sprosste dann Hermione.' 
 
 Goethe : Faust, II. 
 
 ' Odyssey, iv. 12-14. 
 
 * Ersch and Gruber mention also a daughter, Helena, 
 who is killed by Hecuba at the taking of Troy. The 
 parents quarrelled about the name ; the father wanted 
 her to be named Alexandra, the mother preferred Helena ; 
 the decision was given for her by lot. Compare also K. 
 Lehrs {Aufs'dtze), who refers to Photius. Other children 
 
 5 
 
84 HOMER'S HELEN OF TROY 
 
 In the Hellenics of Walter Savage Landor, 
 Menelaos, on the taking of Troy, reproaches her 
 with abandoning her child, who ' could scarce 
 have clasped thy knee, if she had felt thee 
 leaving her.' And Helen replies : ' Oh, my 
 child 1 my only one !'^ 
 
 are mentioned by Ersch and Gruber. Sophocles speaks 
 of two sons, called Diaethos and Morraphias. According 
 to Dictys, Helen had by Paris four sons — Brunichos, 
 Korythos, Aganos, and Idalos. Lehrs also records these 
 four sons of Paris and Helena, and refers to Schol. 
 Lycophronis, 851. Old Alexandrian grammarians knew, 
 it appears, a son Dardanus. Korythos is mentioned by 
 Nikander, in Parthenius, 34. The very late Johannes 
 Tzetzes of Constantinople, in the second half of the 
 twelfth century, claims to know of four sons. Of his 
 Iliaca (in three parts), Antehomerica, Homerica et Post- 
 homerica, there seem to exist editions by Jacobs, 1793, 
 and J. Bekker, 1816, which the curious — the very curious 
 — may consult. 
 
 1 W. S. Landor, The Hellenics (1st ed.), 1847, 
 pp. 62, 63. Thus, too, in the Iliad, iii. 175, ' Leaving 
 my darling daughter and youthful playmates.' 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 Now the handsome Trojan Prince appears 
 on the stage, either whilst Menelaos is away 
 battling in Crete,^ where he must have gone 
 repeatedly,^ or before he sets out for such ex- 
 pedition, leaving Paris behind as an honoured 
 guest to stay on during his (the King's) 
 absence. 
 
 If these two young people, hampered, perhaps, 
 as to oral converse by their surroundings, had the 
 desire and courage to write to one another, would 
 it not be charming to read their love-letters ? 
 Well, there they are— a little long for ordinary 
 biUets-doux ; but, then, so are those of Abelard 
 and H^loise, and there was, perhaps, not often an 
 opportunity for such an exchange. Ovid wrote 
 
 ^ ' Doch als er fern sich Greta's Erbe kiihn erstritt, 
 Der Einsamen da erschien ein allzuschoner Gast.' 
 
 Goethe : Faust, II. 
 
 ^ The stewardess is at Sparta already when Paris comes, 
 and she was brought, as a slave, from a Cretan expedition. 
 
 35 5—2 
 
36 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 them in the time of the Emperor Augustus,^ and 
 he seems to have known much about love and its 
 ways. Paris is full of admiration, which, a little 
 more distantly, is shared by Helen. He warmly 
 presses his suit. She is at first indignant, then 
 struggling with herself, gradually yielding, finally 
 considering ways and means, all of it being very 
 characteristic, very convincing, it seems to me. 
 
 The love-making between the two is spiritedly 
 depicted by Thomas Heywood. Paris is pas- 
 sionate, Helen coquettish as well as passionate. 
 That she be invited to a feast on board ship is 
 her own suggestion, while she must apparently 
 be forced. Only, he must promise not to send 
 her back again. She wants to go to Troy.^ 
 
 With great poetic charm the successive 
 changes in Helen's disposition are painted by 
 Leconte de Lisle, from 
 
 ' Va ! que Zeus te protege ! Je ne quitterai point Sparte,' 
 to 
 
 ' Viens, Priamide ! viens ! je t'aime et je t'attends.'^ 
 
 ^ 31 B.C. to 14 A.D. These letters form, of course, only a 
 portion' of Ovid's Her aides or Ejmtolce. They have 
 attracted many a lover and many a writer of verse. 
 Probably the oldest of many translations into English is 
 the one dated 1567, which may well have given pleasure 
 to the Virgin Queen. 
 
 2 The Iron Age, i. ; Works, vol. iii., pp. 277-287. 
 
 ^ Poimes antiques, 1852 ; 2nd edit., 1881, pp. 81-124. 
 (Many leaves in the Brit. Mus. copy only now cut.) 
 
HELEN AND ACHILLES 37 
 
 Somewhat differently the episode presents 
 itself to the mind of Walter Savage Landor. 
 For an episode only — albeit a long and ulti- 
 mately painful one — it was in Helen's life, 
 whose final destination lay, not towards Paris, 
 but towards Achilles. 
 
 Landor's imagination conceived a meeting 
 between Achilles and Helen, during the siege of 
 Troy, in the neighbourhood of the besieged city.^ 
 The goddesses Aphrodite- Venus and Thetis, the 
 mother of Achilles, brought her there in a cloud 
 — ' on this very ground where we are now 
 reposing' the fatal prize of beauty had been 
 adjudged — and they will take her back, safely 
 and unseen, into the city. She confesses to 
 Achilles : 
 
 'Menelaos, it is true, was fond of me when 
 Paris was sent by Aphrodite to our house. It 
 would have been very wrong to break my vow 
 to Menelaos, but Aphrodite ' — the victrix in the 
 beauty-contest, who was under promise to the 
 bribed judge Paris — ' urged me day and night, 
 telling me that to make her break her promise to 
 Paris would be quite inexpiable.' 
 
 Achilles asks : ' Was it force that bore thee 
 off ?' and Helen rephes : ' It was some evil 
 
 ^ In the Hellenics, Forster's edition, vol. vii., pp. 490- 
 495. 
 
38 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 god.'i The same convenient personification 
 of desire occurs at the end of the third canto 
 
 ^ In the Museum of Naples is an ancient bas-relief, 
 showing how Aphrodite persuades Helen. It is repro- 
 duced by V. Duruy in his History of Greece (trans- 
 lated by Mahaffy), 8 vols., 1892; vol. i., p. 243. On 
 the right stands Paris, clothed in a chlamys only, 
 beckoning Helen to himself ; on the left Helen is sitting, 
 more fully clothed, looking towards Paris, but apparently 
 calmly, certainly not resolute. Three divinities assist 
 the wooing — Love, unclothed, with wide-spreading wings, 
 his hand encouragingly on the Trojan's shoulder ; by 
 Helen's side, but away from the spectator, sits Aphro- 
 dite, of higher stature than Helen, her right arm folded 
 round the latter's shoulder, while Helen's right hand rests, 
 as it seems, trustingly, but not fully persuaded, on the 
 body of the divine counsellor ; in tjie background sits 
 Peitho, the Goddess of Persuasion. / Helen herself later 
 on, after her return from Troy, relatsnhat ApEfodite 
 caused the unfortunate love for Paris {Odyssey, iv. 261). 
 Thus also Penelope refers Helen's temptation to Venus- 
 Aphrodite, to whom she had yielded too rashly, not con- 
 sidering the evils which were to follow {Odyssey, xxiii. 
 218-224). On neither occasion is the judgment of 
 Paris mentioned. The antiquary A. L. Millin, 1759- 
 1818, possessed several Helen statues. His successor, 
 James Millin, in 1827 sold one for 14,775 thalers 
 (about d£'2,215) to the Berlin Museum. Helen, seated, 
 fondles on her knee a winged Eros. Paris stands before 
 her, his lance held by his right hand, the left beckoning 
 to Helen. W. Zahn, in his magnificent collection of 
 300 plates, being Ornaments and Pictures from Pompei, 
 Herculaneum, and Stahice (Berlin, 1828-1865), gives under 
 No. 44 a ' Mars and Venus.' It is more likely meant 
 for Helen and Paris. Venus did not require to be led 
 
HELEN AND PARIS 39 
 
 of the Iliad, and pictorial artists have naively 
 accepted it. ' And,' continues Helen, • she 
 told Paris the same thing at the same hour, 
 and as often. He repeated it to me every 
 morning : his dreams tallied with mine exactly. 
 At last . . .' 
 
 Achilles interrupts : ' The last is not yet 
 come.' 
 
 In Troy. 
 
 In the end Paris and Helen fled from the 
 house of Menelaos — Helen willing, according to 
 the generally received tradition, but according 
 to others not without the need or formaUty of 
 forcible abduction.^ 
 
 The scene of their flight and embarkation has 
 often been represented by the painter's art. You 
 
 to Mars by amorets. Half resisting, half yielding to 
 these, the lady is rather in the character of our Helen. In 
 another fine picture (ii. 31), representing Paris and Helen, 
 the lady sits apart, beautiful and grave-looking. Zahn 
 believes it is Helen repenting, and refers to Iliad, iii. But 
 perhaps her expression may seem, not the mingling regret 
 and indignation felt by the unhappy woman near the fall 
 of Troy, but, rather, her divided feeling previous to her 
 flight from Sparta, and not without anxious presentiments. 
 Paris, sitting apart, leaves her to her own thoughts, feeling 
 the decision will be in his favour. 
 
 1 Thus W. S. Landor in the Hellenics, Sir Lewis Morris 
 in the Epic of Hades, Leconte de Lisle in Helene. 
 
40 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 find in the National Gallery (No. 591) a picture 
 on the subject by Benozzo Gozzoli. %hfi Prin- 
 cess and her ladies are being carried off to a ship 
 by Paris and his Trojan companions — a composi- 
 tion of many small figures. The Wallace 
 Collection also contains a Rape of Helen (in 
 Gallery XI„ No. 634) by Platzer. It may be 
 sufficient to refer to Guido Reni's and Claude 
 Lorraine's paintings at Chatsworth. A picture 
 made by a pupil of Raphael's from that master's 
 composition was once in the Campana Museum, 
 and is now somewhere in Russia.^ Here Helen 
 is struggling. In the various prints which 
 Winckelmann has published, she is willing. ^ 
 
 1 Larousse. 
 
 ^ Thus, in Winckelmann''s Momiments inMits, graves par 
 David, we have (No. 116) Paris and Helen about to depart 
 on a ship, pointed at by Helena, with encouraging gesture. 
 She is the more advanced of the two, with resolute face 
 calling Paris forward, who appears still sitting. And in 
 No. 117 we see Helen being taken away by Paris on a 
 quadriga, she standing on the vehicle already, the ripe 
 woman not in the least hesitating, he springing up to her, 
 his right foot only just lifted from the ground. 
 
 In one of the many curious woodcuts adorning the 
 remarkable folio Recueil des Histoires de Troye (Lyons, 
 1544), Helen seems, from the right of the design, to look 
 with considerable equanimity on the fight which rages on 
 the left, the Trojans — jEneas, Antenor, and Polydamus — 
 pressing back the Spartans who would prevent the flight. 
 She leans against Paris on her right ; her left hand is held 
 
HELEN'S FLIGHT 41 
 
 But not only is she willing, not only is this an 
 affaire du cceur ; but she and her lover also take 
 considerable treasure from the palace, and this is 
 an aggravating circumstance which, in the course 
 of subsequent events, is repeatedly and bitterly 
 mentioned. Helen was then about twenty-five. 
 
 The JRoman^oet_ Horace^_^.Qws-.JN£reus, the 
 sea-god, stilHngjtl^ waveSjjiot^^ 
 the fugitives, but to foretdOl ]PaxiSjJtltg^a:;fidiQus 
 shepherd,' the terrible future, so different^from 
 what he had promised his belovgd,, to. expect. 
 The poet seems not without some feeling for 
 Helen, but is altogether unfavourable to Paris. 
 
 Our poet Lewis Morris, on the other hand, is 
 entirely in sympathy with Helen. One account 
 
 by Deiphobus — later on her brother-in-law, later still her 
 third husband — who is about to assist her up the gangway 
 to the ship. A vase by the potter Hiero and the painter 
 Makron — figured in the Gazette Archeologique, vol. vi., 
 1880, and reproduced by Duruy, History of Greece — shows 
 her rather as resigned, neither ardent nor forced. ^Eneas 
 is followed by Paris, both striding. The latter leads 
 Helen, whose steps seem slow. Paris's face is turned 
 towards Helen, whom he holds by the right wrist. Her 
 head is downcast, but over her chiton she wears the bridal 
 peplos. Aphrodite, behind her, adjusts the bride's gar- 
 ment, draws it over her forehead, holds a wreath upon her 
 head. Peitho (Persuasion) follows with a flower in her 
 hand. A last figure, appearing at a little distance, repre- 
 sents, perhaps, the artist himself. 
 1 Odes, i. 15. 
 
 6 
 
42 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 says that they took just three days for the 
 voyage from Sparta to Troy. That would be 
 very fair saUing. Our poet makes Helen say : 
 
 \' I fled willing from my prison and the pain 
 Of undesired caresses, and the wind 
 Was fair, and, on the third day as we sailed. 
 My heart was glad within me when I saw 
 
 \_The towers of Ilium rise beyond the wave.' i 
 
 This joy on arriving at Troy seems by no 
 means incompatible with the sorrow Helen 
 manifests, nine years (or more) later, at finding 
 herself still there. The young woman, however 
 attractive still, was past the bloom of her expan- 
 sive years, and disillusion had set in. 
 
 Other writers let them wander about for a 
 long time, not without some more or less 
 piratical adventures in Phcenicia,^ Paris bring- 
 ing from Sidon some embroidered veils or 
 tapestry. Others, again, tell not of common 
 flight from the palace of Menelaos, but of a 
 meeting in the island of Cythera, sacred to 
 Venus, where first the love-knot was tied, and 
 whence the fatal flight began. ^ 
 
 ^ Sir Lewis Morris, Epic of Hades, p. 106. 
 
 2 Homer, Iliad, vi. 282, 286. 
 
 3 This view recommends itself to the English poet-monk 
 Lydgate, who, saying that Paris was visited there by 
 Helen, describes her as 
 
 ' This fayre Heleyne, this freshe lusty quene.'' 
 
HELEN'S FLIGHT 43 
 
 The Avengers before Troy, 
 
 Some time must have elapsed before the dis- 
 covery of the untoward event at Sparta was 
 spread about among the admirers of Helen — 
 more stiU, to obtain their consent to act in her 
 rescue, to send a summons to Troy demanding 
 restoration of wife and treasure. Both are 
 refused, Helen herself declaring she will not go, 
 claiming relationship with Priam and protection 
 resulting therefrom, and affirming that nothing 
 was taken but what belonged to her personally^ 
 — an early assertion of the principle of the 
 Married Woman's Property Act. 
 
 StiU more time was required to gather the 
 fighting forces of the allied Princes — allied in 
 admiration of Helen, and by their phghted word 
 for her — and to effect their final saihng from 
 Aulis. The legend gives nine years to this 
 intermediate period, but does not fill it in with 
 sufficient detaU. Was Helen happy with Paris ? 
 happy in his love continued during all that long 
 period ? 
 
 The Iliad, no doubt, is full of details. But 
 
 you recollect it is not the chronicle of the siege, 
 
 but only gives an episode — a very rich one, no 
 
 doubt — of the last year preceding the fall. And 
 
 ^ Dictys. 
 
 6—2 
 
44. IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 its hero is Achilles. Let us take from it two 
 characteristic scenes which both show the diffi- 
 cult position in which Helen must have found 
 herself among the Trojans as the evils of the 
 war dragged on and increased, and her own 
 mind divided between her love for Paris and 
 the regret for what she had lost. Yes, love for 
 Paris, though, in a sense, also aversion. 
 
 The bitterness against her of many of those 
 surrounding her could not escape Helen ; but 
 though she was felt to be the cause of the war, 
 her beauty and grace maintained her sway and 
 kept the hostile in awe, whilst from some she 
 met even with tenderness — foremost among 
 them the old King, and her brother-in-law, noble 
 Hector. 
 
 In book iii. of the Iliad we have the great 
 combined attack by all the Greeks, except 
 Achilles, who is still angry with Agamemnon, 
 and keeps with his men to his tents and ships. 
 Paris appears in the front rank of the Trojans ; 
 his * divine beauty ' is expressly mentioned. 
 Menelaos advances ; eager to meet Parjs and 
 to 'punish the guilty man,' he leaps from his 
 chariot. Paris draws back from him, his heart 
 beating quickly, his cheeks paled with fear of 
 death ; he re-enters the ranks of the Trojans. 
 His brother Hector chides him in unmeasured 
 
HECTOR AND HELEN 45 
 
 terms. ' Would to God,' he says, ' you had 
 
 never been born, or had died before you set 
 
 about making love to Helena 1' whom he refers 
 
 to as ' thy beautiful wife,' and whom he carefuUy 
 
 refrains from insulting. 'But the Trojans,' he 
 
 adds, ' are cowards, else they had long ago stoned 
 
 you to death, for the harm you have caused.' 
 
 Paris, thus stung to the quick, but referring to 
 
 the gifts he has received from the gods, offers to 
 
 fight Menelaos, in single combat, for Helen and 
 
 the treasure : 
 
 ' And whoe'er shall prove 
 The better man in conflict, let him bear 
 The woman and the spoils in triumph home ;' 
 
 whilst both armies and nations shall thenceforth 
 dweU peacefully, those in Greece, these in the 
 plains of Troy. 
 
 Hector makes proclamation to this effect ; 
 Menelaos accepts the challenge ; there is a 
 general truce. Sacrifice to the gods is to 
 precede the duel, and is to be offered by Priam. 
 The hosts partly disarm, and lie around to 
 witness the fight. 
 
46 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 On the Sk^an Gate. 
 
 Now the goddess Iris — the rainbow, the mes- 
 senger of the gods — assuming the form of 
 Laodice, ' of Priam's daughters all loveliest of 
 face,' goes to Helen's chamber, in the palace of 
 Paris, and invites her to come and see the fight. 
 She finds Helen weaving 
 
 ' A mighty web of double woof and brilliant hues, 
 Whereon was interwoven many a toilsome strife 
 Of Trojan warriors and of brass-clad Greeks.'^ 
 
 Iris fans in Helen's breast a longing for her 
 former husband, her home, her parents. ' Come, 
 sister dear,' she says, ' and see the glorious 
 deeds.' Helen throws over her head a snowy 
 veU, and accompanied byher maids th ey g o, 
 to the platform on the Sksan^^ate.^ 
 
 ' Attending there on aged Priam, sat 
 The Elders of the City,— 
 By age exempt from war, but in discourse 
 Abundant, — 
 Helen they saw, as to the tower she came ; 
 
 1 I again use Lord Derby's beautiful translation. 
 
 * The scene at the Skaean gate gave the German 
 painter A. J. Carsten the subject of an aquarelle, which 
 is at Weimar, and has been engraved by W. Miiller, and 
 described by F. von Alten {Ca/rsterCs Werlce, Oldenburg, 
 1866, p. 34). 
 
PRIAM AND HELEN 47 
 
 And " 'Tis no marvel," one to other said, 
 
 " The valiant Trojans and the well-greaved Greeks 
 
 For Beauty such as this should long endure 
 
 The toils of war : for goddess-like she seems ; 
 
 And yet»^s pite h er hpmity,_lpt hpr go, 
 
 Nor bring onjis and our sons a cursed' ' 
 
 Thus they, but the old King is all tenderness : 
 
 ' " Come here, my child, and sitting by my side. 
 From whence thou canst discern thy former lord. 
 His kindred and thy friends (not thee I blame. 
 But to the gods I owe this woeful war) ; 
 Tell me the name of yonder mighty chief 
 Among the Greeks, a warrior brave and strong : 
 Others in height surpass him ; but my eyes 
 A form so noble never yet beheld, 
 Nor so august ; he moves, a King indeed !" 
 To whom in answer, Helen, heavenly fair : 
 " With reverence, dearest father, and with shame 
 I look on thee ; oh, would that I had died 
 That day when hither with thy son I came. 
 And left my husband, friends, and darling child, 
 And all the loved companions of my youth : 
 That I died not, with grief I pine away. 
 But to the question : I will tell thee true. 
 Yon chief is Agamemnon, Atreus' son. 
 Wide reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good 
 And valiant warrior ; in my husband's name. 
 Lost as I am, I called him brother once." ' 
 
 At Priam's request, she points out other 
 chiefs, Odysseus, Ajax, Idomeneus ; not Achilles, 
 for he still keeps away, angry ; nor, as mentioned 
 before. Castor and Pollux, her brothers. The 
 
4.8 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 pained woman knows not that they lie buried in 
 Lacedgemon. ^ 
 
 The fight comes off, in which Menelaos is 
 favoured by Athena ; it goes against Paris, who, 
 however, is rescued by Aphrodite. This goddess 
 then calls Helen away from the company on the 
 SkEean gate ; unwilling, she follows to her 
 palace, where Paris expects her. She upbraids 
 him : ' Back from the battle ? Would thou 
 hadst died beneath a warrior's arm, whom once 
 I called my husband.' 
 
 But the storm is calmed by Aphrodite's influ- 
 ence,^ and the scene closes in loving embraces. 
 
 Agamemnon proclaims the victory and claims 
 the prize. 
 
 1 Thus the Iliad, iii. 243, 244. But not so in the 
 Odyssey, xi. 298-304, where they are said to be still alive 
 — each alternately enjoying one day's existence above the 
 grave, passing the next one below ; much later, when 
 Odysseus, previous to his home-coming, inquires of the 
 Shades at the entrance to Hades. It is perhaps curious 
 that Helen is not mentioned here as a daughter of Leda, 
 who is here only introduced as the mother of the Dioscuri. 
 
 '■^ In connection herewith we must mention Prudhon's 
 much-admired picture, ' Paris et Helene reconcili^s par 
 Venus,' in the Louvre. See, about this episode, ' Helene ' in 
 Paul de Saint Victor's Hommes et Dieux, 1867, pp. 36-47. 
 
 Flaxman treats the subject in two of his fine drawings, 
 ' Venus disguised inviting Helen to the Chamber of Paris,' 
 and Venus (her garment nearly pushed aside) presenting 
 Helen to Paris. 
 
THE HEART OF PARIS 49 
 
 'In Breach of Plighted Faith.' 
 In the fourth and fifth books of the Iliad we 
 witness the council of the gods, in which a view 
 unfavourable to the Trojans gains the upper 
 hand, Athena entices Pandarus to break the 
 treaty by wounding Menelaos. The fight be- 
 comes general ; the gods join in it. The con- 
 ditions of the duel are, on both sides, forgotten. 
 Then we see the leave-taking of Hector from 
 his wife,^ but also Paris ready to return to 
 fight, and Helena encouraging him thereto ; 
 for, whilst still accusing herself, she would 
 like to be the wife of a valiant man, and, as 
 she says with pain, ' the heart of Paris is full 
 of change, and always wiU remain so.' And 
 thus encouraged, he goes forward to battle, 
 together with Hector, who upholds him.^ 
 
 ^ ' Will sich Hector ewig von mir wenden ?' Schiller, 
 Hector's adietias. Iliad, vi. 307-517. 
 
 ^ There is a very fine outline, in the Abbade Misserini's 
 work on Thorwaldsen, of the scene between Hector, 
 Helena and Paris — a bas-relief made by the artist, in 
 1809 (Thorwaldsen, Intera collezione). It appears also in 
 C. A. Rosenberg's Thorwaldsen, Bielefeld, 1896, but the 
 photogravure is inferior to the outline. Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti made a pen-and-ink sketch of the call of Hector 
 on Paris. It was to serve for a picture which was never 
 made, but an engraving of which is published by 
 Marillier, with the title 'Cassandra.' In reality it is a 
 combination of the two passages in book vi. of the Iliad, 
 
 7 
 
50 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 In the sixth and seventh books the fighting 
 continues. Antenor, the Trojan Prince, advises 
 to give up the cause of war, ' Now,' he says, 
 ' we fight in breach of phghted faith.' But Paris 
 will not permit the return of Helen. He will 
 give back the treasure to Agamemnon, and add 
 to it of his own ; the wife he will not restore. 
 The message is sent to the Greeks, but now 
 Diomedes, strong in his conviction that Troy is 
 near her fall, exclaims : ' Let no man accept 
 Paris 's substance, neither Helen's self; known it 
 is, even to him that hath no wisdom, how the 
 issues of destruction hang already over the 
 Trojans.' 
 
 For our present purpose there is no occasion 
 to follow in their changes the warlike events of 
 the next cantos ; in the twenty-fourth and last 
 we receive one more of Homer's pictures of 
 Helen. We come to Hector's death. And 
 perhaps on this occasion, if on no other — for 
 Helen in her life had many occasions for weep- 
 
 306-362 and 499-520, to which add vii. 1-6. The picture 
 had better not been called ' Cassandra ' ; she has really, 
 in Homer, nothing to do with the episode. The painter, 
 perhaps unconsciously, seems influenced by the eleven lines 
 of Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida,' where Cassandra 
 appears ' raving.' Vide H. C. Marillier, Dcmte Gabriel 
 Rossetti: an Illustrated Memorial of his Art and Life 
 (Macmillan, 2nd edit., 1901). 
 
THE DEATH OF HECTOR 51 
 
 ing — there arose the plant whose origin was 
 attributed to the tears of Helen, similarly as the 
 origin of the fragrant clove {clou) was ascribed 
 to the drops of blood called forth by the nails 
 used at the Crucifixion. That plant was called 
 Helenium ( Thymus incannus).^ 
 
 The Death of Hector. 
 
 When things went hard with the Greeks, and 
 AchiUes persisted in not coming forward, his 
 friend Patroclus obtained from him the loan of 
 his armour. In it he strikes terror into the 
 Trojans, but is killed by Hector. Then Achilles 
 himself throws away his reserve in order to 
 avenge his friend. He slays Hector. At night 
 Priam goes out to the camp, begs for the restora- 
 tion of the maimed body, and obtains it for 
 obsequies at home. The wife and the mother 
 address the form of the fallen hero, dirge-like, 
 Helen foUows : 
 
 ' " Hector, of all my brethren, dearest thou ; 
 The godlike Paris claims me as his wife, 
 Who brought me hither — would I then had died ! 
 
 1 Plinius the Elder, book xxi., chap. 91. Cf., also, 
 xxi. 33. There seems, however, an error in this reference 
 of LittrtPs as to the latter passage, which speaks throughout 
 of Brassica-chou (not clou). 
 
 7—2 
 
52 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 But twenty years have passed since here I came, 
 
 And left my native land ; yet ne'er from thee 
 
 I heard one scornful, one degrading word ; 
 
 And when from others I have borne reproach, 
 
 Thy brothers, sisters, or thy brothers' wives. 
 
 Or mother (for thy sire was ever kind, 
 
 E'en as a father), thou hast checked them still 
 
 With tender feeling, and with gentle words. 
 
 For thee I weep, and for myself no less ; 
 
 For, through the breadth of Troy, none love me now, 
 
 None kindly look on me, but all abhor." ^ 
 
 Weeping she spoke, and with her 
 
 Wept the crowd.' 
 
 Well says J. Addington Symonds, in his 
 appreciation of the women of Homer, and with 
 reference to this beautiful passage : ' It would 
 have been impossible to enhance more worthily 
 than thus the spirit of courtesy and knightly 
 kindness which was in Hector — qualities in 
 truth which, together with his loyalty to Andro- 
 mache, endeared the champion of the Trojans 
 to chivalry, and placed Hector, not Achilles, 
 upon the list of worthies beside King Arthur 
 and Godfrey of Boulogne. '^ 
 
 1 Perhaps, better, ' now shudder at me ' (Lord Derby's 
 translation, as before). Grote, History of Greece, vol. i., 
 pp. 282, 283, speaking of the poet Stesichorus, says that 
 writer's view is strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect 
 with which Helena is always handled by Homer, who never 
 admits reproaches against her, except from her own lips. 
 
 ^ John Addington Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets, 
 vol. i., p. 115, 1893. 
 
TO GIVE UP HELENA 53 
 
 Aftek Hector's Fai.l. 
 
 We have left Homer's Iliad behind us, and 
 now turn again to other sources. 
 
 Once more, after Hector's fall, a helping hand 
 is extended to the Trojans. The Amazons, led 
 by their Queen Penthesilea, the daughter of 
 JNIars, shake for a while the besiegers. But she 
 faUs by the hand of Achilles.^ Then another 
 force, that of King Memnon, approaches to 
 their aid. INIeanwhile their counsels are shaken. 
 Fhght from Troy is proposed on the one side ; on 
 the other, by Polydamas, the advice is again 
 pressed to give up Helena to the Greeks, 
 together with the treasures she brought from 
 Sparta — nay, with double their value. ^ But 
 Paris opposes, as he did on a former occasion, 
 successfully. Well is he aware how great is the 
 harm he has brought on his countrymen, but 
 his • flaming heart ' would rather die than be 
 severed from Helen. 
 
 Again, when later on Eurypylos the Mysian, a 
 grandson of Herakles, came to the aid of the 
 Trojans, a warm reception was given to him by 
 Paris and Helen, whose beauty bewitches him 
 
 ^ A former proposal by Antenor to give Helen back 
 having been refused by Paris {Iliad, vii.). 
 2 Quintus Smymaeus, book i., x. 20-728, and ii. 41-99. 
 
54 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 and finally determines him to go into battle, in 
 which he falls. In this whole episode Helen 
 
 r shows herself strongly as one aiding the Trojans ; 
 
 ) of such ambiguity as^ further on, is suggested 
 there is no trace. ^ 
 
 I 
 
 The Death of Achilles. 
 It is Paris, the weaker man, who is destined 
 by fate to overcome the victorious Achilles. 
 His arrow, perhaps treacherously, pierces the heel 
 of the bravest of the Greeks. And, not without 
 reference to our Helen, says the poet Ovid : 
 
 ' Was this thy fee, 
 Achilles, victor of a thousand fields ? 
 Thiscoward c hief that stole a Grecian wife . 
 Thy conqueror ? If the Fates thy fall ordained 
 To hand so like a woman's, better far 
 Penthesilea's Amazonian axe 
 Long since had by Thermodon laid thee low.' ^ 
 
 According to Quintus Smyrngeus, Achilles 
 was not killed by Paris ; his wound was caused 
 by the arrow of Apollo himself, he having in 
 vain exhorted the enraged Achilles to cease 
 fighting the Trojans.^ 
 
 ^ Quintus, vi. 143-160, and 197 et seq. 
 
 2 Henry King's translation of the Metamorphoses, 
 Blackwood, 1891. 
 
 3 Quintus, iii. 80-178. A middle term is found by 
 Hyginus {temp. Caesar), who affirms that Apollo for this 
 feat assumed the appeai-ance of Paris (Fabularium, liber x.). 
 
THE DEATH OF ACHILLES 55 
 
 In the 'Nostoi,' one of the Cyclic poems, 
 it is related that Thetis snatches her son's body 
 from the funeral pyre, and takes it to the isle 
 of Leuke in the Pontus, of which we shall hear 
 more. 
 
 Let me remind the reader here that we have 
 by Goethe a long poem, or the beginning of a 
 long poem, on Achilles.^ If he had finished 
 the beautiful fragment, would our Helena have 
 appeared there ? Would Euphorion have been 
 foreshadowed there already, for whom we have 
 now to wait till the third act of the second 
 Faust 1 
 
 Landor, however, as mentioned before,^ had 
 the idea of bringing Achilles and Helen together, 
 just before the fall of Troy, in one of his im- 
 mortal prose-poems, at the very time when 
 Goethe shows us the son of Thetis preparing, 
 in the feehng of death approaching, that gigantic 
 cairn under which his body, together with that 
 of his friend Patroclus, is to rest, and which is 
 to become a helpful landmark to the shippers 
 from East and West. 
 
 That cairn, if ever completed, has no longer 
 
 1 We had, in the English Goethe Society, a paper 
 on the Achilleis, a few yeais ago, by Mr. Alexander 
 Rogers. 
 
 2 See pp. 19, 20, ' Achilles,' note ^- 
 
56 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 to fulfil such an office. But the hero Achilles 
 has not remained without a memorial. It was 
 erected in our days by an ill-fated and much- 
 to-be-pitied Empress. ' Elizabeth of Austria's 
 favourite talk,' says a confidante of hers, ' and 
 her thoughts were always bent on discovering 
 the hidden tragedy of existence, and comparing 
 it to the tales and myths bequeathed to us by 
 antiquity. When her wounded soul tried to 
 seek consolation after her son's death, she found 
 comfort in Homer's rhapsodies, and, remembering 
 Thetis and her grief when her heroic son was 
 killed, she built at Corfu the famous Achilleion, 
 and spent her time among the roses and statues 
 of the Greek gardens that overlook the sea.^ 
 Thus she will remain hnked to the glorious 
 remembrances she so well understood and 
 cherished.' ^ 
 
 The Death of Paris and of (Enone. 
 
 So Paris was victor, after all. But not long 
 was his triumph to last.^ On the way to Troy 
 the Greeks had left behind them Philoctetes on 
 
 ' At Corfu. 
 
 2 Helene Vacaresco, in the Contemporary Review, August, 
 1902, p. 177. 
 
 ^ The Ancients had, and Pliny still knew, a statue, by 
 Euphramus, of Alexandres - Paris which was esteemed, 
 
THE DEATH OF PARIS 57 
 
 a lonely island.^ This earliest Robinson Crusoe 
 possessed the poisoned arrows of Hercules, and 
 now the Greeks before the apparently uncon- 
 querable city, and deprived of their best man, 
 Achilles, sent for the one they had abandoned. 
 With one of these arrows he mortally wounds 
 Paris.^ No healing is possible unless by the art 
 and goodwill of that Qjiuone whom he had loved 
 for her own sake and had abandoned for Helena. 
 He has himself borne up into Mount Ida. But 
 CEnone, having the means of healing, refuses to 
 apply them. Shall she cure her faithless lover 
 that he may continue to love Helen ? No. In 
 vain Paris beseeches her, lovingly.^ Then, being 
 borne back valleywards, rejected by CEnone, his 
 heart turns once more to Helen, who, however, 
 does not behold him again. Let me quote 
 from WiUiam Morris's beautiful poem ' The 
 Death of Paris,' in The Earthly Paradise : 
 
 ' Then, as a man who in a failing fight 
 For a last onset gathers suddenly 
 All soul and strength, he faced the summer light, 
 
 says he, because one recognised there the judge of the 
 goddesses, the lovers of Helena, and the murderer of 
 Achilles (Plinius, xxxiv.). 
 
 1 Quintus Smymasus, ix. 328-541. 
 
 2 Ibid., X. 209-246, and 254, 255. 
 
 3 Ibid., X. 260-329. 
 
 8 
 
58 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 And from his lips broke forth a mighty cry 
 Of « Helen, Helen, Helen !"— yet the sky 
 Changed not above his cast-back golden head. 
 And merry was the world though he was dead.' 
 
 But with (Enone, too, deep regret rapidly sets 
 in. She escapes from her father's home, hastens 
 at night after the bearers. The pyre is already 
 lighted by the oldest of the shepherds, who is the 
 same that found the child Paris when exposed 
 in the woods. She throws herself upon it — is 
 consumed. The ashes of both were collected in 
 one golden vase.^ 
 
 Loudly Helen wails before the court, but her 
 mind is full of anxiety for her own coming fate. 
 Deeply wails Hecuba for this loved son. Priam 
 does not yet learn the fatal news. He sits at 
 Hector's grave, preoccupied and weeping. 
 
 The Widow Helen. 
 
 The widow Helen, however, finding there 
 were two suitors to her hand in Troy — both 
 sons of Priam — Helenus and Deiphobus, married 
 
 ^ So Apollodorus, Parthenius, and Quintus of Smyrna. 
 The latter's recital of the (Enone episode is very beautiful 
 (Quintus Smymaeus, ix.). Other accounts say she hanged 
 herself, or, when the news of Paris's death was brought to 
 her, she fell down dead, and the two lovers were buried 
 in one grave. Landor gives another account still of 
 
THE WIDOW HELEN 59 
 
 the latter.^ Helenus, the disappointed lover, 
 was a kind of soothsayer ; he gained the friend- 
 ship of the Greeks. After the fall of Troy, he 
 remained alive, of all the many sons of Priam, 
 established a kingdom in Epirus, and married 
 the twice-widowed Andromache, who had be- 
 come a slave and unwUling wife of Pyrrhus, the 
 son of Achilles. 
 
 The Palladium, a statue of Minerva, con- 
 sidered a tutelary goddess of Ilium, has been 
 stolen, gained by Ulysses and Diomedes, and 
 brought into the Greek camp, but with bloody 
 hands, all the guards slain. In the camp the 
 goddess shows her anger for the insult shown 
 her, her statue being besprinkled with blood. 
 Calchas, the priest, advises the Greeks to return 
 to Greece before they, with renewed sanction, 
 may again assail the tower. The horse is built 
 up, apparently as an atonement for their heavy 
 guilt, yet intentionally too colossal to allow the 
 Trojans to take it into their city as a substitute 
 for the stolen Palladium. ^ 
 
 Paris's and CEnone's death. Deeply moving is Tenny- 
 son's ' Death of CEnone,' in the last book of verse he gave, 
 almost from his dying couch, to the world, in 1892. 
 
 1 According to the ' Little Iliad,' one of the Cyclic 
 poems (Welcker, ii., p. 237 et seq.). 
 
 2 Virgil, jEneid, ii. 162-184. 
 
 8—2 
 
60 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 The Fall of Troy. 
 
 Twice more do we find Helen mentioned by- 
 Homer, shortly before the fall of the city, but 
 not in the Iliad. Much later, when Menelaos,^ 
 after their long and adventurous home-bound 
 voyage, is settled with his recovered wife at 
 Sparta, she receives, in the dignified position 
 of recognised head of the house, the visit of 
 Telemachos, in search of his father. Having 
 mixed with the wine that magic nepenthe she 
 once received from Polydamna in Egypt, a 
 powerful opiate which stills grief and resent- 
 ment and the memory of past suflFering, she 
 herself tells us how in Troy she was visited 
 secretly by the Greek chief Odysseus,^ who, 
 disguised as a beggar, had made his way into 
 the city. Could she betray her countryman to 
 the Trojans ? And, on the other hand, could 
 she prevent his finding out how the land lay, 
 and thus become herself an instrument by 
 faciUtating the ruin of her Trojan friends ? 
 
 ^ Quintus Smyrnaeus, x. 365, 366. 
 
 2 Odyssey, iv. 239-264. 
 
 Grote, History of Greece, vol. i., p. 279, seems to go 
 too far in the italicized words of this passage : ' Helen alone 
 recognised him, but she was now anxious to return to 
 Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting means Jar 
 the capture of tlie town^ 
 
THE FALL OF TROY 61 
 
 Paris is dead. The position was most embar- 
 rassing. It may be mentioned that this is not 
 represented as the secret visit of Odysseus and 
 Diomedes, related in the second book of ^'^irgil, 
 when they stole the Palladium on whose pos- 
 session the Fates had agreed the preservation of 
 Troy to hang.^ 
 
 ^ ApoUodorus, Dionysius Halicarnassus (i. 69), and in 
 the second book of the JEneid, verse 162 et seq. Nothing 
 in Helen's account of her meeting with Odysseus refers 
 to the details given in Virgil. Grote, as above indicated, 
 connects the two accounts (i. 279). They would then be 
 two variants of the same legendary event, and such a 
 view will frequently present itself. According to Dictys 
 (v. 5-13),the theft took place by the Trojan Antenor, who, 
 being hostile to Priam, had entered into peace negotiations 
 with the Greeks. During these Diomedes and Odysseus 
 were his guests, and to these he handed the statue. 
 According to Quintus Smyrnasus (ix. 346-363), it is 
 Helenus who, from jealousy, hands over the statue ; he, 
 after Paris's death, having aspired to Helen's hand, angrily 
 saw Deiphobus preferred. It is further noteworthy that 
 Dictys records on this occasion a striking step attributed 
 to Helen. According to him, Odysseus and Diomedes are 
 not smuggling themselves into Troy, they are, openly 
 enough, guests of Antenor, who previously, as head of an 
 anti-Priam party, has visited the Greek camp. There it 
 was agreed to give up Helen and her riches to Menelaos. 
 Then Deiphobus marries Helena, and she goes at night 
 to Antenor's house, and begs him to intercede with the 
 Greeks in her favour. She adds that, since the death of 
 Paris, her residing at Troy had become odious to her, and 
 that she had not ceased to wish to return to the Greeks. 
 On the following morning two Trojan deputies go to the 
 
62 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 But if the recollection of that visit was em- 
 barrassing, the role of Helen in the next adven- 
 ture is more than that : it is ambiguous. And 
 mark that it is not Helen who relates this detail 
 of her story : Menelaos does, in her presence. 
 
 The Wooden Horse has been constructed, and 
 by the beguiled Trojans themselves dragged into 
 the city. It contains in its bowels the Greek 
 chieftains who are to come out in the night and 
 give to the Greeks outside the signal for their 
 irruption. The besieged come, wondering, ad- 
 miring, believing the horse, if brought into the 
 city, would protect them — perhaps as a substi- 
 tute for the lost Palladium. Helen comes, too,^ 
 her new husband, Deiphobus, with her. Three 
 times she walks round the immense horse, call- 
 ing the names of the Greek leaders — calling 
 them with great skill in imitating the voices 
 of their wives. And they were going to come 
 out, or, by answering, to betray themselves. 
 They are prevented by Odysseus, and thus saved 
 from destruction at the hands of the surrounding 
 Trojans. 
 
 Greek camp, whence they return, instructed of the favour- 
 able disposition of Helen, accompanied by Odysseus and 
 Diomedes. Dictys is a Cretan, and the reader may 
 remember a certain proverbial expression about those 
 islanders. 
 
 ^ Virgil knows nothing of this appearance of Helen. 
 
HELEN DOUBTED 63 
 
 What was Helena's intention ? ' I,' says the 
 poet — not Homer this time, but Lewis Morris^ — 
 
 ' I, with a divided heart, 
 Saw victory incline now here, now there/ 
 
 It has to be explained by Menelaos that a 
 god, favourable to the Trojans, must have led 
 her there, and Athena, now favourable to 
 the Greeks, led her away again. That is the 
 convenient explanation Menelaos gives in the 
 presence of Telemachos. And Helen does not 
 answer her husband. Does it not look as if she 
 was not absolutely forgiven, and as if there was 
 still a grudge kept up, on account of double- 
 dealing ? 2 
 
 Gladstone, in his Homeric Studies,^ admits 
 the doubtful character of Helen's action on this 
 occasion, but adds : ' Menelaos, in referring to 
 the incident, carefully spares Helen's feehngs 
 
 ^ Epic of Hades, p. 107. 
 
 2 Grote, History of Greece, vol. i., p. 282, seems to 
 assume too much in saying that ' Helen gladly resumed 
 her union with Menelaos ; she accompanied him back to 
 Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort 
 and dignity ' ; and in this note : ' Such is the story of 
 the old epic [see Odyssey, iv. 560, and the fourth book 
 generally] . . . Polygnotos, in the paintings above alluded 
 to, Jbllows the same tale ^ (Pausanias, x. 258). 
 
 The italicized words of Grote's are not borne out by the 
 pictures. 
 
 5 Vol. iii., p. 582. 
 
64 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 by another of those strokes of exceeding tact 
 and refinement for which Homer's writings are 
 remarkable : " Thither thou earnest ; and no 
 doubt it was the influence of some celestial 
 being favourable to Troy that prompted thee " 
 — thus preventing, by anticipation, the sting that 
 his account of the matter might carry.' 
 
 Does she, by volunteering her own previous 
 statement, mean to weaken beforehand anything 
 that Menelaos might wish to relate to her guest ? 
 It remains curious that she should mention — a 
 fact she may have learnt subsequently — that 
 Odysseus, in his retreat, perhaps, killed many 
 Trojans (verse 257). She is careful, too, to 
 observe that she had to take an oath not to 
 mention Odysseus' visit before he could have 
 reached the Greek ships again (verses 253, 254). 
 
 It may be worth adding that Demodokos, 
 the minstrel of King Alcinous, referring, in the 
 presence of Odysseus, to the taking of Troy, 
 mentions the horse indeed, and the different 
 views with which the Trojans beheld it, also 
 their fatal decision, but has not a word to say 
 about Helen's bearing on this occasion. Nor 
 does he utter her name, though he speaks of 
 the dweUing of Deiphobus, whither Odysseus 
 hastens with Menelaos.^ 
 
 1 Odyssey, viii. 499-520. " 
 
.ENEAS AND HELEN 65 
 
 The guests, having heard the statements of 
 husband and wife, forbear all comments, and 
 the ' sensible youth ' Telemaehos expresses the 
 wish to go to bed, which Helen hastens to get 
 prepared for the two visitors. 
 
 -^NEAS AND Helen. 
 Troy has faUen. The Trojans, taken by sur- 
 prise, are beaten, massacred, ^neas, with a 
 faithful band, has offered resistance so long as 
 possible, but at last — it is again a Roman that 
 speaks now^ — after the kUhng of Priam : 
 
 ' look I around 
 To see what force remains to me, but all, 
 Ay, all, worn out with wretchedness, are gone, 
 And either to the earth have leaped or given 
 Their miserable bodies to the flames. 
 And I alone remain. The brilliant light 
 My paths makes clear, as I descend and gain 
 The courts below. My eager eyes search out 
 Whatever their search may meet, when I observe 
 In humble attitude hidden in Vesta's fane, 
 Silent and secret and avoiding all, 
 Helen, King Tyndareus' daughter. There she sat, 
 At once the Erinnys of her land and oui-s, 
 Concealed by shrines which loathed her, and in dread 
 
 ^ ^neid, ii. Translated by John Augustus Wilstach 
 (Counsellor-at-Law), in two volumes (Boston : Houghton, 
 Mifflin, and Co., 1884), verse 563 et seq. Schiller's trans- 
 lation of canto ii., stanzas 98-106. Compare, also, the 
 translations by Sir Theodore Martin, Conington, and 
 G. Symmons (1820). 
 
 9 
 
66 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 Of penalties to come which hunted her 
 
 From Trojans, for their power and city lost, 
 
 And from the Greeks, and from the wrath inflamed 
 
 Of her deserted spouse. My heart flashed fire, 
 
 And sudden rage possessed me to avenge 
 
 My fallen country, and inflict on crime 
 
 Its punishment due. " Shall she secure behold 
 
 The Spartan land and fair Mycene's realms, 
 
 And ride a Queen in solemn triumph borne .? 
 
 Shall she her spouse behold, her native land, 
 
 Her children, and her parents, while a crowd 
 
 Of Trojan maids and warriors swell her train^ 
 
 And wait upon her steps ? Shall Priam fall 
 
 Beneath the sword ? Shall Troy expire in flames. 
 
 And the whole coast be soaked in Trojan blood ? . . . 
 
 Not so. . . ." ' 
 
 He is about to rush upon Helen to kill her, but 
 Venus appears, the mother of iEneas by the 
 mortal Anchises. 
 
 ' Such things I meditated in my mind 
 Enraged, when came (and ne'er before so clear 
 To my pleased vision), splendid through the night, 
 My mother dear, goddess confessed, as seen 
 In spheres above by those who dwell in heaven.'^ 
 
 ^ Compare the chorus of Trojan maids — or, at any 
 rate, girls — in Goethe's Helena, and their nobler leader, 
 Panthalis. 
 
 ^ How beautiful is Dryden's translation of this passage ! 
 — Qualisque videri ccelicolis, quanta sokt : 
 
 ' Never so radiant did her eyes appear ; 
 Not her own star confessed a light so clear ; 
 Great in her charms as when, on gods above, 
 She looks, and breathes herself into their love.' 
 
MENELAOS AND HELENA 67 
 
 She admonishes her son ^neas to save his father, 
 her now aged lover Anchises, his own wife and 
 httle son ; and Helen's image and crime pass 
 away from his sight. Venus herself has some 
 sort of excuse for Helen and Paris, her old 
 prot^g^s. Not they, though guilty, have caused 
 the fall of Troy : the gods themselves have done it. 
 Neptune, .Juno, Pallas, even great Jove himself, 
 are now seen engaged in the work of destruction. 
 
 ^neas goes to save his family, the ancestors 
 of Julius Caesar, and of the Roman poet's patron. 
 Emperor Augustus. 
 
 But not yet is Helen's life safe. 
 
 Menelaos and Helena. 
 
 In another version, that of a Greek this time 
 — Quintus of Smyrna — it is Menelaos who 
 threatens the hfe of Helen, after kUling 
 Deiphobus, not led to him by Helen, as the 
 unsympathetic Latin poet would have it. 
 Demodokos, the minstrel of the Court of King 
 Alkinous, relates that Odysseus hastened with 
 Menelaos to the ' noble Deiphobus' dwelling ' 
 {Odyssey, viii. 517, 520), and speaks of a terrible 
 fight, but gives none of the horrors with which 
 Virgil regales his Roman readers. 
 
 Helen is accused — but by a Roman, Virgil 
 
 — of having, in that awful night when Ilium 
 
 9—2 
 
68 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 fell, tried to regain the good graces of Menelaos 
 by opening to him the door to the bedroom 
 of Deiphobus, who was killed and horribly 
 mutilated by the vengeful Greek. So iEneas 
 found him when he visited the Inferno, and 
 thus he replied to the Trojan's greeting, who 
 was as yet ignorant of the fate of Deiphobus, 
 to whom he had erected an empty tumulus : 
 
 ' My own hard destiny and the deadly wiles 
 Of that Lacffinian woman, these it was 
 That overwhelmed me with the wounds you see, — 
 These the last marks she left me of her love. 
 You know, — whoever can forget ? — how we 
 Spent that last night in reckless revelry, 
 When the fell horse our ramparts overleapt, 
 And hid within it bore a warrior band. 
 In festal garb disguised, along the streets 
 She led a troop of Phrygian Bacchanals, 
 And in their orgies waved a blazing torch 
 As signal for the Greeks to storm the town. 
 Worn with anxiety and drowned with sleep, 
 Upon my ill-starred bed I threw me down. 
 And o'er me as I lay there stole a sweet 
 Deep, peaceful slumber, as of death. Meanwhile 
 My charming spouse of weapons stripped the wall. 
 Stole from my pillow my true sword, and then 
 To Menelaos open threw the door, — 
 A boon, belike, to appease her amorous lord, 
 And make her past delinquencies forgot. '^ 
 
 1 Virgil, jEneid, book vi,. Sir Theodore Martin's trans- 
 lation, 1896, pp. 227-230. Cf. also John Conington's 
 translation, 3rd ed., 1870, pp. 195-198. Also that by 
 William Morris, 1876, and G. K. Richards, 1869. 
 
HELEN'S LIFE THREATENED 69 
 
 Helen runs away, pursued by Menelaos — it is 
 like a scene in Maeterlinck's Pelias and Melisande 
 — and he is about to kill her, when his milder 
 brother Agamemnon intercedes.^ 
 
 The chest of Cypselos was the name of an 
 ancient coffer in cedar -wood, a work of the 
 seventh century B.C. Cypselos became Tyrant 
 of Corinth, and the Cypselides, his descendants, 
 consecrated this coffer to Zeus at Olympia, where 
 it was preserved and seen by Pausanias.^ On one 
 of the bands, of cedar or of ivory, was represented 
 ' Menelaos, with a sword in his hand, rushing on 
 to kill Helen ' — clearly at the sacking of Ihum. 
 
 A vase shows us Aphrodite disarming the 
 wrath of Menelaos by withdrawing the veil from 
 the beautiful face of Helen. ^ 
 
 Another vase is mentioned and figured by 
 Panofka,* where Helen, fully dressed, causes the 
 enraged Menelaos to drop his sword. Panof ka, 
 in the German edition,^ says that Menelaos is 
 ' disarmed by the entreaties of the once beloved 
 one.' But this seems not well observed. To me 
 
 1 Menelaos finding Helen, threatening her, and Aga- 
 memnon interceding, in Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, 
 xiii. 359 and 388-418. 
 
 2 Pausanias, v. 17, 18. 
 
 3 Andrew Lang, Helen of Troy, p. 189. 
 
 * Manners and Ciostoms of the Greeks, London, 1849. 
 ^ Griechen wnd Griechinnen, nach Ant'iken. 
 
70 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 it appears that her hand is rather warningly 
 raised, and the gesture is not that of entreaty. 
 
 One of the three so-called ' Mirrors of Helen '^ 
 in the British Museum shows again the interven- 
 tion of Aphrodite against the raging hushand at 
 the shrine of Minerva. Unfortunately, Helen's 
 face is here no longer clear. Only Minerva's 
 is very clear, that of Menelaos tolerably so. 
 
 By none of these testimonies is a clue offered 
 to make it clear how Menelaos passes from a 
 raging desire to kiU Helen (of which so much 
 remains in the beginning of Goethe's Helena) 
 to his absolute complacency as shown in the 
 Odyssey. Homer does not tell. 
 
 Only Walter Savage Landor does, in the 
 Hellenics.''' Here Helen is pursued by Mene- 
 
 1 Larousse mentions one ' Mirror of Venus ' as being in 
 the British Museum. I find three : 
 
 {a) Betrothal of Helen and Menelaos. Helen distinctly 
 ugly and almost clumsily drawn, Menelaos somewhat 
 better. Is this a caricature ? 
 
 (6) Helen's toilette, attended by the three Graces, super- 
 intended by Venus, a fat woman. Only the lower part of 
 Helen's face is seen : strong straight nose, strong chin. 
 
 (c) Menelaos threatening Helen at the shrine of 
 Minerva, Venus protecting. In parts very indistinct, by 
 destructive effect of age. Helen not clear ; head of 
 Menelaos bearded ; Minerva clearest. This is the 
 ' Mirror ' referred to by Larousse. It does not appear 
 to have been known to Winckelmann. 
 
 2 Edition of 1846, vol. ii., pp. 483, 484. 
 
HELEN'S LIFE IS SAVED 71 
 
 laos up the steps of the palace. An old atten- 
 dant deprecates and momentarily prevents the 
 vengeance being carried out. Nevertheless, 
 Menelaos prepares to kill her, but her sweetness 
 disarms him, and at the end of the scene his love 
 has returned.^ 
 
 Anyhow, Helen's life is saved ; but she has 
 become a prisoner. And now, in a picture very 
 different from that by the Roman, who shows 
 her so abject, let us see her in what Goethe caUs 
 ' The Glorification of Helena.' 
 
 The Pictures of Polygnotus. 
 
 To the Roman writer, then, Helen had appeared 
 as an accursed monster. Not so to a Greek artist. 
 How considerately — ■ nay, lovingly — Homer 
 treated her image! though he by no means forgets 
 
 ^ This comes nearest to the picture on a vase, repro- 
 duced by Millin (1759-1818) in Monuments inedits, vol. ii., 
 p. 306. Brantome tells the episode, according to his own 
 manner, with scant sympathy, in his book Des Dames : 
 ' . . . comme fit Menelaus, le pauvre cocu, lequel, I'espace 
 de dix ou douze ans, menassant sa femme Heleine qu'il la 
 tuerait, s'il la tenait jamais, et mesmes lui disait du has de 
 la muraille en haut ; mais, Troye prise, et elle tombee entre 
 ses mains, il fut si ravy de sa beaute qu'il lui pardonna 
 tout, et I'ayma et caressa mieux que jamais ' {Des Dames, 
 QEuvres completes, ed. Ludovic Lalanne, Paris, 1864-1882, 
 tome ix., pp. 17, 18. 
 
72 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 that upon the Greeks, too, she had brought 
 suffering. Later on we find another artist, 
 Polygnotus, about 450 B.C., distinctly treating 
 her with dignity and as a commanding figure — 
 not after the return to Sparta, where, in the 
 Odyssey, we have seen her the respected mistress 
 of the King's house, but much earlier, at a 
 moment scarcely hours, or at the utmost days, 
 after the horror in which she appeared amidst 
 the massacre of the Trojans when Ilion fell. 
 
 The pictures of Polygnotus have long dis- 
 appeared, with many other works of art that 
 were yet extant when, between 160 and 180 a.d., 
 the traveller Pausanias^ described the artistic 
 beauties of the Hellas of his days. At Delphi 
 there was quite a gallery of his pictures. They 
 fell into three great groups : the storming of 
 Troy ; the return of the leaders ; the visit of 
 Odysseus to the Lower World. The pictures 
 were, from the description of Pausanias, repro- 
 duced by the brothers F. and S. Riepenhausen 
 in 1826 and 1829.2 This is the work which 
 
 ^ Pausanias, x. 25, 26. The writer also mentions the 
 poem by Lesches — one of the Cyclics — on the destruction 
 of Troy, which must have lain before Polygnotus, and 
 was known to Pausanias himself. 
 
 ^ Peintures de Polygnote, Rome, 1826-1829. There is 
 a more recent publication : GemaMe des Polygnot zu 
 Delphi, ^ezeichnet und gestochen nacli der Beschreibuiig 
 
THE PICTURES OF POLYGNOTUS 73 
 
 Goethe had before him in speaking of this 
 matter.^ 
 
 We turn to the eight pictures which show the 
 preparations for the home voyage of the Greeks, 
 with their booty and prisoners. Four of these 
 pictures may fairly be called ' The Glorification of 
 Helena.' Nothing as yet indicates that a recon- 
 ciliation between her and Menelaos has taken 
 place. It is evident, however, that she is sur- 
 rounded by sympathy and respect. But let 
 Pausanias speak. > 
 
 Picture III. 
 Near Helen stands Briseis ; a little higher, 
 Diomedes and Iphis^ together. Both seem to 
 admire Helen's beauty. Helen herself is seated. 
 Near her stands a young man, probably Eury- 
 bates,^ the herald of Odysseus. Helena has two 
 
 des Pausanias, Leipzig, C. Hesse, 1885. No reference is 
 made in this edition to the earlier one, nor to Goethe, 
 whose essay on the subject seems unknown to the new 
 editor or publisher. Four pages of text accompany the 
 large engravings, giving the translation of the two chapters 
 from Pausanias, and a reference to Kugler''s Kunstgeschichte. 
 The latter (Stuttgart, 1842), pp. 232, 233, cites Goethe. 
 
 1 Goethe, v. 354, 355, Cotta ed., 1855, in 6 vols. 
 
 ^ Which of the different mythological personages of 
 this name ? 
 
 ^ As to Eurybates, i'ausanias was a little more vague 
 than Goethe's translation : zov 'OSuo-o-ew? elvai, KrjpvKa 
 
 10 
 
74 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 women near her — Panthalis^ and Electra: the 
 
 former stands by her side ; the latter ties her 
 
 sandals. 
 
 Picture IV. 
 
 Somewhat higher stands a man, clothed in 
 purple, very sad-looking ; it is Helenus,^ a son 
 of Priam. Beside him stands Meges,^ with his 
 arm wounded. Next this one is Lykomedes, 
 wounded in the wrist, the head, and the heel. 
 (All these figures, evidently prisoners of war, are 
 on a stage higher than Helena.) 
 
 Picture V. 
 Beside her we see Aithra,* the mother of 
 Theseus, with the hair of her head shorn, in sign 
 of slavery, and Demophon, the son of Theseus, 
 in a meditative position. Probably he considers 
 how to liberate Aithra. He asked Agamemnon 
 for her freedom, but the latter would not grant 
 it unless Helen herself consented. That is 
 
 ^ Here, then, did Goethe find the name of the noble 
 Leader of the Chorus in his play. 
 
 2 Helena's rejected suitor, after the death of Paris ; vide 
 p. 59. 
 
 3 Meges, grandson of Augas, one of the suitors to Helen, 
 killed the son of Antenor. 
 
 * Vide p. 30. Also affectionately mentioned in Konrad 
 von Wiirzburg's long poem, 'Ethra, mein liebez Kamer- 
 wip,' ed. Keller, p. 262 ; and at length in Quintus 
 Smyrnaeus, xiii. 492-539. 
 
GOETHE ON POLYGNOTUS 75 
 
 probably the cause of Eurybates (the herald or 
 messenger above mentioned) standing before 
 Helen to deliver this message (not in vain).^ 
 
 Picture VI. 
 
 On the same line we see captive Trojan 
 women, exceedingly sad. Amongst them two 
 Princesses, Andromache and Medesikaste, are 
 veiled.^ The latter is a natural daughter of 
 Priam. 
 
 So far Pausanias. 
 
 Goethe — The Gloiiification of Helena. 
 
 Now let us listen, even at the price of some 
 httle repetition, to Goethe's comment^ on these 
 four pictures, in which Menelaos does not appear. 
 ' Here is no longer any question of violence. 
 Wise Nestor, stiU in his great age characterized 
 as a master of horse-training, stands by the shore, 
 presiding over the embarkation, which requires 
 precaution. Beside him, in three stages, are 
 
 ^ Not in vain : cmoaT^ovTi Se ainoo KijpvKa eBtoKev 
 'EKevTj Tijv j(dpiv. 
 
 ^ The unveiled ones may be those less distinguished 
 maidens — or girls — who later on, at Sparta, form the 
 lively and noisy chorus in Goethe and Carlyle. 
 
 5 In the essay Polygnots Gemdlde, p. 357, vol. v., 
 Cotta ed. 
 
 10—2 
 
76 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 crowded Trojan women, prisoners, more or less 
 bewailing their fate. No longer are they, as 
 formerly, distributed in family life by the side of 
 mother, father, brother, husband, but snatched 
 into a troop, like a herd driven into a corner — 
 treated as a multitude. But not only weak 
 women do we see here in debasing captivity ; 
 men, too, most gravely wounded, incapable of 
 offering resistance. And all these mental and 
 bodily sufferings — for whose sake are they en- 
 dured ? For the sake of a woman, the symbol 
 of highest beauty. 
 
 ' There she sits, served once more as a Queen, 
 surrounded by her maids, admired by a former 
 suitor, respectfully saluted by a herald. 
 
 'This last trait leads us back to her early 
 youth. We are directed to a neighbouring 
 group. Behind Helena stands Aithra, the 
 mother of Theseus, who for Helen's sake has 
 been languishing for many years already in 
 captivity, and now again finds herself a captive 
 among captives. Her grandson, Demophon, by 
 her side, seems to plan her liberation. Now, if, 
 as the legend informs us, Agamemnon, the all- 
 powerful commander of the Greeks, is not 
 inclined to set Aithra free unless Helen herself 
 consents, the Queen appears here in her highest 
 glory, seeing that amidst the mass of captives 
 
THE GLORIFICATION OF HELENA 77 
 
 she appears as a Princess on whose word depends 
 the power to bind or loosen, 
 
 ' Everything in which she was wronged has the 
 saddest consequences ; the wrong she herself did 
 is wiped out by her presence. 
 
 ' From early youth an object of admiration and 
 desire, she kindles the most violent passion of a 
 heroic age ; she imposes on her suitors a never- 
 ending fealty, is abducted, married, led away, and 
 reconquered. Even whUst bringing ruin, she fills 
 with ecstasy the youthful and the aged ; she 
 disarms her vengeful husband, and, after having 
 been the aim in a calamitous war, she now 
 appears as the most beautiful gain of the victor, 
 and when only raised above the mass of the dead 
 and the captives she thrones on the apex of her 
 influence. Everything is forgiven and forgotten, 
 for she is here again. The living man sees again 
 the living woman, and rejoices in the highest 
 earthly good, the view of a perfect form. 
 
 ' And thus the then contemporary world, and 
 the world of the ages since then, seem to agree 
 with the Shepherd oi Mount Ida, who esteemed 
 but Uttle Power, and Gqld^ and even Wisdom, 
 when contrasted with Beauty.' 
 
78 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 Home again, Triumphant. 
 
 Quintus of Smyrna (of whom more later on) 
 wrote a book on these events, perhaps in the 
 fourth century a.d., but it was for a long time 
 lost. It was discovered only towards the end of 
 the fifteenth century. Its genuineness has never 
 been contested. And it is much superior to 
 Dictys and Dares, who were the chief authorities 
 for things Trojan in the Middle Ages. 
 
 According to Dictys (v. 14), Ajax, after the 
 fall of Troy, asks for the death of Helen. But 
 Menelaos, unforgetful of all his love for her, and 
 seconded by Odysseus, succeeds, by many appeals 
 and prayers, to save her life. 
 
 Still, according to Seneca's play,^ on the 
 ground of a Greek original by Euripides, a grim 
 episode occurred just before the sailing. Helen 
 has to appear as bridesmaid in the horrible 
 ceremony of a mock-marriage of Polyxena,^ a 
 daughter of Priam, to the shade of Achilles, on 
 whose cairn she is solemnly sacrificed by his son 
 Pyrrhus (or Neoptolemos) stabbing the bride to 
 death. There are bitter words from Andro- 
 mache, the wife, and Hecuba, the mother, whose 
 
 1 Seneca's play, The Troades. 
 
 2 Compare, on the death of Polyxena, the Hellenics of 
 Landor, 1st ed., 1847, pp. 122-132. 
 
BACK TO SPARTA 79 
 
 present is like the recent past, terrible, and 
 whose future is to be decided by lot among the 
 victors. Helen's is fixed, and at this moment, at 
 any rate, seems dark enough. She exclaims :^ 
 
 ' Andromache weeps for Hector openly ; 
 Hecuba weeps for Priam ; I alone 
 In secret weep for Paris. 
 
 ***** 
 My master drags me hence, without the chance 
 Of lot. Was I the bringer of this war ? 
 Of so great Teucrian carnage ? I think this true 
 If first a Spartan keel thy waters cut. 
 But if of Phrygian wars I am the prey. 
 By the victorious goddess as a prize 
 Given for Paris' judgment, pardon me ! 
 
 ***** 
 An angry judge awaits me, and my cause 
 Is left to Menelaos.' 
 
 Talthybius, the messenger, or officer from 
 the Greek camp, interrupts the bitter contest, 
 and ends the play : 
 
 ' Ye captive women, seek with speed 
 The sea ; the sails are filled, the vessels move.' ^ 
 
 1 In Miss Ella Isabel Harris's translation (Boston, U.S.A., 
 1898). 
 
 There may also be compared one by Watson Bradshaw, 
 1902, and one by S. P. (probably the oldest, 1660). 
 
 ^ In Mr. Bradshaw's translation : ' Now, captives, look 
 out to embark on the briny deep with quickened steps ; 
 the vessels are now loosening sails, and the foremost ships 
 of the fleet are already under way.' Whilst these pages are 
 passing through the press, a new English translation of the 
 
80 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 Helen, Quintus relates, marched with the cap- 
 tive Trojan women towards the beautiful Greek 
 vessels. She was at first afraid of insult by the 
 Greeks, but, all around the troops were dazzled 
 by her faultless beauty, and no one dared to say 
 anything unpleasant before her face or behind 
 her back. All looked upon her with delight.^ 
 
 A beautiful antique bas-relief in the Campana 
 Museum showed, in accordance with Quintus, 
 Helena entering Sparta on her chariot, with 
 Menelaos — not as a captive woman, but trium- 
 phantly, with firm aspect, proud bearing, holding 
 with a royal gesture the reins of her four-in- 
 hand (quadriga). 
 
 Ten years have passed in the siege of Troy, 
 eight or nine in the preparation for that siege 
 and in fruitless negotiation. The city taken, 
 Helen has returned with Menelaos to Lace- 
 dsemon. But they do not reach home imme- 
 diately. In the eighth year only, after many 
 wanderings, Menelaos comes to Sparta. No words 
 
 play of Euripides, by Professor Murray, comes to hand, 
 ' The Trojan Women. Translated into English rhyming 
 verse by Gilbert Murray, LL.D.' (G. Allen). 
 
 ^ J. A. Symonds says : ' Down to the ships she comes 
 with Menelaos, hand in hand.'' This is saying too much. 
 She walks behind Menelaos, and the complete reconciliation 
 comes a little later, just before sailing (Quintus, xiv. 
 149-178). 
 
AT HOME AGAIN 81 
 
 in Homer saying that Helen is all the while 
 with him ; in the Odyssey,^ he relates his adven- 
 tures and visits to Cyprus, Phoenicia, Egypt, 
 Libya, and the Ethiopians. 
 
 Later legends about Helen have, after all, a 
 tragic ending. She was near forty-five when 
 Troy fell. She was then the femme de quarante 
 ans — still beautiful. She was full of grace and 
 dignity, a little later on, when she again presided 
 in the house of Menelaos, and Telemaehus came 
 there in search of his father. ^ The scene of 
 leave-taking is full of charm ; she has still her 
 golden locks, her rosy cheeks. (Enone long 
 ago had said bitterly to Paris : ' She is reported 
 never to age' (Quintus, x. 312). Helena, as 
 well as Menelaos, give costly presents : a precious 
 mantle, woven by her own hands, to her belongs 
 the favourable explanation of an omen that to 
 other witnesses appeared doubtful.^ Homer 
 gives a striking and pleasing picture of comfort 
 and matrimonial entente cordiale. A modern poet, 
 
 1 Odyssey, iv. 81 et seq. ; also xv. ll"2-118. 
 
 ^ It is on this occasion that Homer mentions the posses- 
 sion by Helen of the nepenthe {Odyssey, iv. 227, 228), 
 which she had received from the Egyptian Queen, and 
 which procured the oblivion of all grief and of its causes. 
 You will recollect the mention of this nepenthe by Edgar 
 Allen Foe in ' The Raven.' 
 
 3 Odyssey, xv. 117, 162. 
 
 II 
 
82 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 peering into the inner life of the woman so 
 situated, after so many and such experiences, 
 lends her these words : 
 
 ' I lived a Queen long time, and because wealth 
 And high abundance can make sweet our days 
 When youth's swift joy is passed, I did requite 
 With what I might — not love — the kindly care 
 Of him I loved not ; pomp and robes of price 
 And chariots held me.' ^ 
 
 Helen's Tragic End. 
 
 At last Menelaos died. She aged. The 
 English poet Thomas Hey wood ^ makes her 
 send Hermione, her daughter, for a looking- 
 glass ; and when this is brought, and she finds 
 herself no longer beautiful, and not wishing to 
 outlive her 16veKness^slie„kills herself. ^ 
 
 ]3iBfeTeQfrT>ut surely not less tragic, is the 
 catastrophe as it appeared to the later Greek, 
 Pausanias. He relates, and in that beautiful 
 Epic of Hades the English poet adopts the sad 
 story. 
 
 1 Sir Lewis Morris, Epic of Hades, p. 117. 
 
 ^ Began to write in 1598 ; died about 1641. 
 
 3 Last scene of ' The Second Part of Hey wood's Iron Age, 
 vol. iii., pp. 429, 430, now first collected, with Illustrative 
 Notes and a Memoir of the Author.' In 6 vols., London, 
 1874, John Pearson. 
 
THE TRAGIC END 83 
 
 Megapenthes and Nikostratos,^ sons of Mene- 
 laos by another woman, rose in insurrection 
 against Queen Helen, drove out their step- 
 mother. No doubt, whilst committing their new 
 wrong, they pleaded to themselves, in justifica- 
 tion, her old wrongs. She fled to a friend of her 
 youth, Polyxo, in the Isle of Roses. But this 
 ruler of Rhodos,^ who had lost a husband in the 
 siege of Troy, was angered against her, the 
 cause of the war ; gave her indeed hospitaUty 
 first, then death. The hostess — or her maids, 
 disguised as Furies — fell upon Helen in her 
 bath. Then she was hanged on a tree. Hence 
 her by-name, Dendritis.^ In Schiller's words : 
 
 ' Das ist das Loos des Schonen auf der Erde.' 
 
 The mist of uncertainty, then, spreads over 
 this end of Helen, as over much of her life. For 
 others say she and Menelaos were killed in 
 Tauris. And another version stiU is given by 
 Euripides, in his play of Orestes : When Orestes 
 and his friend Pylades were on the point of 
 killing Helena, Phoebus- ApoUo — as a last tribute 
 to the glory of her beauty — ^placed her among 
 the stars. 
 
 * Pausanias, iii. 19. 
 
 ^ Tlepolemos (Pausanias, iii. 19). 
 
 ^ AevS/aov, a tree. 
 
 11—2 
 
84 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 A Myth only ? 
 Was Helena originally a moon-goddess ? 
 Creutzer, in the once well-known book Sym- 
 bolics and Mythology, calls her a Mondsfrau ,^ 
 and in another place says she belongs to the 
 religion of the moon- worshippers.^ Was she a 
 myth only ? was there never a personal existence 
 of a Helen of Troy, the wife and sister-in-law of 
 Menelaos and Agamemnon, the sons of Atreus ? 
 Is Helena = Selene, length and shortness of 
 vowels notwithstanding P ' But such magic 
 figures,' says Niebuhr, * are different from dreams, 
 and not without a hidden ground of real truth.' 
 
 ^ Symbolik und Mythologie, vol. i., p. 343. 
 
 ^ Ibid., vol. iv., p. 458. 
 
 ^ The Encyclopwdia Britannica, 9th ed., says it is most 
 probable that the word eXivrj, an epithet of the moon 
 or moon-goddesses, is connected with the [Sanscrit] root 
 svar, to shine. Which does not seem to help us much, as 
 Helena certainly shone as much or more than many persons 
 called illitstrious, even when they are not shining lights. 
 
 Compare also W. F. Roscher, Ueber Selene und Ver- 
 wandtes, in his Studien, iv. 146. The author does not deal 
 as specially with Helena as he does with others, with those 
 who are related to Artemis or Hecate, the moon-goddesses. 
 To the former he attaches Kallisto, Atalanta, Iphigenia ; 
 to the latter, Medea and Circe. He adds : ' Probably 
 there was also an Aphrodite class of Lunar heroines — e.g., 
 Helena and Phaedra.' On p. 6 he mentions a Spartan 
 legend, according to which the egg from which Helen 
 sprang had fallen from the moon. 
 
MYTHS AND HISTORY 85 
 
 And in another place : ' Mythical the Trojan 
 War was, no doubt — so much so that not a 
 single point of its events can, by its greater or 
 less probability, be distinguished from others ; 
 none the less, a historical groundwork is un- 
 deniable, and it is even less hidden than in many 
 other poetical legends. The Atrides, for in- 
 stance, as rulers of the Peloponnesus are not to 
 be doubted.' ^ 
 
 To which, perhaps, one may add : And is the 
 existence of a King Arthur, which even Milton 
 doubted, of Charlemagne, of Romulus, of a 
 WUliam Tell, to be denied, on the strength of 
 the legendary inventions which have gathered 
 round their names — the search for the Graal, 
 Arthur's taking of Paris and Rome, Charle- 
 magne's expedition into Palestine, or Gessler's 
 hat? 
 
 It is, perhaps, enough to have touched on the 
 point. There was a time, not long ago, when 
 all mj^hological legends, however man-hke or 
 woman-like their personages appeared, had to 
 be dissolved, by clever interpreters, into Sun, 
 Moon and Dawn. 
 
 ^ Niebuhr : Romische Gescliichte, 1811, vol. i., pp. 126, 
 149. 
 
86 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 In Ancient India. 
 
 Max Mullerjield that the Indian Sarama,, the 
 CaiYiykgpddess of the Rig-Veda, is the counter- 
 part of the Helena of the Greeks. Sarama goes 
 to the Belu, or fortress of the Panis, or powers of 
 darkness, to recover the red cattle, which are 
 supposed to be the rays of light. She declares 
 herself to be the messenger of the irresistible god 
 Indra. The Panis tempt her ; she shall be their 
 sister, shall stay with them, have a share of the 
 cattle. But in vain, and she recovers the 
 cattle. ^ 
 
 Etymologically the identification of Sarama 
 (or Saramya) with Helena, and that of Ushas 
 with the Eos of the rosy fingers, of Brisaya with 
 Briseis, of Dahana with Daphne, etc., offers 
 little, if any, difficulty. But how different the 
 roles assigned to the actors ! In the Indian 
 myth it would be Helena who is in search of 
 what was stolen, and is successful in the end ; 
 the Panis hold the fortress and are by her over- 
 come. The points of variance are surely as great 
 as those of coincidence, to say the least. 
 
 If a common origin lies at the base of both 
 Iliad and Rig- Veda, an immense space of time 
 must have elapsed before such great divergen- 
 ^ Rig- Veda, book x., hymn 108, verses 1-10. 
 
AMONG INDIANS AND MONGOLS 87 
 
 cies, in India and Greece, could have come from 
 the same germ, and even the traditional date of 
 the siege of Troy, about 1200 a.d., would seem 
 to indicate an enormous rapidity of development 
 if the age of the Rig- Veda be accepted as lying 
 somewhat before 1500 a.d. The story of the 
 siege of Troy would then seem, by Max Miiller's 
 theory, a development of the Vedic myth of the 
 • daily siege of the East by the solar powers.' 
 
 To this matter our attention was strongly 
 attracted by my learned friend, Mr. Romesh 
 Dutt, who may, perhaps, in another place return 
 to it. 
 
 Among the Mongols. 
 
 An Austrian scholar. Dr. Jiilg, Professor at 
 the University of Innsbruck, has found a curious 
 reflex of our Helena story among the Mongols. 
 In their great (or perhaps only long) heroic poem, 
 the Deeds of Bogda Gesser Chan, he finds unex- 
 pected parallels both to lUas and Odyssey. Their 
 IIelen_ is caUedJBogmo Goa ; there is wooing and 
 rape, fight of the contending lovers with their 
 friends for nine years, and again nine years are 
 consumed in the return from the war. ^ 
 
 1 Verhamdlungen der 26sten Versammlung deutscher 
 Philologen, etc., Leipzig, Teubner, 1869, pp. 58-71. In 
 the British Museum Library. 
 
88 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 More Theories and a Personality. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be sufficient that we just 
 mention another learned theory, developed in an 
 essay, De Helena ded, in which, with a great 
 mass of speculative learning, Helena's mother, 
 Leda, is not only identified with Leta or Latona, 
 the mother of Diana and Apollo, but with 
 Venus-Aphrodite herself. Nemesis being the 
 mother, Leda becomes only the nurse of Helena. 
 Leda is, moreover, identified with Astarte, not to 
 mention her niece, or granddaughter, Iphigenia, 
 the whole being perhaps bewildering enough. ^ 
 
 Or, again, is she a reproduction of the Indian 
 Maja, who by her arts deceives everyone ? Be 
 this as it may, Helena, even if personified out of 
 whatever naive observation of elemental natural 
 events, stands before us now as a person : not 
 fixed in the straight lines of one of the historical 
 personages of these latter centuries of memoirs, 
 chronicles, and gazettes, yet as one who, more 
 than a mere abstraction, appeals to the poets and 
 to us as one having lived and loved — firmly 
 statuesque on the one hand, and yet passing, 
 on the other, into various forms and aspects, like 
 
 ^ De Helena ded, von Th. Heincke. Programm des 
 Koniglichen Katholischen Gymnasiums, Hechingen bei 
 Sigmaringeu. Sigmaringen, 1863. 
 
THE CHARMS OF HELENA 89 
 
 the rosy or fierce clouds accompanying the rise 
 or setting of the sun ; somewhat hke the fiery 
 Brunhild and the innocent Dornroschen (the 
 Sleeping Beauty — la Belle au Bois dormant) 
 who are but one and the same person, as the 
 Mdrchen-cxesitmg fancy of unconscious artistic 
 ages forms the plastic element into new, some- 
 times even contradictory phenomena. 
 
 So let her live with us — as a personality, not 
 an abstract ; so, perhaps, let her love on and be 
 loved by us, not as one perfect, but as one to 
 whom much may be forgiven, seeing she has 
 loved much.^ 
 
 The Charms of Helena. 
 
 Helen is said to have cast a charm on every 
 man by means of love-philters which she received 
 from the wise Polydamna in Eg5rpt. And her 
 bewitching power extended even to her personal 
 belongings. When the Phocians sacked the 
 treasury of the Delphian Oracle, 357 B.C., the 
 wife of one of their captains took and wore 
 Helen's necklace, whereupon she came to dote 
 on a young Epirote soldier and eloped with him.^ 
 
 Before parting from her, would one not hke 
 to have a satisfactory portrait ? An authentic 
 one is, of course, beyond one's hopes. Still, one 
 1 St. Luke vii. 47. ^ Symonds, ii. 73, 74. 
 
 12 
 
90 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 at least presents itself with much confidence as 
 such, whilst the acceptance of any of the various 
 ones will partly depend on the beholder's 
 conception of her character. 
 
 Dares the Phrygian,^ who probably followed a 
 current tradition, describes her two brothers and 
 herself in one picture. ' Their likeness was per- 
 fect. They had fair hair, large eyes, a white 
 complexion, and were tall. Helen, like them, 
 was beautiful, of a gentle mind, sweet disposi- 
 tion, well grown, with shapely limbs ; she had a 
 mark, or mole, between the two eyebrows, and a 
 very small mouth.' Dares did not know, or had 
 nothing to say about, the colour of her eyes. 
 Boito says they were brown, and he should 
 know, he loved her so much. ' Those brown 
 eyes,' reports the poet-musician, ' were gentle as 
 the moon and ardent as the sun ' {vaga com la 
 luna, ardente come il sole). 
 
 On the occasion of her marriage with Mene- 
 laos, Landor speaks of her 'rosebud face,' and 
 the girls, addressing Menelaos, sing of 
 
 ' Helen, in whose eyes 
 The loves for ever play.' 
 
 1 Chapter 12 of his account of the Trojan War (De 
 exidio Trojoe). The work presents itself as translated 
 from a Greek original, by Cornelius Nepos, with a dedi- 
 cation to Sallust. Its real age is not ascertained. 
 
HELEN'S BEAUTY 91 
 
 In a description of a woman who was supposed 
 to realize the traditional idea of Helena, the mass 
 of golden hair, large eyes, and warm expression 
 are mentioned. That hair, the forerunner, as it 
 were, of that of the daughters of Titian, is weU 
 attested by the poets. Pindar's tribute has 
 akeady been mentioned. Landor, not a mean 
 authority where woman's beauty — or, indeed, 
 any kind of beauty— is in question, speaks, in 
 Achilles and Helena, of her ' golden hair,' and in 
 his Hellenics he makes the grim Menelaos, on 
 her murder intent, say: 'How glossy is that 
 yellow braid my grasp seized and let loose !' It 
 was not only glossy, but also perfumed. Mene- 
 laos threatens to 'toss it and its odours to the 
 dust and flames.' Perfumes were not the only 
 artificial means by which she cultivated her 
 natural beauty. We are informed by Pliny — 
 who had an eye to so many things — that Helen 
 possessed a cosmetic with which she combated 
 des ans Virreparable outrage} It was an extract 
 or decoction of Thymus incannus, called by the 
 Ancients helenium, as mentioned before.^ 
 
 ^ Racine, Athalie. 
 
 ^ Vide p. 81. 'It had the force in its sweet taste to 
 augment and preserve the beauty of women, both for the 
 face and other parts of the body. This plant was con- 
 sidered to bestow gracefulness and attractiveness to those 
 who used it, and when mixed with wine it would call 
 
 12—2 
 
92 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 At Lindos, in the isle of Rhodes, she made to a 
 temple a present in the shape of a beautiful bowl 
 of amber : she had it fashioned from her breast.^ 
 
 Rossetti, in his Ballad of Troy Town, refers to 
 
 this cup, thus : 
 
 ' Helen knelt at Venus' shrine 
 (O Troy Town !), 
 Saying, " A little gift is mine, 
 
 A little gift for a heart's desire. 
 Hear me speak and make me a sign ! 
 (O Troy's down ! 
 Tall Troy's on fire !) 
 Look, I bring thee a carven cup, 
 
 (0 Troy Town !) 
 See it here, as I hold it up, — 
 
 Shaped it is to the heart's desire, 
 Fit to fill when the gods would sup, 
 (O Troy's down 1 
 Tall Troy's on fire !) 
 It was moulded like my breast." ' ^ 
 
 Some of the finery, it would seem, she had to 
 leave behind her at Troy ; and have we not seen 
 
 forth gaiety, and produce the same eifect as that nepenthe 
 mentioned above, of dispelling all sad memories (Pliny, 
 xxi. 91). 
 
 ^ Pliny, xxxiii. 23. Observe, however, that while we 
 constantly translate electriim by amber, Pliny gives that 
 name to a mixture of gold and silver, when the propor- 
 tion of silver is more than 20 per cent. The temple in 
 question was, according to Pliny, Minerva's. Brantome, 
 repeating the story, substitutes Diana, and calls the metal 
 or hlanc (ffiuvres completes, 1864-1882, vol. ix., p. 255). 
 
 ^ Rossetti, Ballads and Poems, 1880. 
 
SCHLIEMANN— ORNAMENTS— PICTURES 93 
 
 it ? or fancied we saw those pretty things of hers, 
 notably her golden head-gear and other articles, a 
 few years ago, at South Kensington, whither they 
 were brought as a result of the excavations of Dr. 
 Schliemann, that energetic and persevering man? 
 
 Some pictures in which Helena figures we 
 have already mentioned. A remarkable drawing 
 of her and Paris, made about 1450 by the 
 Florentine Finiguerra, may be added. It is 
 preserved in the Print Room of the British 
 Museum, with others by the same artist, and 
 reproduced in a sumptuous edition by Mr. 
 Sidney Colvin. The collection contains many 
 remarkable figures in what was once called 
 sacred and profane history, beginning with 
 Adam and Eve, with whom Helen ranks in 
 equal authenticity. Helen and Paris are seen, 
 to the left of the spectator, as they leave a little 
 temple. Paris shows a fuU profile, from the 
 left — a handsome face, full of admiration for 
 his bride — a tall figure in the dress of the later 
 Middle Ages chnging to him, but showing to us 
 only the back of her head and a portion of what 
 seems a beautiful neck. 
 
 Three pictures in the Wallace Collection we 
 have already referred to. 
 
 Canova's bust of Helen we should not forget 
 to mention, were it only because it inspired Lord 
 
94 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 BjTon to write a few verses in its praise. A 
 print of the bust is to be found in the volume 
 Canova published by Chatto and Windus, 1876. 
 It does not appear in the beautiful work Canova : 
 Recueil de statues, etc. (Rome, 1820), which, on 
 the other hand, contains a splendid statue of 
 Paris with the apple. 
 
 Among the Ancients representations of Helena 
 were very frequent. The picture by the cele- 
 brated Zeuxis was especially famous. It is a 
 curiously composite representation of complete 
 beauty. The artist collected, from a number 
 of beautiful women at Croton in Magna Grascia, 
 his models, various special features which he 
 welded into one idealized representation of the 
 charms that Helen, as the supreme beauty, 
 ought to have possessed.^ iEhan, the collector 
 of anecdotes towards the beginning of the third 
 century a.d., adds that Zeuxis made a lot of 
 money by this picture : he charged a fee to each 
 beholder. This then unusual proceeding was 
 the reason of Helen being called a courtesan. ^ 
 
 A story is also told of the same painter acting 
 similarly with a statue of Juno at Agrigentum, 
 
 ^ Pliny the elder, xxvi. 36. 
 
 ^ Histories, book iv., chap. 12. Abraham Fleming, in 
 his pretty translation, uses a stronger word {Histories, 
 London, 1576, pp. 60, 61). 
 
BRANTOmE— THE THIRTY BEAUTIES 95 
 
 now Girgenti. In another passage Pliny refers ^ 
 to another picture of Helen at Lavinium, a city 
 said to be founded by ^Eneas, about forty miles 
 from Rome : an Atalanta and Helen, both un- 
 clothed, by the same artist. 
 
 Brantome de Bourdeilles, in his pleasant 
 though occasionally loose manner, relating the 
 story of Zeuxis' composite portrait of Helen, 
 observes, as a connoisseur, that, however exceed- 
 ingly beautiful Helen was, she could not have 
 united all the beauties which those various ladies 
 possessed, and to which the brush of Zeuxis 
 made further additions. This leads him to a 
 curious inventory, communicated to him by the 
 lips of a Spanish lady at Toledo, where they 
 know what beauty is. It appears there are 
 thirty traits or points of beauty. ^ You will 
 
 ^ Pliny, XXXV. 6. 
 
 2 Francesco Cornigero, a Latin writer of the Middle 
 Ages, counted thirty of them, in sections of three each, 
 and distinctly declared Helen to have possessed them all. 
 Brantome adds that he had the list from the lips of a 
 Spanish lady at Toledo, ' ou il y en a de tres-belles et 
 bien gentilles et bien apprises.' He gives her Castilian 
 text, and follows it up with his French translation, ' afin 
 qu'on Tentende :' 
 
 ' Trois choses blanches : la peau, les dents, et les mains. 
 Trois noires : les yeux, les sourcils, et les paupieres. 
 Trois rouges : les levres, les joues, et les ongles. 
 Trois longues : le corps, les cheveux, et les mains. 
 Trois courtes : les dents, les oreilles, et les pieds. 
 
96 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 find them referred to in chapter ii. of Prosper 
 M^rim^e's tale of Carmen, on which the opera 
 by Bizet is founded. 
 
 Further on^ Phny mentions, in his list of 
 artists in the second rank of excellence, Aristo- 
 phon, citing a large picture which showed a 
 number of personages, among them Priam, 
 Helen, Credulity, Ulysses, Deiphobus, and 
 Cunning. 
 
 Helen, mostly accompanied by others, apppears 
 frequently in the wall-paintings of Pompeii and 
 Herculaneum, reproduced in the work IVand- 
 gemdlde,^ and in Zahn's Ornaviente, already 
 mentioned. 
 
 Trois larges : la poitrine (ou le sein), le front, et 
 
 rentresourcil. 
 Trois etroites : la bouche (I'une et Tautre), la ceinture 
 
 ou la taille, et I'entree du pied. 
 Trois grosses : le bras, la cuisse, et le gras de la jambe. 
 Trois deliees : les doigts, les cheveux, et les levres. 
 Trois petites : les tetins, le nez, et la teste.' 
 It, after all, does not make quite thirty, several points 
 being counted twice ; nor does he think that all the points 
 can be there in perfection : ' II n'est possible.' 
 
 Much more absolute is our Latin writer, who was 
 apparently not known to Brantome, and whose list differs 
 in some details ; he was quite certain Helen had all these 
 beauties. 
 
 ^ Pliny, XXXV. 40. 
 
 ^ This splendid work Wandgem'dlde (Berlin, 1839 et 
 seg.) recounts from Pompeii and Herculaneum quite a 
 
ROSSETTrS HELEN 97 
 
 Rossetti's imagination led him to make a 
 portrait of Helena, which is figured in Marillier's 
 book on the poet, with the observation that the 
 painting itself ' has disappeared, and is now prob- 
 ably in America or Germany.' At a later 
 date he had some thought of doing a picture 
 to illustrate his Ballad of Troy Town, which 
 must not be confused with this, the subject 
 being Helen's dedicating to Aphrodite the goblet 
 modelled on her shapely breast. In the picture 
 figured here, except that Rossetti has painted 
 a burning town behind, and that the lady is 
 fingering a crystal locket in which is a flaming 
 torch, there is little to suggest that ' daughter 
 of the gods for whom the towers of Ilium were 
 sacked.'^ 
 
 Swinburne has written a glowing descrip- 
 tion of this Helen. ^ In the first of two sormets 
 by Rossetti, Cassandra, the mad daughter of 
 Priam, occupies, indeed, the greatest space ; 
 in the second, Hector is favourably, Paris un- 
 
 chronicle of the love of Paris and Helena, from the first 
 meeting onward, besides the actual drawings made by the 
 clever artist Tentore, who was obliged to prematurely stop 
 the completion of this gi'eat work because he felt his 
 eyesight going. 
 
 ^ H. C. Marillier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: An Illus- 
 trated Memorial of his Art and Life, 2nd ed., 1901. 
 Essays and Studies. 1875. 
 
 13 
 
98 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 favourably, presented. Venus and the apple 
 are mentioned^ 
 
 Lord Leighton painted a 'Helena of Troy,' 
 exhibited in 1865, about which we may quote 
 the judgment of a connoisseur : ' In the figure 
 of Helen he dared greatly, but without com- 
 plete success. It is monumental in height and 
 rigidity, the limbs are cast in a heroic mould, 
 and the general effect of it is impressive and 
 well contrasted with the less dignified attitude 
 and more agitated drapery of her attendants ; 
 but her tread is heavy, her drapery encumbers 
 her, both hands are occupied in holding it, and 
 his desire to complete the perfect oval of her 
 face has made him almost denude her head of 
 the glory of her hair.' ^ 
 
 The late F. Sandys painted two Helenas. One 
 shows the half-figure of the lady looking at the 
 spectator, holding her long and very ample hair 
 in front of her, pressing it with both hands, as in 
 woe. The flames of Troy illumine the back- 
 ground. The other is peculiar, and to some 
 beholders displeasing, but, so it would seem, 
 a legitimate conception, vastly different from 
 being the unwilhng instrument of Venus, in the 
 conception of Paul de Saint Victor, and to some 
 
 1 Cosmo Monkhouse, • British Contemporary Artists 
 (Heinemann, 1901), pp. 110, 111. 
 
RESURRECTION 99 
 
 extent in the third book of the Iliad. - She is 
 a Lorelei, rather, hungry for loving victims, and 
 ruining the conquered ones. Luxuriant red hair ; 
 searching, burning eyes. 
 
 The Grave — Resurbection. 
 
 Helen's grave is now^here shown ; but the 
 influence of her beauty, beneficial after her death, 
 continued. A temple was built and dedicated 
 to her at Therapne in Lacedgemon, and there, 
 says Herodotus,^ women brought their baby- 
 girls, praying to the divine Helen that she might 
 give them beauty. He then tells a pretty story 
 how an exceedingly ugly child was there so 
 influenced, by the grace of the famous daughter 
 of Zeus, as to grow up into a most beautiful 
 damsel. 
 
 Some noble and mystic resurrection was in 
 store for Helen. I have already alluded to it, 
 and we shall have to revert to it further on. 
 Her shade was united to the shade of Achilles 
 
 1 Herodotus, vi. 61. Pausanias (iii. 19) reports that at 
 Therapne Menelaos had a temple, and that it was said 
 he was buried there, together, with Helena. But he 
 passes on at once to the Rhodian story, which is contra- 
 dictory. 
 
 13—2 
 
100 IN SPARTA AND TROY 
 
 — SO they are introduced in Bulwer Lytton's 
 'Bridals in the Spiritland.' ^ Thus in another 
 legend the shade of Achilles was united to that 
 of Iphigenia.2 
 
 Helen was to lead a new life, finding resur- 
 rection in a distant isle with AchUles, and to 
 them a son was born, Euphorion, whom we shall 
 meet in Goethe's play. 
 
 1 In the Lost Tales ofMiktns, 1866. 
 
 2 Vide Dr. Garnett's play of Iphigenia in Delphi, 1890, 
 a subject which also attracted Goethe at the time of his 
 stay in^Italy. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 So far our account of Helena has chiefly followed 
 the melodious course of Homer and of those who 
 have succeeded him, or drank at the same sources. 
 But there is a stream branching off at the moment 
 when she leaves her home in Sparta. That is 
 the Egyptian version, according to which Helen 
 never went to Troy.^ Herodotus, about 450 B.C., 
 learnt it from the priests in Egypt. He there 
 hears first of a King Proteus — in whom there 
 appears as yet nothing of the characteristics of 
 that sea-god in the Odyssey, so ready to change 
 his form and from whose name we have our 
 frequent adjective protean. Where that King 
 had resided, at Memphis, Herodotus saw a 
 grove ^ sacred to the memory of that good 
 
 1 Herodotus, ii. 92 et seq. This is what Goethe in his 
 drama refers to in the words of Phorkyas to Helen : 
 
 ' But I have heard thou livedst on earth a double life : 
 In Ilion seen, and all the while in Egypt too.' 
 ^ Grove = fewiewo*, whence Mommsen derives templum, 
 the point where, in the founding of a city, the constructors' 
 
 101 
 
102 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 King Proteus, and within, a chapel dedicated 
 to Venus- Aphrodite, surnamed in this instance 
 ' the Stranger.' He conjectures that this 
 byname refers to Helena ; that she is the divine 
 beauty revealed to the Egyptians. He has 
 heard that Helen was once at the Court of 
 Proteus. Indeed, he must have recollected, 
 from the Odyssey,^ that Helen had been at some 
 time in Egypt — though there she is reported to 
 have been in company with Menelaos, and on 
 that King's return from Troy. No other temple 
 of Venus- Aphrodite gives her that byname, ' the 
 Stranger.' So, on this hypothesis, the indefati- 
 gable explorer Herodotus sets about questioning 
 the priests. They gradually inform him that 
 Alexandres or Paris, after abducting Helen from 
 Sparta, set, indeed, sail for Troy, but contrary 
 winds push his vessel towards Egypt. There, 
 on the shore, is a temple of Hercules. If any 
 slave take refuge there and undergo certain 
 ceremonies, dedicating himself to the god, he 
 has an inviolable right of asylum. The slaves 
 of Paris, perhaps frightened by the long-con- 
 tinued storms, take flight there, and, being ill- 
 lines, north and south, east and west, cut each other, and 
 which is reserved for religion {Romische Geschichte, 2nd ed., 
 vol. i., p. 21). 
 
 1 Book iv., 125 et seq., and, again, 227-229. 
 
PARIS IN EGYPT 103 
 
 disposed to their master, publish in the presence 
 of the priests and of the Governor of the pro- 
 vince, Thonis,^ the rape of Helen. The Governor 
 reports to the King.^ He is directed to send the 
 stranger to Memphis, where he may state any 
 facts tending to disculpate him of the crime of 
 violating hospitality — viz., that granted by Mene- 
 laos to Paris. Thonis obeys, lays an embargo 
 on the ships, arrests Paris, has him conducted 
 with Helen, with the slaves and the purloined 
 treasure, to Memphis. There the King, after 
 careful inquiry, pronounces judgment : Helen 
 to remain in Egypt, also the treasure, until 
 Menelaos himself comes to claim her and them. 
 Paris is saved from death only by the King's 
 unwillingness to kill a foreigner. So far, but 
 no farther, respect for the principle of hospitality 
 protects Paris, but he must leave Egypt within 
 three days. 
 
 Herodotus thinks that the Egyptian version 
 was not unknown to Homer, but that he rejected 
 it as being less impressive, or less fit for the pur- 
 poses of his epic. 
 
 Note here that Menelaos' Homeric stay in 
 Egypt must be placed in his home voyage from 
 
 ^ This Thonis, or at any rate a Thonis in Egypt, is 
 mentioned, as well as his spouse Polydamna, by Helen in 
 the Odyssey (iv. 228). 
 
 2 Herodotus, ii. 114. 
 
104 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 Troy. That will make it fit in with receiving 
 the presents he and Helen were given in Egypt, 
 and which are recorded in Odyssey iv. 15-22, 
 on the occasion of the visit of Telemachos to the 
 Court of Sparta.^ 
 
 Herodotus was further told by the priests in 
 Egypt that the Greek legend of Helen being at 
 Troy must be a fable. Menelaos told the priests 
 — this must be on the voyage home — that on 
 arriving before Troy they sent ambassadors to 
 the city, he himself being one of them, to ask 
 for the restitution of Helen and the treasure. 
 The Trojans replied that they had neither ; that 
 both were in Egypf^ (Paris, on his return, having 
 had to leave Helen in Egypt, could tell them 
 that). The Greeks would not believe, began the 
 siege, took Troy, and — did not find Helen. 
 
 ^ Voss, in Note 20 to the Odyssey, iv. ^28, says : ' Dies 
 geschah auf der Hinreise nach Troja, als Helena von Paris 
 entfiihrt wurde.' This particular present came from Poly- 
 damna, the wife of Thonis. The other presents {Odyssey, iv.) 
 would belong to a later period, when Menelaos was with 
 Helen. Observe, however, that one version transports 
 Helen and Paris by the most direct way from Sparta to 
 Troy. Other traditions {vide p. 42) interpose a longer 
 period and rather piratical wanderings. Thus, this earlier 
 appearance of Helen in Egypt may be referred to by her 
 in Menelaos' hearing. The two traditions seem to touch 
 on this point. 
 
 ^ Herodotus, ii. 118. 
 
MANELAOS TO EGYPT 105 
 
 Then they sent^ Menelaos to Proteus in 
 Egypt.'^ There both Helen — ^who had been 
 honourably treated — and the treasure were 
 rendered back to him. As successor to Proteus 
 the King, Herodotus mentions Rhampsinite, but 
 Euripides names Theoclymen, a pious ruler, 
 wishing to marry Helen, but, like Thoas in 
 Iphigenia, allowing her to depart. Menelaos 
 himself received substantial proofs of goodwill, 
 which he badly requited. In order to overcome 
 contrary winds, he committed the crime of immo- 
 lating two Egyptian children. He was pursued, 
 and fled by sea to Libya. The Egyptians knew 
 not whither he went afterwards. 
 
 ^ Compare here Euripides' play. In that, however, Mene- 
 laos cannot be sent to the Egyptian King to get Helen. He 
 is thrown on the Egyptian coast by a storm, and he fancies 
 Helen to be with him ; but this supposed Helen is only a 
 simulacrum, which disappears when the real Helen is 
 found. Thus the Helena dialogue in Euripides'' Egyptian 
 play: 
 
 H. . . . I was never at Troy ; 
 A phantom took my place. 
 
 M. How could you at the same time be at Troy and 
 here ? 
 
 H. My name was in several places, not myself.' 
 
 ^ The Proteus of the Odyssey, in the report which 
 Menelaos makes to Telemachos, is the changeful sea-god, 
 and is confounded with or obscured from the pious Egyptian 
 King. Or was the latter after his reign changed into the 
 sea-god .'' 
 
 14 
 
106 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 In the Odyssey^ Menelaos says he was de- 
 tained for some time in Egypt by the gods 
 sending contrary winds in punishment for remiss- 
 ness in making sacrifice. But he is released 
 when, after his interview with the sea-god Pro- 
 teus, he does make proper sacrifice. 
 
 Herodotus is disposed to beheve the Egyptian 
 priests, and to disbeheve the presence of Helen 
 in Troy. For assuredly, he says, the Trojans 
 would ultimately not have refused to give her 
 up, when for her sake they suffered so much. 
 To retain her was not in the interest of either 
 Priam or his nearest heir. Hector, Paris being 
 only a younger son ; and why should the 
 heir-presumptive support him in wrong-doing, 
 especially when that involved such great loss ? ^ 
 
 Still, whilst this critic does not shrink from 
 undermining so much of Homer, it never occurs 
 to him to doubt the personality of Helen. It 
 remains to mention, as also disbelieving Helen's 
 presence in Troy, a later Greek writer, Lyko- 
 phron, born in the isle of Euboea about 270 B.C., 
 but who passed a great or the greater part of his 
 life at the Court of the Graeco-Egyptian King 
 Ptolemteus Philadelphus at Alexandria, 285- 
 297 B.C. His long account of the siege of Troy 
 
 1 Odyssey, iv. 352, 353, 381, 882, 585, 586. 
 
 2 Herodotus, ii. 120. 
 
HELEN NOT AT TROY 107 
 
 is called Cassandra ox Alexandras . As to Helen, 
 Lykophron admits that Paris carries off Helen 
 from Sparta (verse 86) ; but he is not to enjoy the 
 fruit of his crime, for Proteus wUl take her away 
 from him (verse 116), and he has to return into 
 his own country without Helen (verse 139). 
 Lykophron's work was edited in the twelfth 
 century by the learned brothers Tzetses, and was 
 first printed at Venice, 1515. 
 
 Stesichorus and Helen. 
 
 A very remarkable instance of the conflict 
 between the Egyptian story and that of Troy, 
 and a curious solution thereof, is furnished by 
 the writings and legendary life of the poet Stesi- 
 chorus. He was born at Himera in Sicily in 
 638 B.C., and died in 556, which gives him an 
 age of eighty-two years. He was originally 
 called Tisias, and received the name of Stesi- 
 chorus — leader of the choir — for having made 
 rules for the chorus to sing lyrical poetry. 
 Although a contemporary of Alkaios and Sappho, 
 and ranked among the nine principal Greek lyric 
 poets, not only is there Kttle known of his Ufe, 
 but that httle is interwoven with mythological 
 matter, legend and miracle occurring in plain 
 historic time, hke St. George aiding on horseback 
 
 14—2 
 
108 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 the Crusaders in the taking of Jerusalem, or the 
 
 Devil in Luther's life, or the Virgin of Lourdes 
 
 in our days. He had in several poems occupied 
 
 himself with Helen,^ adopting the Troy story, 
 
 and taken not a very favourable view of the 
 
 lady, while yet acknowledging the power of her 
 
 beauty. In his Fall of Troy^ still known to 
 
 Pausanias, the enraged people were about to stone 
 
 the fatal woman because of their misfortune : 
 
 ' Armed with the stony shower, the desperate crew 
 Rush headlong to inflict the vengeance due ; 
 In Beauty armed the bright adulfress stands, 
 And stones drop harmless from the lifted hands.' ^ 
 
 And in a further poem, not preserved to us, 
 the character of Helen seems to be handled dis- 
 respectfully.* Now, with fraternal love, the 
 
 1 The Remains of Stesicliorus in an English version, 
 by Sir Edward Ffrench Bromhead, Bart., 1849. In the 
 British Museum. No publisher mentioned. The essay 
 seems reprinted from a magazine article. Based on 
 Dr. Kleine's publication (Berlin, 1828). 
 
 ^ Pausanias, book x., chap. 26. In the preceding 
 chapter he has mentioned another Destruction of Troy 
 by the poet Lesches, son of iEschylenus, of the town of 
 Pyrrha. The Lesches belong to the Cyclic poems, of 
 which we have spoken before. 
 
 ^ Compare Sudermann in Johannes. 
 * The Helen poems are 
 
 X. Epithalamiivm of Helen and Menelaos. Com- 
 pare the treatment of the same subject in 
 Theokritus and Helena's Brautkammerlied in 
 Arnold Ruge's Wanderbuch, pp. 233-236. 
 
THE ORACLE AT DELPHI 109 
 
 heavenly twins, Castor and Pollux, intervened, 
 and struck the poet with bhndness for having 
 maligned their good sister. 
 
 He repents, consults the oracle of Delphi as 
 to how to cure his blindness, is advised to send a 
 representative to the isle of Leuke, near the 
 delta of the Danube, where Achilles had a 
 temple. There, so he is informed, Achilles hves 
 again, risen from the dead, and with him Helen 
 equally so. From her own lips the messenger 
 brings back the order as to what the poet is to 
 do in order to expiate his calumnious story 
 about Paris and Troy, and to deserve having the 
 punishment taken off again. 
 
 It seems worth while to sketch the Palinody 
 which closes the poems of Stesichorus. 
 
 In stanza 1 the poet himself mourns that the 
 name of Helen has been soiled with shame. 
 
 In stanza 2 he relates how he has been struck 
 bhnd by Castor and Pollux. 
 
 XL The Fall of Troy. 
 XII. The Return from Troy, a companion poem to 
 the Odyssey. 
 
 XIII. Helen. Mr. Broomhead seems to think that ' the 
 
 satirical invective against Helen was probably a 
 poem of lighter nature than the present, more 
 in unison with the Palinodia, and forming a 
 sort of first part to that production. 
 
 XIV. Palinodia, or the Recantation of Helena. 
 
110 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 In stanzas 3, 4, 5 he is advised by the oracle 
 of Delphi to seek healing at Leuke, where there 
 are Achilles and Helen. His friend Autoleon, 
 who has also offended, but against the memory 
 of Ajax, goes there, with a commission from 
 Stesichorus, and brings from Helen's own lips — 
 what a heavenly interview ! — her decree. 
 
 The voyage sketched, we learn that 
 
 ' The desert Leuke next was won, 
 Sacred to Thetis'' godlike son ; 
 Shades of Ajaces there were seen, 
 The less and he of giant mien, 
 Achilles there, and at his side 
 The chaste, the lovely Spartan bride.'' 
 
 Autoleon, in stanza 6 : 
 
 ' He brought a warning back to me : 
 " From Helen tell that poetaster 
 To me he owes the dire disaster ; 
 He shall recant those calumnies, 
 And he shall laud me to the skies."' 
 
 Such, then, is fair Helen's decree to the poet, 
 
 who acts accordingly (stanza 7) : 
 
 ' " O Helen ! Queen of Beauty thou, 
 And faithful to thy marriage vow." ' 
 
 And in stanza 8 : 
 
 ' Blindly I sang : " With willing heart 
 Did Helen from her home depart." ' 
 
 In stanza 9 : 
 
 ' 'Tis false ! for never Dardam oars 
 Did Helen hear to Trojan shores.'' 
 
HELEN AND ACHILLES 111 
 
 In stanza 10 : 
 
 ' The faithless Paris put to sea 
 With a dead Image, shaped like Thee.' 
 
 And he concluded by relating that he again 
 regained his eyesight (stanza 11) : 
 
 ' The Twins propitious hear the righteous lay : 
 Again I now behold the Light of Day.' 
 
 This, then, is what Goethe refers to vaguely 
 
 when Phorkyas says to Helen, to weary and 
 
 confound her : 
 
 ' But I have heard thou livedst on earth a double life : 
 In Ilion seen, and the while in Egypt too.' 
 
 And Helen rephes : 
 
 ' Confound not so the weakness of my weary sense : 
 Here even [in Sparta], who or what I am, I know it not.' 
 
 Phorkyas : 
 
 'Then I have heard how, from the hollow Realm of 
 Shades, 
 Achilles, too, did fervently unite himself to thee, 
 Thy earlier love reclaiming, spite of all Fate's laws.' 
 
 Helen : 
 
 ' To him the Vision, I a Vision joined myself. 
 It was a dream ; the very words may teach us this. 
 But I am faint, and to myself a Vision grow.' i 
 
 (Sinks into the arms of one division of the 
 Chortis.) ^ 
 
 1 < 
 
 Ich als Idol ihm dem Idol verband ich mich, 
 Es war ein Traum, so sagen ja die Worte selbst. 
 Ich schwiade hin und werde selbst nur ein Idol.' 
 Carlyle's translation. 
 
112 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 A similar union of Shades is already men- 
 tioned briefly above (p. 100) from Richard Gar- 
 nett's Iphigenia in Delphi. Here Iphigenia's 
 shade is united to that of Achilles, who had been 
 meant to marry her before the departure for 
 Troy. 
 
 The Palinody must have been very familiar 
 to the contemporaries of Horace, who plainly 
 alludes to it in Epode xvii., verses 42-44 : 
 
 ' Infamis Helenas Castor offensus vice 
 Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece 
 Adempta vati reddidere lumina.'' 
 
 In (the first) Lord Lytton's translation : 
 
 ' Moved by prayer, Castor's self and the twin of great 
 Castor 
 Gave back sight to the bard who had Helen defamed.' ^ 
 
 1 Schiller and Horace, translated by Lord Ly tton, 1 875. 
 Here is a more recent attempt of conquering these two 
 troublesome lines : 
 
 ' Castor, who chafed — indignant-souled at lines Stesi- 
 chorean 
 That libelled Helen — chafed the might of Pollux also 
 
 — hearkened 
 To prayer, and straight restored their sight to poet 
 pupils darkened.' 
 
 Arthur S. Way's The Epodes of Horace, 1898. 
 
 Compare also this more smooth translation by Tar- 
 teron : 
 
 'Vous savez que Pollux et Castor son illustre frere, 
 piques jusqu'au vif des vers outrageauts de Stesichore 
 
HORACE— ISOCRATES—IREN^US 113 
 
 Horace imitates, too, scoffingly, the prayer of 
 Stesichorus, but his Canidia is not as gracious 
 and forgiving as Helen. 
 
 The Athenian rhetor, Isocrates, 436-338 B.C., 
 in his Eulogy of Helen, chap. 28, refers to Stesi- 
 chorus, to the infliction of bUndness, and to the 
 miraculous heahng, both by Helen's wiU and 
 power. In the few lines he devotes to this part 
 of his subject — which is the praise of Helen — he 
 omits entirely the contents of stanzas 8 and 9, 
 in which Stesichorus distinctly denies Helen's 
 having ever gone to Troy.^ 
 
 MahafFy says : ' The Palinody of Stesichorus 
 was very celebrated, and is repeatedly aUuded to 
 by Plato. 2 Nevertheless, it seems very bold to 
 transfer to the stage (as Euripides did) the fancy 
 of a few literary men, or in any case to contra- 
 dict the greatest and the best established of all 
 
 contre la fameuse Helene, furent sensibles au repentir du 
 poete, et lui rendirent par pitie la lumiere du jour, qu'ils 
 lui avaient otee." 
 
 1 Clement Tonnerre, Isocrate, 1862, tome ii., p. 197. 
 
 2 Professor MahafFy might have added a much later 
 author as referring to Stesichorus — viz., Irenaeus, Bishop 
 of Lyons, 178 a.d. ; died about 202 — who speaks of him 
 and his Palinody as sufficiently known to the public of his 
 time {Contra Hceretkos, lib. i., par. 3). Edition Caillau 
 (Patres Apostolici) ; Paris, Mollier, 1842. Translation 
 by Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rombaut ; Edinburgh, 
 Clark, 1868. 
 
 15 
 
114 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 the popular myths. It is evident that this inno- 
 vation did not prosper. Isocrates, in his en- 
 comium (of Helen), takes no notice of it,^ and 
 no modern has attempted to reproduce it, except 
 the German Wieland.' 
 
 The learned writer has overlooked on this 
 occasion Goethe, who has brought the Shade of 
 Helena (if Shade it was), with her last lover, on 
 the stage. Only he is not called Achilles there, 
 but Faust. 
 
 BuLWEB. Lytton and Helena. 
 Before proceeding to Euripides, the next 
 follower of the Egyptian tradition, let us quote 
 a few verses from a work, already referred to, of 
 Bulwer Lytton, The Lost Tales of Miletus, 
 where he introduces AchiUes and Helena in- 
 habiting ' the Isle of Happy Souls.' ^ 
 
 ' As the vessel touched the shore. 
 Came the stateliest two, by Hymen 
 Ever hallowed into one. 
 As he strode, the forest trembled 
 To the awe that crown'd his brow ; 
 As she stepped, the ocean dimpled 
 To the ray that left her smile. . . .' 
 
 ^ This is saying too much {vide above). 
 
 2 'The tales connecting Helena with Achilles, who is 
 clearly a sun-god originally, which are known already to 
 the writer of the Cypriacs, are also very instructive. Over 
 the Black Sea coasts, Achilles and Helena were worshipped 
 as united in the Elysian fields ' {Erwycl. Brit., 9th ed.). 
 
BULWER LYTTON 115 
 
 And further on Achilles himself explains to the 
 amazed travellers that 
 
 ' on the funereal pyre 
 Earthly sins are purged from glory, 
 
 And the Soul is as the Name. 
 If to her in life was Paris, 
 
 If to me in life a slave, 
 Helen's mate is here Achilles ; 
 
 Mine, the sister of the Stars. 
 
 ' Nought of her survives but beauty ; 
 Nought of me survives but fame. 
 Fame and Beauty wed together 
 In the Isle of Happy Souls.' i 
 
 Euripides. 
 
 Euripides (485 or 480 to 408 or 402 B.C.) came 
 more than a hundred years after the death of 
 Stesichorus. He and Herodotus were con- 
 temporaries, and he accepted, at least for 
 dramatic purposes, the Egyptian version. It is 
 true he did not do so always, for elsewhere 
 he foUowed the Homeric tradition, and, more 
 than that, showed himself not very friendly 
 towards Helen. So in his Orestes, and in the 
 Trojan Women, in which he was foUowed by 
 the Roman Seneca,^ whose drama was so 
 
 1 ' Bridals in the Spiritland,' pp. 137, 138, of Tales of 
 Miletus (1866). 
 
 ^ Vide antea, p. 78. . 
 
 15—2 
 
116 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 popular in the Middle Ages. But in his play 
 of Helena he adopted, as I said, the Egyptian 
 version.^ 
 
 Not adverse winds, however, bring Helen to 
 Egj^t, nor is, as in Herodotus' account, Paris 
 with her. But here Juno — so Helen herself 
 relates to us — displeased at not having conquered 
 the other goddesses in the trial by Paris, resolves 
 to spoil the plan of Venus. ' She,' Helen says 
 herself, ' she spoilt my marriage with Paris, and 
 gave not me, but a phantom,^ looking like me, 
 and formed out of aether, to Priam's son, who, 
 misled by illusion, fancied he possessed me. . . . 
 It was my name, not I, that was the price for 
 which the Greeks fought. But I was carried by 
 Mercury-Hermes through the regions of the air, 
 and, veiled in a cloud in Sparta already — for 
 Jupiter was favourable to me — I was set down in 
 the palace of Proteus, the King of Egypt. So 
 long as he lived, I was not troubled by any offer 
 
 1 Mahaffy, Classical Greek Literature, vol. i., part ii,, 
 p. 128 et seq., is not favourable to Euripides' Helena, with 
 the Egyptian form of the legend. Neither was Aristo- 
 phanes, who ridiculed it, as he ridiculed many other things. 
 
 But does not that very disbelief in this particular version 
 imply a general belief in the personality of a real Helena, 
 who had an existence, whilst the exact facts of her life 
 cannot be disentangled from the various accretions of 
 legend ? 
 
 ^ eiStoXov. 
 
EURIPIDES AND EGYPT 117 
 
 of marriage, but now Theoklymen, the pious son 
 of the late King, has taken to be a suitor to my 
 hand. In the meanwhile my unfortunate hus- 
 band has gathered an army ' — she is not aware of 
 the issue of the war — ' and inquires about my 
 abduction. Already he has gone to the towers 
 of Ilium, and many warriors have fallen about 
 the waters of Skamandros. I, who have suffered 
 sojimch3_amLCursei by, th£_£ieeks, because, in 
 ^eirpp-nion, by*rea«on to jny^husband> I have 
 lighted so great aflameofwar.' 
 
 From this exposition we proceed to new facts. 
 A shipwrecked man, who has been in the Trojan 
 War, comes to Egypt, wonders who may be the 
 owner of the palace, and, perceiving Helena, 
 marvels at her appearance, bearing ' the form of 
 that most hateful woman, that deadly beauty, 
 who ruined me, who ruined all the Greeks.' In 
 conversation with him, Helen, who remains as 
 yet unknown to him, asks : 'And the woman 
 from Sparta fell into your hands ?' and receives 
 this answer : ' By the hair of her head Mene- 
 laos dragged her away.' Which unfair proceed- 
 ing seems fair evidence of the fact of Helen 
 having been really found at Troy, as well as 
 of the vigorous disposition of her husband 
 Menelaos, the sternness of whom, grown into 
 sullen vindictiveness, survives in Goethe's 
 
118 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 drama, but has quite disappeared when, as 
 you recollect,! in the fourth canto of the 
 Odyssey, Telemachos visits Menelaos and Helen, 
 and finds them constituting a sort of model 
 couple in mutual love, or, at any rate, exhibiting 
 matrimonial esteem. 
 
 Helen further inquires of the shipAvrecked man 
 whether Menelaos has returned with his wife, 
 and receives the answer : 
 
 ' He is not at Argos, nor at the banks of the 
 Eurotas.' 
 
 After a while, Menelaos himself,^ shipwrecked 
 in his turn, arrives in Egypt, too — with him the 
 supposed Helena, the etSwXoi^, the phantasma, 
 i^e^eAjj, the air-being. He hides her in the re- 
 cesses of a grotto while he goes to explore the 
 country and gather information. He is told 
 that Helena is with the Royal Family of Egypt; 
 that she got there even before the Greek forces 
 went to sit down before Troy. This is news 
 bewildering to Menelaos. 
 
 ' Has someone carried off my wife out of the 
 grotto ? Are there two Helens ? Is there 
 another Zeus in Egypt ?' 
 
 ■^ Vide antea. 
 
 2 Aristophanes, the outrageous humorist, adopting this 
 Egyptian version, introduces in his Women's Meeting (Thes- 
 mophoriazusce) the poet Euripides himself in the' character 
 of the shipwrecked Menelaos (Act III.). 
 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA AND DION 119 
 
 But a messenger comes who clears up the 
 riddle. The Doppelgdngerin, the idolon — the 
 gods finding her no longer necessary — has dis- 
 solved, and is now more than ever an airy 
 nothing. 
 
 All can end comfortably, Helen's and 
 Menelaos' flight to Greece being helped by the 
 ruse of Helen and the sympathetic help of the 
 King's sister. The young Egyptian King-lover 
 of Helen, angry at first and threatening his 
 sister's life for having favoured the flight of 
 Helen and Menelaos, and not without deep 
 grief, becomes convinced by Helen's divine 
 brothers, the Dioscuri, that the gods have 
 ordered all for the best, and the piece closes 
 happily with the praise of Helena. The young 
 disenchanted King, however, shows hardly so 
 favourably as does, in Goethe's Iphigenia, the 
 old King Thoas, disarmed and softened by the 
 nobly warm words of Iphigenia, in his gravely 
 kind farewell to the departing couple. 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana and Dion. 
 
 That the Eg5rptian version was not extin- 
 guished by the brilliancy of the Homeric one 
 we have already seen in Horace's allusion to the 
 
120 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 Palinody of Stesichorus. But here is a still 
 later proof. 
 
 ApoUonius of Tyana, who was a contemporary 
 of St, Paul, and died at a great age about the 
 year 100 a.d., gives to the Egyptian legend a 
 testimony which will recommend itself to those 
 of my readers who are theosophically inclined, 
 and perhaps also to others. He performed 
 miracles, or what seemed such, and called 
 ' spirits from the vasty deep.' What is more, 
 differing in this from Shakespeare's Owen Glen- 
 dower,^ he succeeded: the spirits came. The 
 ghost of Achilles, near his tumulus, then still 
 recognisable, engaged to answer five questions to 
 be put by ApoUonius. 
 
 'Did Helen really go to Troy?' asked the 
 medium, apparently predisposed in favour of the 
 Egyptian legend. 
 
 ' No such thing,' answered Achilles ; ' she re- 
 mained in Egypt, and the leaders of the Greeks 
 were quite aware of it. But we fought for fame 
 and for the riches of Priam.' ^ 
 
 Dion Chrysostomos, in the time of the Em- 
 peror Trajan, goes a step farther; it is his cue 
 to assure his neighbours, the inhabitants of a 
 
 1 Shakespeare, Henry IV., Part I., I. 
 ^ J. Addington Symonds, Greek Poets, vol. ii., p. 87 ; 
 Sketches and Studies, 3rd series, p. 216, 1898. 
 
DION CHRYSOSTOMOS 121 
 
 later Troy, situated a little distance off, that 
 Priam's Ilium was never destroyed by Agamem- 
 non and his men,^ who, on the contrary, were 
 glad to go home again, like whipped dogs. How 
 it must have pleased the respectable and patriotic 
 citizens of the provincial townlet to be allowed 
 to think that other people of the same name, 
 and living once not far from them, had tired out 
 the onset of the Greeks and driven them back ! 
 And to hold fast such a belief, Chrysostom would 
 add, not quite unwisely, was so much better and 
 more comfortable ^ than admiring those same 
 
 ^ Strabo (contemporary of Augustus and Tiberius, died 
 about 25 A.D.) on ' the present site of Ilium ' — i.e., on 
 Troy or the city or cities of Ilium which existed on or near 
 the locality of ancient Troy, and were favoured, as Troy, 
 by Alexander the Great and Julius Cassai-'' (book xiii., 
 chap. 1, pars. 25-45, more especially 38) — ' no trace of the 
 ancient city remains.' In 40 : ' The present Ilienses affirm 
 that the city was not entirely demolished when it was 
 taken by the Achaians, nor was it at any time wholly 
 deserted.' 
 
 Compare here Ernst Curtius, History of Greece (trans- 
 lated by A. W. Ward, 1868), who says: 'The sons of 
 the Achaians, who cast down the kingdom of Priam, really 
 remained in the land and built a new Moiiic Ilium below 
 Pergamus, the fatal city, on the actual site of which they 
 feared to build.' The Trojan War is, for Curtius, a 
 moment in the course of a great movement of emigration, 
 and he passes lightly over it. 
 
 ^ ' Quando igitur praestabilius erat Graecis, haec nunquam 
 evenisse, quam captam esse Troiam.' 
 
 16 
 
122 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 Greeks for having been the ruthless savages they 
 proved themselves, in the ferocious crimes com- 
 mitted in the night of Ilium's fall, when Priam 
 w&s murdered at the altar, and Cassandra fell, 
 by the statue of her goddess, a victim to grim 
 Ajax.i 
 
 Dion is very positive in his assertions, for which 
 he has the, to him, weighty authority of an 
 Egyptian priest of the town of Anuphis. This 
 man and his cotemporaries looked upon the Troy 
 adventures, in comparison with the traditions of 
 their own country, as almost recent events. And 
 they were sure they had received such weighty 
 authority 1 For it was from Menelaos' lips that 
 the Egyptian priests had the facts. On returning 
 from Troy he did not go home to Sparta, but 
 landed in Egypt, and there married a King's 
 daughter. As to Helen, she had never been his 
 wife ; there was consequently no rape. Paris 
 had landed in LacEedemon with a full retinue and 
 very ample treasure. He had, in his open 
 
 ^ Homerus confutatus a Dione Chrysostomo . . . in 
 oratione de Ilio non capto [Greek and Latin] a M. 
 Laurentio Khodomanno (Rostock, 1585). 
 
 But Homeric tradition is, against Dion and Rhodo- 
 mannus, repeated by G. H. Ursinus in Observationum 
 philog'icarum liber unus in quibtis, etc. . . . Adjecta 
 est ad calcem libri Oratio de Ilio capto, adversiis Dionem 
 ilium de Ilio non capto, quce inscribitur, etc. (Ratisponae, 
 1679). 
 
TROJANS VICTORIOUS 123 
 
 marriage, the consent of Helen's father and her 
 two brothers. Agamemnon did not care much 
 about his brother Menelaos' rather humiliating 
 position, but the brilliant aspect of Paris and his 
 possible prospects suggested to him the danger 
 of that young and ambitious prince placing him- 
 self at the head of the Grecian world. I'o be 
 beforehand with him, Agamemnon organizes the 
 expedition against Ilium — in reality a vast 
 7-azzia, or meant as such, evoking also the old 
 grief of King Laomedon of Troy, and his alleged 
 wrongs towards Herakles.^ Things fall out be- 
 fore Troy very differently from what we have 
 learnt by Homer ; e.g., it is not Achilles that kiUs 
 Hector, but the opposite takes place. Ultimately 
 the Greeks leave by treaty, not even succeeding 
 in their endeavour to be bought off handsomely. 
 They return, not in a triumphant mass, but 
 scattered and almost helpless. Priam dies at a 
 happy old age, succeeded by Hector, who con- 
 quers nearly all Asia ; he, too, reaches a high 
 old age, and leaves the throne to his son 
 Scamandros. ' Such is the real truth of matters.' 
 The Trojans send out successful colonists — 
 ^neas, Helenus, Antenor. 
 
 As a variety to these cleverly-presented truth- 
 ful accounts, the Egyptian priests add that 
 ^ Iliad, book v., verses 626-638. 
 
 16—2 
 
124 THE EGYPTIAN VERSION 
 
 ' some among us say that Menelaos found 
 Helena in Egypt, which she had never left. 
 Dion also refers to Stesichorus.' ^ 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Now let us sum up this chapter with one more 
 observation of Goethe's. ' A human being,' he 
 says, ' of an extraordinary type, like a gi^eat 
 phenomenon of Nature, remains for ever sacred 
 to the patriotism of any nation. Whether such 
 a phenomenon has been useful or hurtful is 
 a matter disregarded. Every brave Swede 
 honours and admires Charles XII., the most 
 baneful of his Kings. So, too, the memory of 
 his Helena seems to have filled with transport 
 the heart of the Greek. And although now 
 and then a justifiable displeasure about the 
 
 ^ Dion''s translator, Bretigny, 1762, in an essay as 
 charming as it is curious, hesitates for a while as to the 
 value of Dion's relation, but thinks, after all, it was merely 
 meant as a jeu d'esprit. Dion's criticism showing the in- 
 credibility of this or that detail in Homer seems acute 
 enough. He evidently knows, or knows of, the Egyptian 
 tragedy of Euripides. As to another of the latter's Helena 
 dramas, he says : ' A tragic poet represents Orestes as 
 wishing to assassinate Helen, who runs forward to receive 
 the blow of his sword, but Helen''s brothers appear.' Dion 
 seems, then, not to have read the Orestes of Euripides, 
 or to have retained but a vague impression of it. 
 
GOETHE SUMMING UP 125 
 
 immorality of her doings invented fables 
 opposed to this admiration, showed her to 
 have been maltreated by her husband — nay, 
 makes her suffer the death of abject criminals- 
 yet we find her again, in Homer already, as 
 leading the easy and dignified existence of the 
 honoured wife and directress of her husband's 
 home ; a poet, Stesichorus, is punished by blind- 
 ness inflicted on him for having spoken of her 
 unworthily. And so, after many years' con- 
 troversy, Euripides certainly deserved the thanks 
 of all Greece, when he represented .her as 
 justified — nay, as completely innocent — thus 
 satisfying the absolute requirement of man in 
 civilization, which is to see Beauty and Morality 
 united in harmonious concord.' ^ 
 
 1 Werke, Cotta edition, 1855, vol. v., p. 358. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HELENA IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 All through the greater part of the Middle 
 Ages, when the turmoil of the invasion of the 
 Roman Empire by the Northern nations had 
 begun to subside, the names of Troy and Helen 
 appeared in literature as well as in legendary 
 lore and fanciful derivation. 
 
 The city of Paris — the Lutetia Parisiorum of 
 the Romans, so called from a Celtic tribe in- 
 habiting the country thereabouts — ^was reported 
 to have been built 800 years B.C., in honour of 
 Helen's second husband. Great families of the 
 ancient world liked to link their origin with 
 the champions in or before Troy, and in 
 preference with the Trojans rather than with 
 the Greeks. The Roman antiquary Marcus 
 Terentius Varro,^ in his book De Familiis 
 Trojanis refers to Ilium no less than fifty great 
 Roman houses. ^ A complacent genealogist of 
 
 1 116 to 27 B.C. 
 
 2 W. Roscher, Politih, 1892, p. 643. 
 
 126 
 
ECHOES OF TROY 127 
 
 the family of Julius Cassar traced their origin 
 back to ^neas, the Trojan founder of Alba 
 Longa, the mother of Rome. 'The noble 
 Britons,' says Spenser, in the Faierie Queen, 
 ' sprang from Trojan bold.'^ And so we learn 
 that Brute, the son of Antenor, conquered 
 Albion the King, made prisoners his two 
 brothers, Gog and Magog — our old friends at 
 the Guildhall — and founded the town of Troy 
 Novant, or New Troy, later on called Lud's 
 Town, from a subsequent King, and ultimately 
 London. 2 
 
 Thus, three great cities and seats of civiliza- 
 tion — Rome, Paris, London — have been con- 
 nected by popular tradition with that Troy 
 and ^vdth the friends of our Helena. 
 
 How much the tradition of Ilium continued 
 to hve in the minds of the people of the Middle 
 Ages is also illustrated by a curious perversion 
 which Gibbon relates.^ He cites a late Greek 
 writer, Chalcocondyles,* to whom it had become 
 evident that, if in 1453 a.d. the Greek city of 
 Constantinople was sacked by Asiatics, it was in 
 
 1 Book iii., canto 9, stanza 36, and, again, stanzas 44-46. 
 
 2 Vide Caxton. The story is retold, with perfect 
 naivete, anonymously in 1845. Publisher : Caleb Conolly, 
 Dublin. 
 
 ^ Decline and Fall, chap. 68, footnote. 
 * About 1470, 
 
128 HELENA IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 revenge for the ancient calamities of Troy : the 
 grammarians of the fifteenth century were happy 
 to melt down the uncouth appellation of Turks 
 into the more classical form of Teucri, meaning 
 Trojans or Phrygians. 
 
 The Legend in the Middle Ages. 
 
 In the literature of modern languages the 
 story of Troy and Helen occupies a large space. 
 For the sources of their knowledge, the writers 
 of the Middle Ages were scarcely indebted to 
 Homer, inaccessible as yet to the West of 
 Europe, whilst Virgil was near to them and 
 greatly cultivated. They principally relied on 
 two other writers, known as Dictys of Crete and 
 Dares the Phrygian, already mentioned above. 
 The former announces himself as having been in 
 the Trojan War itself, as a follower of one of the 
 Greek leaders, Idomeneus, and affirms having 
 kept a sort of diary of the siege, his Ephe- 
 merides. The latter appears as a Trojan priest 
 of Neptune-Poseidon. His book exists in 
 Latin only ; the translation from a Greek auto- 
 graph found at Athens, and since lost, was made, 
 or said to be made, in the time of the Emperor 
 Augustus, by Cornelius Nepos, whose short bio- 
 graphies of Greek and Roman famous men have 
 
DANTE AND HELEN 129 
 
 been the deEght and worry of numberless English 
 and other schoolboys. 
 
 Whoever this Dictys and Dares were, they 
 probably handed on older traditions. The in- 
 quiry about the authenticity and origin of their 
 books has occupied many a pen, but hes outside 
 our present subject, and we may now only 
 adduce the circumstance that their account 
 reduces the ten years' period of the siege by 
 repeated armistices, of which one lasted for two 
 years, another for three. ^ 
 
 The great Dante ^ was not unmindful of the 
 war ; he saw Helen and Paris in hell, between 
 Cleopatra and Tristan, and not far from 
 Francesca da Rimini and Paolo. ^ 
 
 Dante's brief and vigorous mention is pre- 
 ceded by a little in that curious book The 
 Foreign Guest, by Tomasin, a Germanized 
 Italian, whose book is accessible to you in the 
 publications of the Early English Text Society.* 
 Writing at the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, he sums up our Helena thus : 
 
 ■^ Compare Koerting, Dictys and Dares, 1874; Jaeckel, 
 Dares Phrygius andBenoH de Sainte-More (Breslau, 1875) ; 
 Gaston Paris, Romanis, 1888, 129 et seq. 
 
 2 1265-1321. 
 
 ^ Inferno, canto 5. 
 
 * The Italian Gibest, Early English Text Society, ed* 
 E. Oswald, p. 118, verses 824-828. 
 
 17 
 
130 HELENA IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ', ' In Greece over all the lands 
 She was a powerful Queen ; 
 She had much beauty and little sense. 
 Her beauty gained her great shame : 
 Beauty without sense is a weak security.'' 
 
 In the pages of Boccaccio,^ we find the classic 
 Greek beauty reappearing, not among the clash 
 of arms of the Middle Age knights, but sur- 
 rounded by the warm atmosphere of luxurious 
 Florence. But her name is not yet Helen. ' In 
 the early morning,' we read in the Decameron,'^ 
 'the Queen arising and having her company 
 called, they walk, eat, sing canzonettes ; others 
 went to sleep, some sat down at chess, and others 
 at tables,^ and Dianco fell to singing in concert 
 with Lauretta, of Troilus and Cressid.' 
 
 This, then, is that jCressida whom you know 
 by Chaucer* and Shakespeare, where you have 
 found her at thg side of Helen. Anticipating 
 a httle in our chronological march, we find the 
 poet referring to 
 
 Her whom, we know well, 
 
 The world's large spaces cannot parallel !'° 
 
 and the great sinner gets caressingly called ' My 
 Nell,' whilst in As You Like It the poet, far 
 
 1 1313-1375. 2 VI. 1. 
 
 3 Draughts. * 1328 (?)— 1400. 
 
 ^ Troihis and Cressida, II. ii. ' 
 
SHAKESPEARE AND HELEN 131 
 
 from the rigour of Dante, yet gently indicates 
 that, on the moral side, some imperfectness may 
 remain to be noted : 
 
 ' Heaven Nature charged 
 That one body should be filled 
 With all graces wide enlarged. 
 Nature presently distilled 
 Helen's cheek, but not her heart.' ^ 
 
 Let us retrace a little our steps to the Middle 
 Ages, where the lead seems to have been taken 
 in these Trojan subjects by the North French 
 trouvere Benoit de Sainte-More,^ who finds 
 many successors in English, German and Itahan 
 writers, as well as French. Among the Germans 
 active in this direction, the first is, perhaps, Hein- 
 rich von Veldecke, whose Eneit, or story of the 
 Trojan ^neas, was finished about 1190. Konrad 
 von Wiirzburg, Rudolf von Ems, and Herbort 
 von Fritzlar followed.^ 
 
 1 As You Like It, III. i. 
 
 2 Compare Benoit de Sainte-More et le Roman de Troie, 
 ou les Metamorphoses d'Homere et de Vepopee Grico-Latine 
 au moyen age, par A. Joly, Professeur de la Faculte des 
 Lettres a Caen. Paris, Libraire Franckh, 1870. 
 
 ^ Der altfranzosische Soman von Troie des Benoit de 
 Sainte-More, als Vorbild fur die mittelhochdeutschen Dich- 
 timgen des Herhort von Fritzlar und des Konrad von 
 Wiirzburg, von Clemens Fischer, in Ne^iphilologische 
 Studien, herausgegeben von G. Korting. Zweites Heft, 
 
 17—2 
 
132 HELENA IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Among the English writers on these subjects, 
 John Gower^ is worthy of some distinctive 
 place. In book v. of the Confessio Amantis 
 he tells the Helen story, with scant sympathy 
 for the heroine.^ 
 
 There is also an anonymous book, apparently 
 of the fourteenth century, and but recently dis- 
 covered and edited, under the name of The Seege 
 of Troy? 
 
 But these and other productions are over- 
 topped by the renown of Chaucer, of whom 
 it has been said that ' he alone in his time 
 felt the whole beauty of womanhood.'* His 
 Troilus and Cressida is to be bracketed with 
 his contemporary Boccaccio's shorter treatment 
 
 pp. 63, 142. Of these, Herbort von Fritzlar's Liet von 
 Troye has been edited by Frommann, in 1837, Quedlin- 
 burg and Leipzig ; Konrad von Wurzburg's Trojanischer 
 Krieg, in 1858 (Stuttgart), by Adelbert von Keller. 
 Both are enormous performances, ambling on, without a 
 distribution into books or cantos, or any other break, 
 through 18,455 lines of Herbort, and 49,837 of Konrad's 
 short lines of verse. 
 
 1 1325-1408. 
 
 2 Gower's English Works, ed. by G. C. Macaulay 
 (Oxford, Clarendon Press), vi. 149-164; and R. Pauli's 
 edition (London, Bell and Daldy, 1857). 
 
 8 The Seege of Troye, ed. by Wager, New York, 1899. 
 * Henry Morley, Sketch of English Literature, 2nd ed., 
 p. 111. 
 
CHAUCER AND LYDGATE 133 
 
 of the same tale ; for the rest, the great name of 
 Helen appears as ' Eleyne,' in all her goodly soft 
 wise, not only in Troylus and Cryseide, but also 
 in Chaucer's minor poems, in the Book of 
 the Jyuchess, and in that long portion which 
 Chaucer translates from the French Romaunt 
 de la Rose. But still she is not in the group of 
 the nine good women — Cleopatra, Dido, Medea. 
 Lucretia, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis, Hyperm- 
 nestra. And in the Prologue [Text B] she is 
 told: 
 
 ' Hyde ye your heads, Isoude and Eleyne : 
 My lady cometh that all this may distayne.' i 
 
 We may pass on to his contemporary and 
 successor, Lydgate, a monk,^ perhaps not a verj'' 
 strict monk, whom we have already mentioned for 
 his very full account of the judgment of Paris. ^ 
 His work is long, very long ; we may only 
 mention that he kept an open mind as to the 
 moral merit of the Homeric heroes. He blames 
 
 1 Editions by Skeat, 1889, 1893, and 1896. 
 
 2 Bom not later than 1370. 
 
 ^ The Auncient Historie and onely trewe Cronicle of the 
 warres betwixte the Grecians arid the Troyans . . . wrytten 
 by Daretus, , . . both soiddiers and present in all the 
 sayde warres, a/nd digested in Latyn by the lerned Guydo 
 de Columpsis, and sythes translated into englyshe verse 
 by John Lydgate, Moncke of Bicrye, and newly imprinted. 
 An. MDL. 
 
134 HELENA IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Achilles, and blames the chronicler himself for 
 
 praising Achilles : 
 
 ' A Knight to be in haste so cruell, 
 Or of hatred so spytefull and so fell.'' 
 
 As to Helen, his brief characteristic of her at 
 
 the time of the elopement is not so stern as that 
 
 of less ecclesiastic writers. He calls her 
 
 ' the fresh and lusty Queen.' 
 
 As to Paris, he overflows with his praises, thus : 
 
 ' I mean Paris most passing of beaute 
 That in this worlde no man might se, 
 In very sothe a more semely knight. 
 
 With lockes yelowe like golde is of coloure, 
 And in shotying most was his delyte, 
 Hauying in hunting a full great appetyte. 
 
 ■sp * 'if 'ff '(f 
 
 The best archer one that time alive.' 
 
 And previously already at the meeting in 
 Cytherea : 
 
 ' Now was Parys of passing great beaute, 
 Amonge all that euer were alyve.' i 
 
 It remains to give a word to that strange poet 
 and thorough vagabond who has recently been 
 fitted with a heroic and dramatic halo. I mean 
 Villon.^ He says in his G^-eater Testament — 
 of course in connection with death : 
 
 1 A selection from the minor poems of Lydgate was 
 edited by J. O. Halliwell (Percy Society, 1841). 
 
 2 1431-1461. 
 
LE FilVRE AND CAXTON 135 
 
 ' Et meme Paris ou Helene, 
 Quiconque meurt, meurt a douleur ;' 
 
 Englished thus : 
 
 ' Paris and Helen though one be, 
 Who dies in pain and drearihead, 
 For lack of breath and blood dies he ; 
 His gall upon his heart is shed.'^ 
 
 Caxton 2 must conclude this chapter, with work 
 not original as hterature, but important by the 
 process it inaugurated in England. In 1471 he 
 finished at Cologne, in manuscript, his transla- 
 tion of Raoul Le Fevre's RecuyeLl of Historyes 
 of Troye. And then he set about himself print- 
 ing the book. It is considered one of the first 
 books printed in EngHsh and in England, and a 
 copy of it in the Large Room of the British 
 Museum is worthy of inspection. The work has 
 often been reprinted, not without modifications.^ 
 
 1 Mr. John Payne's translation, 1892, p. 32. Hector 
 and Troilus occur in the Greater Testament, stanza cxxix . 
 
 2 Born about 1422. 
 
 ^ An elaborate edition has been produced in two 
 volumes, quarto, by Dr. H. Oskar Sommer (London, Nutt). 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 The next great event, as opening a new epoch, 
 is the translation of the Iliad into EngUsh by 
 George Chapman,^ thus introducing Homer 
 to his countrymen. Says Keats : 
 
 ' Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
 Round many western islands have I been 
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold ; 
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne : 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.'^ 
 
 Towards the close of the period just rapidly 
 sketched, another account of the Troy story was 
 discovered, though, of course, not at once 
 generally known. In a convent in Lower Italy 
 
 1 Born 1557 or 1559, died 1634 {National Biography, 
 vol. X., 1887). The first section of his translation, seven 
 books of the Iliad and Odyssey, appeared in 1598, and the 
 whole was completed in 1615. 
 
 2 Sonnets, ix., ' On First Looking into Chapman's 
 Homer.' 
 
 136 
 
CHAPMAN— QUINTUS SMYRN^US| 137 
 
 a Cardinal found a manuscript of Quintus 
 SmjnrnEeus, a Greek writer, probably of the 
 fourth century after Christ, who continues the 
 story beyond Homer, and is of much higher 
 literary value than Dictys and Dares. I have 
 used these Posthomerica, here and there, for 
 instance, as to the (Enone episode. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve has given high praise to this 
 author,^ who seems to have possessed some of 
 the Cyclic poems. Smyrnasus he was called 
 from his own mention of having at one time 
 lived at Smyrna ; Calaber occasionally, from 
 Calabria, the region where the manuscript was 
 discovered, towards the close of the fifteenth 
 century. The first edition of the work, which 
 received the name of Paralipomena — i.e., 
 Derelicta ah Homer o libri xiv., was printed at 
 Venice in ISOS.''^ 
 
 1 Etude sur Virile, suivie d'une etude sur Quintus de 
 Smyriie, S""^ ed., Paris, 1870, pp. 317-426. 
 
 ' On conjecture qu'il vivait vers le 4 siecle, et plusieurs 
 passages de son poeme semblent indiquer en effet qu'il 
 ecrivit sous les empereurs. Ce poeme represente des evene- 
 ments et des traditions d'une haute antiquite et pour 
 lesquels I'auteur a du suivre des guides et d'autres poetes 
 qui ne nous sont point parvenues. Son sujet est la fin de 
 la guerre de Troie.' 
 
 ^ Other editions followed at rather long intervals : 
 Antwerp, 1539; Basel, 1569; Frankfort, 1614 {Troja 
 expugnata) ; Leyden, 1734. The first translation into a 
 modem language was made by R. Tourlet, 1800. Mr. A. 
 
 18 
 
138 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 Hans Sachs. 
 
 I hasten to come to the German Volksbucher 
 
 and to Marlowe ; but, as one late sample of the 
 
 literary period we leave behind us, I propose to 
 
 turn to Richard Wagner's friend, Hans Sachs, 
 
 who, as you recollect, 
 
 ' was a shoe- 
 maker and a poet too,' 
 
 and to whom I found a reference the other day 
 in a French book as Jean Sachsius. An exceed- 
 ingly fertile writer, he composed above 7,000 
 longer or shorter ' pieces.' He lived from 1494 
 to 1576, and may appear here as a connecting 
 link, closing the romance of the Middle Ages, 
 and as yet free from the dark shadows of magic, 
 witches, and Mephistopheles. 
 
 His sources are Dictys and Dares. The poem 
 consequently offers you some new points of view 
 as compared with the Homeric story, Priam's 
 sister Hesione is taken away as a prisoner by the 
 Greeks^ when they, under Hercules, destroy the 
 
 Dyce translated, 1821 , three fragments, hardly bearing on 
 the subjects occupying us now. A complete translation 
 of the fourteen cantos into German was made by Donner, 
 the translator of Sophocles, in 1866-1867. A copy in 
 my hands ; none in the British Museum. No complete 
 translation into English seems to exist. 
 1 Dares, chap. 3. 
 
HANS SACHS 139 
 
 city of Troy, which is being built up again by 
 Priam. Paris, in a dream, receives the visit of 
 Mercury and the goddesses, and gives his judg- 
 ment, in accordance with the promise of Venus. 
 His father sends him into Greece for the purpose 
 of bringing back Hesione. Cassandra tries to 
 dissuade them from this project, but in vain. 
 We are not told that he goes to the Court 
 of Menelaos, but he comes to the island of 
 Cythera,^ where there is a 'Chapel' of Venus. 
 There he offers sacrifice ; and there, too, comes 
 Helena ; when she hears that handsome Paris 
 is there, she longs to see him — during the 
 absence of Menelaos. The ' husbands' boat ' is 
 not an institution in that classical Ramsgate 
 or Margate ! Now, when she, too, offers sacri- 
 fice there, they meet, and both are seized by 
 ardent love. Paris, however, dissembles, but he 
 prepares a fleet and arms a power of soldiers. 
 In a dark night Helen is violently abducted. 
 Her people offer resistance, and are defeated with 
 great loss. Paris takes Helen to Tenedos, near 
 Troy, and there comforts her. Priam is glad 
 to hear of the capture ; he expects that the 
 Greeks will now, in exchange, give him back 
 his sister. But things fall out otherwise. 
 
 1 ' In Citeram ' — now Cerigo, near the south coast of 
 Lacedaemon. 
 
 18—2 
 
140 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 Menelaos comes from Athens with 1,140 ships, 
 and after ten years and a half Troy succumbs 
 by treason — an example of the infinite harm 
 which may come from the love of women, ' from 
 which may God keep us,' prays Hans Sachs, 
 the tingallant.^ 
 
 Hans Sachs is not the only one of the Meister- 
 singers who occupies himself with Helen and 
 the Troy story. Here is (British Museum, 
 11,521, a 52) Ein schon maister gesang wie die 
 grosz und machtig stat Troya zerstort ward, 
 durch die schone kunigin Helena ausz Kriechen- 
 landt. The author seems to be Lienhart Pack, 
 and the booklet is ' gedriickt zur Ntirnberg durch 
 Jobst Gutknecht, 1521.' The moral is that 
 princes, lords, and cities are to guard against 
 jjhermut, lest there befall them the fate that 
 ' Kayser Menellus ' inflicted on Troy. Also 
 beware of weiblicJies Bild. 
 
 1 ' Hie merkt man, wie auss Frauenlieb 
 Offt unendlicher Schad erwachs, 
 Vor der bhiit uns Gott ! wiinscht 
 Hans Sachs.' 
 
 ' Anno salutis, 1546, am 23 Tag Martini.' 
 — AtiSgabe der Bihliothelc des liter arischen-Vereins, 1872, 
 vol. ciii., pp. 150-153. 
 
THE 'VOLKOBUCHER' 141 
 
 The Faust Volksbucher. 
 
 If this were an essay, not on Helena, but on 
 Faust, we might have to give a good deal of 
 attention to the Volksbucher, a sort of chap- 
 books, which appeared in Germany towards the 
 close of the sixteenth century and later on. ^ But 
 
 ^ 1. 1587. Johann Spies, Verleger, Frankfort-on-Main. 
 Oldest edition ; author not named. Fourteen reimpres- 
 sions up to 1592. In 1588 already a rhymed version of 
 the Faustbuch. 
 
 Karl Engel, in Znsammenstellung der Faiistschriften 
 vom 16 Jalirhundert his MHte 1884 (1885), mentions 
 fifteen editions of Spiess' Faustbuch. 
 
 % 1592. Also at Frankfort, but without name of 
 printer. N.B. — Marlowe died 1593. 
 
 3. Heine interposes, under date 1594, Schottus, on 
 Wagner, claiming to be from the Spanish. (Not known 
 to Schwab.) 
 
 4. 1599. Widmann's edition ; Hamburg. An exten- 
 sion of the first (1587) edition. 
 
 5. The same year. Pfitzers edition. Like-wdse an exten- 
 sion of the 1587 one. 
 
 6. 1674. Niirnberg. Der christlichMeinende, a shorten- 
 ing, in the interest of piety, of the 1587 or first version. 
 
 7. At the beginning of the eighteenth century. A new 
 Frankfort edition, the basis of the innumerable reprints of 
 the book retailed at fairs, etc. 
 
 Gustav Schwab, in Die deutschen Volksbucher, preface, 
 and pp. 443-500. Compare also Karl Simrock : Faust das 
 Volksbuch und das Puppenspiel, nebst einem Anhang : Ur- 
 synmg der Faustsage, 2 Aufl., 1877. This edition con- 
 tains eighteen pieces more than the oldest (1846), twenty- 
 one more than that of 1852. 
 
142 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 this discourse being about Helen, we can rapidly 
 pass by Faust's doubts, his taking up magic, 
 his league with Satan, the great number of 
 his tricks, most of them not reaching to 
 Goethe's scene in Auerbach's Keller, and some 
 worse. 
 
 The appearance of Helena, however, in these 
 Volkshucher, and her connection with magicians 
 even older than Faust, can be traced back to 
 that Simon Magus of Samaria whom we know 
 through the Acts of the Apostles. ^ Irenaeus, a 
 Father of the Church in the second century, ^ 
 relates, in his book Contra Hcereticos, that this 
 Simon united himself with a woman called 
 Helena, whom he affirmed to be identical with 
 the Helena who had been the cause of the 
 Trojan War, and whose soul had from that 
 time perpetually been reincarnated. ^ ' Having 
 redeemed,' says Irenseus, ' from slavery at Tyre, 
 a city of Phoenicia, a certain woman named 
 Helena, he was in the habit of carrying her 
 about with him.' She seemed originally to have 
 been a sort of angel. ' But,' he continues, ' she 
 suffered all kinds of contumely, and was even 
 shut up in a human body, and for ages passed 
 
 1 Chap, viii., 9-24.. 
 
 2 Bishop of Lyons, 177 a.d. ; died 202 a.d. 
 
 ^ W. C. Coupland, The Spirit of Goethe's Faust, 1855, p. 21. 
 
SIMON MAGUS AND HELEN 143 
 
 in succession from one female body to another, 
 as from vessel to vessel. She was, for example, 
 in that Helen on whose account the Trojan War 
 was undertaken.'^ 
 
 This may dispose of the view that the Helena 
 incident in the Faust legend is a creation of the 
 Age of Renaissance.^ More probably the tradi- 
 tion of these repeated emanations lived vaguely 
 on, from the second century to the sixteenth, 
 in the heads of some cloistered monks, and broke 
 out again into the daylight or twilight of the 
 latter period, having long simmered in the brains 
 of these men. And perhaps the fact that one 
 of the group of the inventors of the then young 
 art of printing — an invention fatal to much of 
 monkish industry — bore the name of Fust 
 or Faust, and also of there having been a 
 real Dr. Faustus, may have contributed to 
 stir up again this legend of Helena as the 
 wife of a magician, once called Simon, now 
 Faustus. 
 
 Enough : Helena in these Volkshuclier appears 
 not only as a vision, conjured up by Professor 
 Faust before his students, but she unites herself, 
 
 ^ Irenseus Against Heresies, book i., chap. 23. Ante- 
 Nicene Christian Library, vol. v. (Irenaeus, translated by 
 Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rombaut). 
 
 ^ Theodor Zahn, Cyprian von Antiochien, Erlangen, 
 1882, pp. 11-13. 
 
144 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 in one of these books, bodily with him, and a son 
 is born to them — Justus Faust. ^ 
 
 After Dr. Faust's gruesome death, when the 
 Devil killed him by twisting his neck, this son, 
 a most handsome young man,^ comes to Wagner, 
 Faust's famulus, to bid good-bye to him, saying : 
 ' I go hence : since my father's death my mother 
 cannot bear remaining here ; honour you my 
 father's art.' 
 
 Then fair Helen enters, takes her son's hand, 
 and both disappear from before Wagner's eyes. 
 
 The Puppentheater. 
 
 At the side of the Volksbilcher there exists a 
 series of baUads or folk-songs, first collected by 
 Arnim and Brentano in Des Knaben Wunder- 
 horn, and recently treated critically by Alexander 
 TiUe.^ One of these ballads describes how, 
 when the pact between Faust and Mephisto 
 draws near to its end, they go to Jerusalem, 
 where Faust orders Mephisto to paint the Cruci- 
 
 1 Schwab, Die deutschen Volksbilcher, p. 484, 
 ^ ' Ein bildschoner Mensch,' Schwab, p. 500. 
 * A. Tille, Die deutschen Volkslieder vom Doctor Faust 
 
 (Halle, Niemeyer, 1891) ; and the Saturday Review, 
 
 July 25, 1891. 
 
THE MARIONNETTES 145 
 
 fixion. The Devil obeys, but will not add the 
 superscription. Rather than write ' Jesus Christ,' 
 he offers to give back the written pact. But, 
 in opposition to the appearance of an exhort- 
 ing angel, he bethinks himself of calling up 
 Helena. Her Faust cannot resist, and so he 
 perishes. 
 
 There also arose out of the Volksbildber a kind 
 of popular drama {Volksschauspiel), which grew 
 into a sort of marionette play.^ The popularity 
 of this Schauspiel is shown, e.g., by Wieland's 
 reference to Doctor Faust im FastnacJitspiel.^ 
 The Puppentheater flourished aU through the 
 eighteenth century, and, with diminished vogue, 
 into the earher part of the nineteenth. The text 
 of this popular play often varied. It existed in 
 the manuscripts only of the various showmen. 
 Its essence is collected by Simrock,^ and trans- 
 
 ^ Vide Goethe on the Puppentheater and his occupation 
 with it {Dkhtung und Wahrheit, book ii.) ; also The 
 Fallot of the Marionnettes, an essay by H. C. Macdowell, 
 in MacmillarCs Magazine, January, 1901. 
 
 ^ ' Wie Doktor Faust im Fastnachtspiel, 
 Da seine letzte Viertelstunde 
 Zu Ende lauft, sein schreckliches Ziel 
 Nun da ist, und zum Hollenschlunde 
 Ihn unter Blitz und DonnergroU 
 Der bose Feind nun holen soil.' 
 
 Der teutsche Mercur, 1776, iv., p. 206. 
 ^ Faust, Das VoTkshuch und das Puppenspiel, 1846. 
 
 19 
 
146 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 lated by Mr. Drakeford, a Cambridge man.^ 
 Here is a sample : 
 
 Helen appea/rs, silent as iisual. Faust hurries away 
 
 with her to his house. 
 Mephisto. Ha, ha, ha, ho ! Now thou art mine, etc. 
 
 Faust rushes on, with despair in his countenance. 
 Curse thee ! curse on thee, malicious, wicked deceiver ! 
 A hellish snake-form I pressed to my bosom. When I 
 would embrace her, she breathed on me a noisome pes- 
 tiferous breath : it suffocated me. Is that thy service ? 
 that thy fidelity ? 
 
 But the Devil has the last word, and silent 
 Helena has nothing to say for herself or her 
 lover. 
 
 The last perforniance of the old piece took 
 place so lately as 1844 by Schiitz and Dieher's 
 Kasperle Company at Berhn.^ 
 
 In Klingemann's ^ Faust Helena enters imme- 
 diately before the fatal end of the hero's career, 
 in a long and wild love scene, masked. At the 
 catastrophe she takes off her mask, and appears 
 with a death's head.^ 
 
 ^ Faust, a Phantasia in Three Acts, edited by Carl 
 Simrock, and translated into English by D. J. P. Drake- 
 ford, Esq., St. Peter's College, Cambridge (London, 
 Bentley, 1847). 
 
 2 Compare The Life and Death of Dr. Johamnes 
 Faustus. Mediaeval Legends. David Nutt, 1893. 
 
 s 1777-1831. 
 
 * Carlyle, in Miscellames, vol. ii., pp. 99-105, gives 
 the essence of the long scenes. 
 
HEINE— MARLOWE 147 
 
 Heine, in his Faust, relates his seeing such a 
 play represented by a travelling circus, and gives 
 the conversation of the Doctor with the Devil, 
 who is to bring to the former a beautiful lady. 
 He proposes Judith, but Faust won't have her, 
 because, after loving you, she finishes by cutting 
 off your head. Cleopatra he refuses as being of 
 too expensive habits, but he shows himself ready 
 to accept Helena. ' With her you can talk 
 Greek,' Mephisto insinuates. That settles the 
 matter in favour of Helen. ^ 
 
 Marlowe's ' Faust.' 
 
 Christopher Marlowe's^ Faustus is built on an 
 early translation of the first of these Volhsbucher^ 
 and on the whole is, by its frequent coarseness, 
 scarcely superior to them. It contains, however, 
 a magnificent passage. 
 
 Mephisto, complying with Faust's wish, causes 
 Helen to appear bodily. He has before, for the 
 
 "^ Heinrich Heine's Faust, ein Tanzpoem, nebst Imriosen 
 BerkMen iiber Teufel, Hexen, und Dichikunst (Hamburg, 
 1851), p. 73. 
 
 2 1563-1593. 
 
 3 Compare A. W. Ward's Old English Plays, 1878, 
 introduction, liii et seq. 
 
 19—2 
 
148 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 satisfaction or delectation of three scholars, 
 
 caused the shade to show itself of 
 
 ' that peerless dame of Greece, 
 No otherways for pomp and majesty 
 Than when Sir Paris crossed the sea with her, 
 And brought the spoils to rich Dardania,' 
 
 Then he admonishes the students to 
 ' Be silent then, for danger is in words.' 
 
 Music sounds, and Helen passes over the 
 stage. The magician himself is silent. But 
 now, when a second appearance is granted by the 
 special favour of Mephisto, Faust, on Helen re- 
 entering, addresses her — she remaining silent — 
 thus : 
 
 ' Was this the face that launched a thousand ships i 
 And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.^ {Kisses her.) 
 Her lips suck forth my soul : see, where it flies ! — 
 Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
 Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips. 
 And all is dross that is not Helena. 
 I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
 
 1 ' That launched a thousand ships.' The exact phrase 
 occurs later on in Thomas Heywood's Iron Age. But this 
 time it is spoken by Helen herself (Works, 1874, vol. iii., 
 p. 430). The editor of these works says that the dates of 
 his birth and death are alike unknown. He was a con- 
 temporary of Massinger, born 1584, died 1640. 
 
 2 ' Immortal by a kiss,' Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, p. 102, 
 book ii., chap. 5. 'Thus was Teufelsdrockh made im- 
 mortal by a kiss.' 
 
MARLOWE— HAMILTON 149 
 
 Instead of Troy, shall Westenbergi be sacked ; 
 And I will combat with weal Menelaos, 
 And wear thy colours on my plumed crest ; 
 Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
 And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
 Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ; 
 Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter 
 When he appeared to hapless Semele ; 
 More lovely than the monarch of the sky 
 In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms ; 
 And none but thou shalt be my paramour.' 
 
 Helen continues silent but the stage direction 
 is Exeunt, and very soon after Faust's time is up, 
 and, according to contract, the Devil takes him.^ 
 
 Hamilton's 'Faust.' 
 
 About a century, or less, after Marlowe, we 
 find a curious contribution to our literature in 
 Count Anthony Hamilton's^ story, U Enchanteur 
 Faustus, where the shade of Helena is introduced 
 
 1 Wittenberg, Hamlet's University. 
 
 ^ The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Edited, 
 with a Preface, Notes, and Glossary, by Israel GoUancz, 
 1897. Also a recent, somewhat originally got up edition 
 by John Masefield, decorated by Charles Ricketts, 1903 ; 
 and in the ' Mermaid Series,' vol. i., edited by Havelock 
 Ellis, with an Introduction by J. A. Sy mends, 1903. 
 
 ^ 1646-1720. The author or redactor of the famous 
 Memoires de Gramont. 
 
150 FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO GOETHE 
 
 by Faust to Queen Elizabeth of England in the 
 presence of her admirers, Sir Philip Sidney and 
 the Earl of Essex. These two courtiers, now 
 the one, now the other, show some inclination to 
 admire, but dare not quite, for the Virgin Queen 
 is very sniffy — that seems the correct word under 
 the circumstances. 
 
 Elizabeth is not impressed with Helen's beauty. 
 ' " Je trouve pourtant," dit le comte d'Essex, 
 "qu'elle ne laisse pas d'avoir les yeux assez 
 beaux." " Oui," dit Sydney, " ils sont grands, 
 noblement fendus, noirs et brillants, mais, apres 
 tout, ses regards disent-ils quelquechose ? " " Pas 
 un mot," rdpondit le favori.' 
 
 Helen, crossing the room, disappears, with a 
 strange smile of conscious triumph. Two other 
 famous beauties — Mariamne, the wife of King 
 Herod, and Cleopatra — are called. Their cold 
 pride offends courtiers and Queen. Then a 
 strange whim makes Elizabeth call for Fair 
 Rosamond, who is not in the original programme 
 offered by Faust to her. The lady beloved by 
 Elizabeth's forebear. King Henry II., unex- 
 pectedly charms the Queen. Rosamond having 
 disappeared like the others, Elizabeth requests 
 Faust to recall this beauty. The magician is 
 unwilling. Harm, he fears, will come from so 
 unusual a recall. But the Queen insists, and, on 
 
ANTHONY HAMILTON'S HELEN 151 
 
 Rosamond actually reappearing, rushes to em- 
 brace her. But an explosion occurs and closes the 
 strange scene. Perhaps we have here the sug- 
 gestion of the explosion in Goethe's work at the 
 close of the first act of the second Faust. What 
 is certain is that he possessed a copy of the 
 book.^ 
 
 ^ The story is introduced as an anecdote extracted from 
 the Doctor's ' Unpublished Memoirs ' with little alterations, 
 but in all essentials clearly reproducing the French original, 
 in Blackwood's Magazine, August, 1822, and reprinted in 
 vol. ii. of Tales from Blackwood, pp. 87-102. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 Thkee times does Helen appear in Goethe's 
 Faust J each time more distinctly, more full of 
 life. The first time in the Witches' Kitchen of the 
 first part. Here Helen's image only is shown in 
 the magic mirror, and is by Faust, in burning 
 words, admired as the perfect form of female 
 beauty. The image, as is fitting for a picture, 
 remains motionless, speechless, perfectly passive.^ 
 The second time — in the first act of the second 
 part — it is Faust himself who calls forth, by his 
 magic art and by the help of the mysterious 
 goddesses, the Mothers, the shape of Helen, 
 similarly to the accounts of the Volkshiicher, 
 of Marlowe and of Hamilton. But Paris pre- 
 cedes her. Faust is more than ever entranced ; 
 this beauty surpasses even what was seen by him 
 
 1 It is to this appearance Faust refers in the second part 
 of Goethe's poem, Act I. : 
 
 " Die Wohlgestalt, die mich dereinst entzuckte, 
 In Zauberspiegehing begliickte, 
 War nur ein Schaumbild solcher Schone.'' 
 152 
 
HOMUNCULUS 153 
 
 in the magic mirror. The shadows (if shadows 
 they be) enact a love-scene. Neither speaks. 
 All remains pantomimic. But Helen inchnes 
 towards Paris, kisses him ; he lifts her up to take 
 her away in his arms. It is then the rape of 
 Helena which we have before us. Faust forgets 
 his role of director of the spectacle. Full of 
 mad jealousy, he tries to interfere. The shadows 
 grow dim. As he touches Paris with his magic 
 key there is an explosion. Faust lies stunned on 
 the ground. The shadows disperse in vapour. 
 Mephisto carries Faust away.^ 
 
 In the second act we find them in Faust's old 
 study, where the former famulus Wagner, now 
 Faust's successor in the University, is creating by 
 chemical proceedings a man, or kind of man. 
 We cannot here dwell on that strange Homun- 
 culus, the idea of which seems to have originated 
 
 1 On the occasion of a Goethe celebration at Dresden 
 in 1849 — the first centenary passed unobserved in the 
 greater part of Grermany — there were performed living 
 pictures, among them Der Raub der Helena, Scenen aus 
 dem zweiten Theile des ' Fatost,'' von Qutzkow eingerichtet 
 und mit Mttsik von Reissiger ; der erste Vers^ich zur 
 Darstellung des zweiten Faiist-theils (Adolf Stem, in the 
 Goethe-Jahrbuch for 1901, p. 230). 
 
 Since then the whole of the second Faust, for a long 
 time considered impossible for the stage, has been repre- 
 sented, not without cuts and modifications, but on the 
 whole perhaps satisfactorily enough, at Hanover, Berlin, 
 Dresden, etc. 
 
 20 
 
154 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 with Paracelsus,^ and was revived in Mrs. 
 Shelley's Frankenstein? He (the Homunculus) 
 and Mephisto and Faust, recovered from his 
 trance, begin their expedition into the Pharsalian 
 fields, where Cassar and Pompey battled for 
 empire, and into a vast mass of mythological 
 matter, to which Goethe has given the name of 
 the classical Walpurgisnacht. This wonderful 
 
 1 1493-1541. He wrote, inter alia, a book, De genera- 
 tione rerum naturalium, in which he gives a circumstantial 
 direction as to the chemical production of Homunculus. 
 Nothing appears on the point in Robert Browning's long 
 poem on Paracelsus, 1835. The Wiirzburg philosopher 
 Johann Jacob Wagner thought (1811) science would ulti- 
 mately succeed in creating men by crystallization (Rich. 
 M. Meyer, Goethe, Berlin, 1895, p. 526). 
 
 See, further, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of 
 Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, 
 called Paracelsus the Great, now for thefrst timejhithfidly 
 translated into English, with biography, preface, elucidatory 
 notes, vocabulary and index, by Arthur Edward Waibe, in 
 two vols. Vol. i.. Hermetic Chemistry (London, Elliot and 
 Co., 1894). 
 
 Compare this passage in the chapter ' Concerning the 
 Generation of Natural Things ' (pp. 120-128): 'But neither 
 must we by any means forget the generation of homunculi. 
 For there is some truth in this thing. ... I answer thereto 
 that this is perfectly possible. In order to accomplish it, 
 you must proceed thus . . .' (p. 124). 
 
 2 1818, then 1823, and more recently reprinted, under 
 the editorship of Dr. R. Garnett, Treasure House, 1891. 
 Observe, however, that Goethe's Homunculus is quite free 
 of the devilish nature of Mrs. Shelley's creation. 
 
'WHERE IS SHE?' 155 
 
 pot-pourri wants, with most people, more than 
 one reading, and, for modern readers who are 
 not so drilled in mythology as Goethe and his 
 contemporaries were, requires a rather frequent 
 reference to Lempri^re, or some other mytho- 
 logical dictionary, but is not on that account 
 to be sneered at, as Heine did, and Vischer in 
 his third part of Faust ^ However, 1 do not 
 wish to drag you through this maze. 
 
 Enough to say, for the present, that as soon as 
 Faust — who has been carried there, still in a 
 trance, on that magic mantle which we are 
 famUiar with through a former adventure — 
 touches the ground, he recovers speech, and his 
 first words are : ' Where is she V Neither of his 
 travelling companions can answer ; they think, 
 however, her abode must be ascertainable, and 
 they separate for the search, going their several 
 ways, with a view to future reunion. Their 
 adventures we need not enter into, especially not 
 those of Homunculus, the scientifically-created 
 man who perishes. 
 
 Out of the mass of facts and fancies which 
 surround Faust in his search for Helen, we select 
 but two or three. He meets Chiron, the man- 
 
 ^ Faust. Der Tragoedie drifter Theil. Treu im Geiste 
 des zweiten Theiles des goethischen Faust. 3 Aufl., 
 Tubingen, 1886. 
 
 20—2 
 
156 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 horse, and physician and sage, who has educated 
 Achilles as well as ^Esculapius, who knows 
 Hercules, and who rendered help in freeing 
 Helen from Theseus, and was present at the 
 wedding of Peleus, his friend, with the divine 
 Thetis, Chiron, being in a great hurry, cannot 
 stop to listen to Faust, but takes him on his 
 horseback, where Helen herself had found a seat 
 when Chiron carried her on that rescuing expedi- 
 tion, through the marshes of Eleusis. How 
 neatly she jumped down from his back, stroked 
 the wet mane flatteringly, and thanked so 
 prettily, so charmingly, like one conscious of her 
 dignity as a grown-up woman ! And yet that 
 old man's joy — she was but seven years old ! ^ 
 
 1 ' But seven years old ' is Faust's interruption in 
 Chiron's tale. But Chiron observes that the poet is not 
 bound by time : ' Gnug, den Poeten bindet keine Zeit ' 
 {Faust II.). 
 
 So also Walter Savage Landor: 'Poets are not bound 
 by chronology ' {Hellenics) Homer and Laertes. 
 
 Larcher, in his Herodotus, is more pedantic or more 
 naif. He gives this curious chronology : 
 
 " Enlevement d'Helene par Thesee quand elle avaitlOans. 
 
 ' Paris I'enleve 25 ans apres (a I'age de) — 25 ans. 
 
 ' Elle demeurait a Troie avant le siege 9 ou 10 ans. 
 
 ' Elle avait done au moment Ou arriverent les Grecs, a 
 peu pres 34 ans. 
 
 " Le siege dura 10 ans, ce qui lui donnerait au moment ou 
 Menelas la reprlt, I'age de 44 ans. 
 
 'II ajoute que le calcul est dans le systeme de ceux 
 
CHIRON AND HELEN 157 
 
 Faust is in ecstasies on hearing Cliiron's tale,^ 
 seated in the very spot where she sat. He will 
 not, cannot live without gaining her. Chiron 
 takes the wilful one to the goddess Manto, a 
 kind of Sibyl ; she is called up from her trance- 
 like dream. She has a mysterious access to the 
 Lower World, whereby in times past she led 
 Orpheus down to reclaim his wife by appealing 
 to the heart of Proserpine (Persephoneia). To 
 her, Chiron, with a good-natured sneer, but 
 helpful, introduces Faust, as a man of maddened 
 brain, seeking Helena, and not knowing how and 
 where to set about it. This is just the sort of 
 undertaking to the taste of Manto, who loves 
 ' him who strives for the Impossible.' Courage, 
 Faust ! They descend the dark passage. 
 
 If we just mention that in that same night 
 Mephisto has made acquaintance with the three 
 hideous daughters of Phorkys, and borrowed 
 
 qui croient que Paris la conduisit a Troie aussitot apres 
 renleveinent ' (Larcher, vol ii., pp. 415, 416). 
 
 ^ As to a celebrated picture, supposed to refer to this 
 incident, vide a note on pp. 29, 30. The most recent 
 critic, or laudator, of Bocklin gives no explanation as to 
 this particular picture, but says : ' The names of Bocklin's 
 pictures, however appropriate some of them sound, are 
 frequently not given by him, but have had their origin in 
 the Art trade ' (Ostini ; Bocklin ; Bielefeld and Leipzig, 
 1904). 
 
158 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 their repulsive shape, we are sufficiently pre- 
 pared for the phantasmagory or Marchen of 
 Helen, who now, as one having returned from 
 death to life, will be full of both speech and 
 action. 
 
 The first traces of Goethe taking for a drama 
 the subject of Helen appear, about the beginning 
 of the century, in his correspondence with 
 Schiller.^ He then doubted whether he could 
 overcome the difficulty of handling, with freedom, 
 the classical metres, a task which he later on 
 performed in so effective and sonorous a manner. 
 On September 12, 1800, he, speaking to Schiller, 
 says he would be saddened to have to treat 
 Helen as a caricature {eine Fratze). He feels so 
 much the beauty in his heroine's position that 
 he thinks a serious tragedy could be built up on 
 what is already begun ; still, he shrinks from 
 ' increasing his tasks, whose poor fulfilment, as it 
 is, already eats up the joy of life.' And when he 
 had read a portion of the beginning of the Helena 
 
 ^ On February 8, 1804, Goethe writes to Schiller 
 about the Hekna of Euripides, and passingly touches on 
 the attempt of a third writer, not named ; it appeared to 
 him that ' the old step, perhaps too heavy for us, of the 
 trimeter was, unaptly, allied with a rhymed chorus.' And 
 yet, perhaps very soon after, he handled the difficult 
 trimeter so splendidly in his own Helena. Of course, he 
 gave up the ' unapt ' rhyme. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HELENA 159 
 
 — for it cannot have been anything else — to 
 Schiller, who on September 23, 1800, mentions 
 that the reading had left him a great and noble 
 impression. 1 More than two decades had passed, 
 from these early steps, before the public learns 
 of the slowly ripening thing of beauty. A 
 short article in Goethe's periodical, Kunst und 
 Alterthum — then translated into the London 
 Athenceum ^ (by Carlyle), it appears — told us that, 
 from those beginnings, the subject had ' silently 
 lain in his mind, from time to time exciting him 
 to some progress.' But whUst hoping to finish 
 the work, he kept the matter ' a carefuUy guarded 
 secret.' We may be sure that among the 
 circumstances which he refers to as ' exciting 
 him ' was the death of Lord Byron, on April 19, 
 1824,^ with whom he was united in ties of a 
 mutual warm admiration. It was this event, 
 probably, which induced him to take up the work 
 again, modifying in some degree his plan, and 
 to bring it to an end. 
 
 At last, in 1827, the book appeared. Goethe 
 himself called it 'a smaller drama, complete in 
 itself, but pertaining to the second part of 
 
 1 ' Mit einem grossen und vornehmen Eindruck.' 
 
 2 AthcTiceum, 1828 (first year), No. 7, February 12. 
 
 ^ Later on, Primrose Day, in honour of another man 
 of genius, who departed life on April 19, 1881. 
 
160 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 Faust' '^ For an appreciation of the work, 
 which announced itself as a ' Classico-romantic 
 Phantasmagoria ' and an ' Interlude to Faust,' 
 we are more favourably placed than were readers 
 then. It forms the third act of the second 
 Faust drama, which now lies before us complete 
 in its five acts. But you recollect that the 
 publication of that complete drama took place 
 only after Goethe's death, March 23, 1832, and 
 the readers of Helena in 1827 were without the 
 passages in the first, and chiefly the second act, 
 which lead up to the beginning of the third, and 
 which I have endeavoured briefly to bring 
 before you. 
 
 The Landing on the Coast of Spabta. 
 
 Goethe^ takes up matters at a definite point 
 in the Troy legend : the landing of Menelaos 
 and the real^ Helena on their return to Sparta, 
 
 1 In the Kunst und Alterthum article, Carlyle, Essays, i., 
 pp. 42, 43. 
 
 ^ Ueher die Darstellung der Helena in der Sage zmd den 
 SchriftwerJcen der Griechen. Mit Beziehung auf GoeiMs 
 Helena. K. Lehrs Avfsdtze aus dem Alterthum. Leipzig, 
 1856. 
 
 In reality very little about Goethe's Helena, otherwise 
 interesting enough. 
 
 ^ ' The real,' in Carlyle's translation of the Kunst und 
 Alterthum article {Essays, i. 141-143). And in Carlyle's 
 
THE LEGEND MODIFIED 161 
 
 after long roving. From that moment, however, 
 the legend is abandoned by Goethe, and an 
 entirely new set of circumstances is entered upon. 
 The King, to begin with, is by no means the 
 suave husband ; there is nothing like the picture 
 of the Odyssey, when Telemachus visits the 
 reconciled couple and finds Helen in the dignified 
 position of the head of the household. Rather 
 does he, at the first mention of him here, remind 
 one of the savage who was with difficulty pre- 
 vented from ruthlessly cutting down her whom 
 he had covered 'with undesired caresses.'^ If 
 now no longer violent, he is sullenly authorita- 
 tive. 
 
 Goethe lets Helen land on the coast of Sparta, 
 as seems natural enough. Pausanias (i, 35) 
 
 own words : ' Not some hollow phantasm attired in her 
 shape ' (like that of the Volksbiiche?- and Marlowe), ' while 
 the true daughter of Leda still dwells afar off in the inane 
 kingdom of Dis, and hears not and heeds not the most 
 potent invocations of black art. Another matter it is to 
 call forth the frail fair one in very deed, not in form only ; 
 but in soul and life the same Helena whom the son of 
 Atreus wedded, and for whose sake Ilion ceased to be. 
 For Faust must behold this wonder, not as she seemed, but 
 as she was ; and at his unearthly desire the Past shall 
 become Present ; and the antique Time must be re-created, 
 and give back its persons and circumstances, though so 
 long since re-ingulphed in the silence of the blank bygone 
 Eternity ' (ibid., p. 143). 
 
 ^ In the words of Lewis Morris. 
 
 21 
 
162 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 fixes upon another place — at least, in the first 
 instance. 'The isles,' he says, 'which the 
 Athenians possess in the neighbourhood of the 
 continent are, first that of Patroclus, and 
 another, above the promontory of Samnium, 
 which one leaves on the left in navigating 
 towards Attica. Helen disembarked there, it is 
 said, after the taking of Troy, and for this reason 
 the island has taken the name of Helena.'^ 
 Pausanias gives no further detail, but that Helen 
 was really a historical personage is for him, as 
 for other eminent writers, a matter admitting of 
 no doubt. 
 
 Panthalis and the Choeus of Trojan 
 Girls. 
 
 Helen is accompanied by Panthalis, whose 
 acquaintance we made in the pictures of Poly- 
 gnotus,^ and by a chorus of Trojan girls, prisoners, 
 now attached in gentle bondage to the Spartan 
 Queen. They at times appear charming, but are 
 by Mephistopheles characterized in a way which 
 reminds us of the crowd of women that accom- 
 panied the hosts of Tilly, or of Wallenstein, a 
 ' war-begotten, fight-bred, feather-headed crew.' ^ 
 
 ^ Attica, chap. 35. His book was written temp. Hadrian, 
 between 160 and 180 a.d. 
 
 ^ Supra, p. 74. ^ Goethe, by Carlyle Essays I., p. 149. 
 
TO THE OLD HOME 163 
 
 Helen, conscious that she is ' much admired 
 and greatly blamed,' reviews, in approaching the 
 royal house, her life and its storms, and she is 
 not certain of her future fortune in the old home 
 to which she is brought back : 
 
 ' For seldom, in our swift ship, did my husband deign 
 To look on me ; and word of comfort spake he none. 
 As if a-brooding mischief, there he silent sat ; 
 Until, when steered into Eurotas' bending bay. 
 The first ships with their prows but kissed the land, 
 He rose, and said, as if by the voice of gods inspired : 
 " Here will I that my warriors, troop by troop, disbark ; 
 I muster them, in battle order, on the ocean strand. 
 But thou go forward, up Eurotas' sacred bank. 
 Guiding the steeds along the flower-besprinkled space. 
 Till thou arrive on the fair plain where Lacedsemon, 
 Erewhile a broad fruit-bearing field, has piled its roofs 
 Amid the mountains, and sends up the smoke of hearths. 
 Then enter thou the high-towered palace ; call the maids 
 I left at parting, and the wise old Stewardess : 
 With her inspect the treasures that thy father left, 
 And I, in war or peace still adding, have heaped up. 
 Thou findest all in order standing ; for it is 
 The prince's privilege to see, at his return. 
 Each household item as it was and where it was ; 
 For of himself the slave hath power to alter nought." ' 
 
 The Sacrifice okdered — The Stewardess. 
 
 It appears, moreover, that she is to make 
 preparations for a solemn sacrifice, all the cir- 
 cumstances and requirements of which are indi- 
 
 21—2 
 
164 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 cated, but not the victim. What betokens that 
 omission ? However, she enters the palace, and 
 returns, greatly agitated, to her attendants. She 
 has left the door-leaves open, speaks half to 
 herself, half addressing the chorus : 
 
 ' Beseems not that Jove's daughter shrink with common 
 
 fright, 
 Nor by the brief cold touch of Fear be chilled and 
 
 stunned, 
 Yet the Horror, which, ascending, in the womb of Night, 
 From deeps of Chaos, rolls itself together many-shaped. 
 Like glowing clouds, from out the mountain's fire-throat 
 In threatening ghastliness, may shake even heroes' hearts. 
 So have the Stygian here to-day appointed me 
 A welcome to my native Mansion, such that fain 
 From the oft-trod, long-wished-for threshold, like a 
 
 guest 
 That has took leave, I would withdraw my steps for aye. 
 But no ! Retreated have I to the light, nor shall 
 Ye farther force me, angry Powers, be who ye may. 
 New expiations will I use ; then purified, 
 The blaze of the Hearth may greet the Mistress as the 
 
 Lord.' 
 
 To her speaks Panthalis : 
 
 ' Discover, noble Queen, to us thy handmaidens, 
 That wait by thee in love, what misery has befallen ;' 
 
 and Helen replies : 
 
 ' What I have seen, ye too with your own eyes shall see, 
 If Night have not already sucked her Phantom back 
 To the Abysses of her wonder-bearing breast. 
 Yet, would ye know this thing, I tell it you in words. 
 When bent on present duty, yet with anxious thought. 
 
THE STEWARDESS 165 
 
 I solemnly set foot in these high royal Halls, 
 
 The silent, vacant passages astounded me ; 
 
 For tread of hasty footsteps nowhere met the ear. 
 
 Nor battle as of busy menial work the eye. 
 
 No maid comes forth to me, no Stewardess, such as 
 
 Still wont with friendly welcome to salute all guests. 
 
 But as, alone advancing, I approach the Hearth, 
 
 There, by the ashy remnant of dim outburnt coals. 
 
 Sits, crouching on the ground, up-muffled, some huge crone ; 
 
 Not as in sleep she sat, but as in drowsy muse. 
 
 With ordering voice I bid her rise, nought doubting 'twas 
 
 The Stewardess the King, at parting hence, had left. 
 
 But heedless, shrunk together, sits she motionless ; 
 
 And as I chid, at last outstretched her lean right arm. 
 
 As if she beckoned me from hall and hearth away. 
 
 I turn indignant from her, and hasten out forthwith 
 
 Towards the steps whereon aloft the Thalamos 
 
 Adorned rises ; and near by it the Treasure-room ; 
 
 When, lo ! the monster starts abruptly from the floor ; 
 
 Imperious, barring my advance, displays herself 
 
 In haggard stature, hollow bloodshot eye ; a shape 
 
 Of hideous strangeness, to perplex all sight and thought. 
 
 But I discourse to the air ; for words in vain attempt 
 
 To body forth to sight the form that dwells in us. 
 
 There see herself ! She ventures forward to the light ! 
 
 Here we are masters till our Lord and King shall come. 
 
 The ghastly births of Night, Apollo, beauty's friend. 
 
 Disperses back to their abysses, or subdues.' 
 
 Phorkyas and the Chorus. 
 
 Phorkyas has entered from the house, stands 
 between the doorposts. The terror, the indigna- 
 tion, the recollection of former dreadful things 
 
166 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 seen by the Trojan chorus break out in short, 
 unrhymed metre, splendid in Goethe, splendid 
 in Carlyle : 
 
 ' Much have I seen, and strange, though the ringlets 
 Youthful and thick still wave round my temples ; 
 Terrors a many, war and its horrors 
 Witnessed I once in Ilium's night. 
 When it fell. 
 
 Through the clanging, cloud -covered din of 
 Onrushing warriors, heard I th' Immortals 
 Shouting in anger, heard I Bellona's 
 Iron-toned voice resound from without 
 Citywards. 
 
 ' Ah ! the City yet stood, with its 
 Bulwarks ; Ilion safely yet 
 Towered : but spreading from house over 
 House, the flame did begirdle us ; 
 Sea-like red, loud and billowy ; 
 Hither, thither, as tempest-floods. 
 Over the death-circled City. 
 
 ' Flying, saw I, through heat and through 
 Gloom and glare of that fire-ocean, 
 Shapes of Gods in their wrathfulness, 
 Stalking grim, fierce, and terrible, 
 Giant-high, through the luridly 
 Flame-dyed dusk of that vapour. 
 
 ' Did I see it ? or was it but 
 Terror of heart that fashioned 
 Forms so affrighting ? Know can I 
 Never : but here that I view this 
 Horrible Thing with my own eyes. 
 This of a surety believe I : 
 Yea, I could clutch 't in my fingers. 
 Did not, from Shape so dangerous. 
 Fear at a distance keep me. 
 
THE TROJAN GIRLS 167 
 
 ' Which of old Phorkys' 
 Daughters then art thou ? 
 For I compare thee to 
 That generation. 
 Art thou belike of the Graiae, 
 Gray-born, one eye and one tooth 
 Using alternate, 
 Child or descendant ? 
 
 ' Darest thou, Haggard, 
 Close by such beauty, 
 Tore the divine glance of 
 Phoebus display thee ? 
 But display as it pleases thee ; 
 For the Ugly he heedeth not, 
 As his bright eye yet never did 
 Look on a shadow. 
 
 ' But us mortals, alas for it ! 
 Law of Destiny burdens us 
 With the unspeakable eye-sorrow 
 Which such a sight, unblessed, detestable, 
 Doth in lovers of beauty awaken. 
 
 * Nay then, hear, since thou shamelessly 
 Com''st forth fronting us, hear only 
 Curses, hear all manner of threatenings, 
 Out of the scornful lips of the happier 
 That were made by the Deities.' 
 
 Phorkias answers with Contempt. 
 
 To this passionate outburst Phorkyas answers 
 with withering cynicism : 
 
 ' Old is the saw, but high and true remains its sense. 
 That Shame and Beauty ne'er, together hand in hand, 
 Were seen pursue their journey over the earth's green path. 
 
168 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 Deep-rooted dwells an ancient hatred in these two ; 
 So that wherever, on their way, one haps to meet 
 The other, each on its adversary turns its back ; 
 Then hastens forth the faster on its separate road ; 
 Shame all in sorrow. Beauty pert and light of mood ; 
 Till the hollow night of Orcus catches it at length, 
 If age and wrinkles have not tamed it long before. 
 So you, ye wantons, wafted hither from strange lands, 
 I find in tumult, like the cranes' hoarse jingling flight, 
 That over our heads, in long-drawn cloud, sends down 
 Its creaking gabble, and tempts the silent wanderer that 
 
 he look 
 Aloft at them a moment ; but they go their ways. 
 And he goes his ; so also will it be with us. 
 Who then are ye, that here, in Bacchanalian wise. 
 Like drunk ones, ye dare uproar at this Palace-gate "> 
 Who then are ye, that at the Stewardess of the King's House 
 Ye howl, as at the moon the crabbed brood of dogs .^ 
 Think ye 'tis hid from me what manner of thing ye are 'i 
 Ye war-begotten, fight-bred, feather-headed crew ! 
 Lascivious crew, seducing as seduced, that waste. 
 In rioting, alike the soldier's and the burgher's strength ! 
 Here seeing you gathered, seems as a cicada-swarm 
 Had lighted, covering the herbage of the fields. 
 Consumers ye of others' thrift, ye greedy-mouthed 
 Quick squanderers of fruits men gain by tedious toil ; 
 Cracked market-ware, stol'n, bought, and bartered troop 
 
 of slaves !' 
 
 Helen acknowledged by Phorkyas — 
 Mephisto. 
 
 But having asserted herself, and poured out 
 her flood of scorn, Phorkyas proceeds to acknow- 
 ledge Helen and her position as Queen. In a 
 
HELEN TO BE SACRIFICED 169 
 
 rapid dialogue between the two, the leading 
 
 events of Helen's hfe are recapitulated, including 
 
 the Egyptian version — nay, also the union vdth 
 
 Achilles, 'from the hollow realm of Shades.' 
 
 Helen is highly perturbed in mind ; the last 
 
 stroke finishes her. She utters the words, 
 
 ' To him a Vision, I a Vision joined myself: 
 It was a dream, the very words may teach us this. 
 But I am faint, and to myself a Vision grow,' 
 
 and sinks in a swoon into the arms of some of 
 the Chorus. 
 
 Then follows another slanging match between 
 Phorkyas and the Trojan girls, until Helen 
 recovers from her swoon. Now Phorkyas, 
 speaking respectfully enough to the Queen, 
 brings matters back to the sacrifice which is to 
 be prepared, and strikes almost terror into 
 Helena and the Chorus by divulging the fact 
 that the Queen herself is to be solemnly sacri- 
 ficed, while the Trojan girls are to be ignomini- 
 ously hanged — hke the maid-servants in the 
 house of Ithaca, when Odysseus returns with 
 Telemachos. 
 
 Thus, death appearing inevitable, Phorkyas says : 
 
 ' She dies a noble death ; 
 Ye, on the high beam within that bears the rafters and 
 
 the roof. 
 As in birding-time so many woodlarks, in a row, shall 
 sprawl.' 
 
 22 
 
170 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 Helen, as well as the Chorus, stands astounded 
 and terror-struck. Phorkyas continues : 
 
 ' Poor spectres ! All like frozen statues there ye stand, 
 In fright to leave the Day which not belongs to you. 
 No man or spectre, more than you, is fond to quit 
 The Upper Light ; yet rescue, respite finds not one : 
 All know it, all believe it, few delight in it. 
 Enough, 'tis over with you ! And so let's to work.' 
 
 A Rescue offered — Faust. 
 
 In this moment of consternation, Phorkyas — 
 we know she is Mephistopheles — wins her game. 
 Subordinate spirits, dwarfs, or devils, are called 
 in, make all preparations for a fatal ending. 
 Despair has seized the Trojans ; they, so perky 
 before, are now cringing. With more dignity, 
 the Greek leader of the Chorus asks to enter 
 into consultation with Phorkyas, whether an 
 issue can be found. Helen herself feels pain, 
 not fear. Resigned to suffer death, she will 
 yet accept rescue thankfully, bearing herself 
 worthily either way. Is there, then, an escape 
 possible ? Yes, Phorkyas offers it. First having 
 established terror, she will appear as a rescuer. 
 She will take Helen to Faust. 
 
 Of this Faust Helen knew as yet nothing. 
 Nor does Phorkyas name him, but relates how, 
 whilst anarchy prevailed in Greece, bands of 
 
A RESCUE OFFERED 171 
 
 armed men entered from the North, under a 
 mighty leader who dwells in an inexpugnable 
 stronghold. He might afford protection to the 
 threatened Queen, 
 
 Helen utters a question which is, perhaps, 
 characteristic of the all-conquering beauty, and 
 seems to indicate in what sense she may enter on 
 the new adventure, she who inspires love with- 
 out necessarily feeling it. ' How looks he ?' she 
 asks. And this is the reply of Phorkyas- 
 Mephisto : 
 
 ' Nowise ill ! To me he pleasant looked. 
 A jocund, gallant, hardy, handsome man it is ; 
 And rational in speech, as of the Greeks are few. 
 We call the folk Barbarian ; yet I question much 
 If one were there so cruel, as at Ilion, 
 Full many of our best heroes man-devouring were.' 
 
 Here Helen may, with a shudder, remember 
 how Menelaos slaughtered Deiphobus, her 
 husband, and the image may stand before her 
 how he was on the point of slaughtering herself, 
 and was with difficulty prevented. Hence the 
 present horrible prospect may unite with the 
 recollections of the past. And she is already 
 near to surrender, when Phorkyas pictures the 
 safety which is to be found in the strong and 
 beautiful castle of the man from the North, 
 barbarian though he be. She entrusts herself to 
 the uncanny guide who will take her thither. 
 
 22—2 
 
172 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 What Faust represents. 
 
 Whatever Faust represents in other parts of 
 the great poem — the Striver, the Endeavourer, 
 the Scholar, the Sceptic, the Passionate Lover, 
 the Pessimist, the Altruist, the Human Race, 
 Man — here he represents to us the Middle 
 Ages, the movement of the North eastwards 
 and southwards ; and later on, in conjunction 
 with Helen, the Renaissance. And this con- 
 ception is not so incongruous as it may appear 
 at first, if we think of the Crusades, and more 
 especially of the fourth, when the Christian 
 warriors did not press onward to Jerusalem, but 
 overturned the Greek Empire, and, staying at 
 Constantinople, founded a new one, with numer- 
 ous feudal dependencies in the old Greek and 
 Byzantine provinces. Faust's kingdom in Achaia 
 is not more improbable than Bohemund's strictly 
 historical principality of Edessa — not to speak 
 of the Danish Prince at Wittenberg, conversing 
 with the players as to representing the story of 
 Troy, or the Moor leading the Venetian troops 
 against the Turks. 
 
 Enough : Helen, the much- vexed Queen of 
 Love, Panthalis the faithful, and the Trojan 
 girls who look for dancers at the barbarian 
 Chief's Court, follow Phorkyas, who seems to 
 
HELEN TO FAUST 173 
 
 take up the office otherwise entrusted to 
 Hermes-Mercury, of Psychopompos, the leader 
 of the souls. They hasten away, a mist rises, 
 they move on in the dark, Phorkyas guiding, 
 behind them the fear of Menelaos ; they know 
 not whether their feet touch the ground or they 
 are wafted along. They hear no longer the mur- 
 muring waves of the Eurotas, the song of the 
 legendary swans is stilled. They see nothing, 
 when suddenly the mist begins to dissolve,^ 
 a brown mass rises before them in dim hght ; 
 they are in front of a wall. One step more, they 
 stand, unheralded, in the castle yard. Phorkyas 
 has disappeared. 
 
 1 ' Auf einmal wird es diister.' The word ' diister,' 
 showing a state between dark and light, is generally con- 
 ceived as more dark than light. But it must here be 
 understood as more light than dark — lighter than the 
 preceding or surrounding darkness. So in the Erlkonig. 
 The darkness of night has before been accentuated, but 
 the child calls the father's attention to the Fairy King's 
 daughters' appearance. 
 
 ' Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst Du nicht dort 
 Erlkcinigs Tochter am diAstern Ort ? 
 
 And the father does see something in a spot, less dark 
 than the surrounding scenery ; he sees it genau (clearly), 
 not because the spot is particularly dark, but because it is 
 rather lighter than the general aspect of the surroundings : 
 ' Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau.' 
 
174 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 In Faust's Castle. 
 
 Many tokens of grandeur as well as safety 
 surround them. It is a new world they have 
 stepped into. In the language, too, the poem 
 shows a curious change in the metric atmosphere. 
 The long-drawn, unrhymed Greek verses dis- 
 appear. Short-rhymed lines take their place. 
 
 A long train of pages comes forth, bringing a 
 throne, into which Helen is ushered. She has to 
 preside at what is to follow. From the stairs 
 descends Faust, in the courtly dress of a medieval 
 knight, with many retainers. He greets Helen 
 as his Queen. He brings with him a man in 
 fetters. It is Lynceus, the lynx-eyed, the 
 watchman who did not perceive or mark the 
 approach of the strangers. His excuse is that 
 he looked eastward ; but this time a blinding 
 Sun rose from the South. It is the Graeco- 
 Roman world shedding its light over the North 
 and the men of the North ; it symbolizes the 
 Renaissance. Lynceus is considered guilty, but 
 his master, Faust, will not pronounce judgment. 
 It is now again, as in Goethe's notes to the 
 pictures of Polygnotus,^ the part of Queen 
 Helen 'to bind or to loosen'; to her the 
 sovereign power is given. She readily pardons 
 ^ Vide antea, p. 77. 
 
HELEN AND FAUST 175 
 
 Lynceus, who shortly afterwards brings chests 
 full of immense treasures by way of thanks. 
 But this is not enough. Faust recommends him 
 to bring more costly things : is he not the lynx- 
 eyed one who sees deep into the bowels of the 
 earth, where he discovers precious stones and 
 metals ? Surely nothing can be too costly for 
 her. Faust commands : 
 
 ' Go, heap me treasures 
 On treasures, yet with order : let the blaze 
 Of pomp unspeakable appear ; the ceilings, 
 Grem-fretted, shine like skies ; a Paradise 
 Of lifeless life create. Before her feet 
 Unfolding quick, let flow'ry carpet roll 
 Itself from flow'ry carpet, that her step 
 May light on softness, and her eye meet nought 
 But splendour blinding only not the Gods ' 
 
 — a command which Lynceus is most willing to 
 obey, as being most appropriate to honour such a 
 Queen. For 
 
 ' To a form of such a mould 
 Sun himself is dull and cold ; 
 To the richness of that face 
 What is beauty, what is grace .'' 
 Loveliness we saw or thought ? 
 All is empty, all is naught.' 
 
 Helen and Faust. 
 The flame of love between Faust and Helena 
 is rising rapidly as they sit together on the high 
 throne. And here occurs a peculiar and pretty 
 
176 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 bit of rhyming verse, which has been most 
 happily translated into French by the younger 
 Ampfere.^ Helena has observed in Lynceus' 
 speech a trait which is quite unknown to her. 
 She, like all the ancient world, has never heard 
 rhymed speech before. 
 
 ' How is it,' she says, ' in this man's speech 
 there is a something so strange, yet so graceful ? 
 One sound seems to become married to another, 
 and scarce has a word rung into our ears, when 
 another word comes to caress it. How should 
 one manage to speak so charming a language ?' 
 
 ' That is easy enough,' replies Faust ; ' the 
 speech must come from the heart.' 
 
 And here let us place Goethe and Ampere 
 
 side by side : 
 
 Helena. 
 So sage denn, wie sprech 'ich auch so schon ? 
 
 Faust. 
 Das ist gar leicht, es muss vom Herzen gehn. 
 
 H^LENB. 
 
 Comment faire pour parler ce beau langage ? 
 
 Faust. 
 Cela est facile, il faut qu'il vienne du coeur. 
 
 Faust. 
 Und wenn die Brust von Sehnsucht iiberfliesst, 
 Man sieht sich um und fragt 
 
 ^ Jean Jacques Ampere, 1800-1864<, in Litterature et 
 Voyages, 2 vols., 1834. 
 
J. J. AMPERE— A. SWANWICK 177 
 
 Helena. 
 
 Wer mitgeniesst. 
 Faust. 
 Quand il est inonde des desirs les plus doux, 
 II demande quelqu'un 
 
 H^lilNE. 
 
 Pour jouir avec nous. 
 
 Faust. 
 Nun schaut der Geist nicht vorwarts, nicht zuriick, 
 Die Gegenwart allein 
 
 Helena. 
 
 1st unser Gliick. 
 Faust. 
 On ne regarde plus en avant, en arriere ; 
 Dans le moment present 
 
 HilLENE. 
 
 Notre ame est tout entiere. 
 
 Faust. 
 Schatz ist sie, Hochgewinn, Besitz und Pfand ; 
 Bestatigung, wer gibt sie ? 
 
 Helena. 
 
 Meine Hand. 
 Faust. 
 Du bonheur le present nous ouvre le chemin ; 
 Mais quel gage repond de I'avenir .'' 
 
 Helene. 
 
 Ma main. 
 
 So, too. Miss Swanwick's translation is well 
 
 worth quoting : 
 
 Faust. 
 Yet were it best this language to essay ; 
 Alternate speech invites it, calls it forth. 
 
 23 
 
178 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 Helena. 
 How thus to speak so sweetly I would know. 
 
 Faust. 
 'Tis easy : from the heart the words must flow ; 
 And when with fond desire the bosom yeaxns, 
 We look around and ask 
 
 Helen. 
 
 Who with us bums. 
 
 Faust. 
 
 The spirit looks nor forward nor behind. 
 The present only 
 
 Helen. 
 There our bliss we find. 
 
 Faust. 
 Wealth is it, pledge and fortune ; I demand 
 Who granteth confirmation ? 
 
 Helena. 
 
 This — my hand. 
 
 And Boito, in that enchanting duet : 
 
 Elena. 
 O incantesimo ! parla ! 
 Dimmi come faro a parlar 
 L'idiome suave. 
 
 And Paul Milliet : 
 
 HilLiiNE. 
 
 Dis-moi qui t'inspire ces sons 
 Dont j 'attends le retour ? 
 
 Faubt. 
 J'interroge mon coeur, il te repond : 
 L'Amour. 
 
MADAME DE STAEL 179 
 
 In this connection some words of Madame 
 de Stael may be quoted, by which, in her book 
 De VAllemagne, written in 1810, she, in speaking 
 of rhyme in general, seems ^ to refer to this 
 passage : ' C'est une d^couverte moderne que la 
 rime ; elle tient a tout I'ensemble de nos beaux- 
 arts ; et ce serait s'interdire de grands efFets que 
 d'y renoncer ; elle est I'image de I'esp^rance et 
 du souvenir. Un son nous fait d^sirer celui qui 
 doit lui r^pondre, et quand le second retentit, il 
 nous rappelle celui qui vient de nous echapper.' 
 
 That is not quite Goethe's graceful concept, 
 but it comes very near. When Madame de Stael 
 was at Weimar in the winter 1803-1804 no part 
 of Helena was printed, but we know by Goethe's 
 correspondence with Schiller that he was 
 occupied with the subject at the turn of the 
 centuries.^ Can he have communicated to the 
 sympathetic lady some portion of what he had 
 written or conceived in this direction ? It seems 
 most hkely. 
 
 Rudely enough is the love-dream of Faust and 
 Helena interrupted. ' There is no time for this,' 
 cries Phorkyas-Mephisto, abruptly reappearing, 
 heralding new evil. The trumpets of Menelaos 
 
 ^ Deuxieme partie : ' De la Litterature et des Arts f 
 chapitre ix., ' Du style et de la versification.' 
 2 Letters 766 and 767. 
 
 23—2 
 
180 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 are heard ; he is approaching ' to storm the castle 
 and avenge his new injuries.' But nothing 
 daunted, Faust summons his men, who arrive in 
 numerous battalions. We soon lose sight of the 
 Spartan King by the opening of a much larger 
 theatre of war. As Faust addresses his troops 
 by battalions, they rapidly march off in different 
 directions. We gather from his varied speeches 
 that we have got into a new kind of symbolism. 
 It is the victorious fight of the men of the 
 North — their conquest of the South of Europe; 
 and Faust's orders to the men and leaders under 
 him become, as it were, the utterance of a 
 common spirit of that great movement which 
 lasted for some centuries, and which the Germans 
 call the Volkerwanderung, the migration of 
 nations, whilst with the more or less Romanized 
 other nations it is called the Invasion of the 
 Barbarians and the rise of the Modern King- 
 doms. Carlyle admires this long piece of 
 verse. In my humble opinion, it is not one 
 of the happier inspirations of Goethe — scarcely 
 more so than the thick volume of ottava rima 
 in which the modern poet Hermann Lingg^ 
 relates harmoniously and tamely what Gibbon 
 has told us in undying prose. 
 
 ^ Die Viilkerwmiderung. Epische Dichtung. Stuttgart, 
 Cotta. 2 vols., 363 and 270 pp. 
 
EUPHORION 181 
 
 EUPHORION. 
 
 Faust, however, and Helena, both personally 
 safe, do not foUow the troops ; nor is it deemed 
 any longer necessary or fitting for the royal 
 beauty to be encircled by defensive walls. They 
 retire to Arcadia to live an idylUc life. There 
 are lovely groves and inviting grottoes — a 
 favourite place for lovers, in the old world and 
 among imitators of the classical, ever since 
 Calypso's time, though to our modern taste a 
 bit too damp. Phorkyas there attends them. 
 The Chorus hes around, chiefly sleeping. There, 
 in this retreat, a son is born to Faust and 
 Helen. 
 
 You remember, from one of the Volksbucher,^ 
 that there was a son of Helen and Faust, called 
 Justus Faust, a handsome young man, who 
 disappeared early, being taken away by his 
 mother when she had to follow his father. And 
 you remember, also, that Achilles and Helen had 
 a son, Euphorion, the nimble, the agile, the 
 graceful. Is, then, Faust, the multiform, now 
 become Achilles ? the symbol of fullest virile 
 power united here with the symbol of highest 
 womanly beauty ? It seems so. 
 
 At first we hear of this child by Phorkyas only 
 ^ Antea, p. 144. 
 
182 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 and by what she tells the Chorus. Then the 
 youth Euphorion himself appears. The child 
 has grown rapidly — a marvel. He is bold, hardy, 
 handsome, ' a Faun in humour, without coarse- 
 ness ';^ he bounds ever upward, and on touching 
 the earth again, like Antasus, gains new strength. 
 He appears, after some obfuscation,^ anew with 
 a lyre and a radiance about his head. ' Quitting 
 his boyish gambols, he takes to dancing and 
 romping, and this in a style of tumult which 
 rather dissatisfies Faust.' ^ One of the damsels 
 escapes him, flashes up in flame into the air. 
 But shaking off the flame, he mounts higher, 
 on to a peak — mitten in Pelopsland^ — ^where he 
 catches the sound of war and feels an attraction 
 which makes both the parents anxious. But he 
 sings : 
 
 ' And hear ye thunders on the ocean. 
 And thunders roll from tower and wall ; 
 And host with host, in fierce commotion, 
 
 ^ ' 1. Portatu facilis. 
 
 2. Qui valde fert, ferax, fecundus. 
 
 3. Agilis, expeditus.' 
 
 Hedericus. 
 
 ^ ' Doch auf einmal in der Spalte rauher Schlucht ist er 
 verschwunden, 
 Und nun scheint er uns verloren.' 
 3 Carlyle. 
 * In the midst of the land of Pelops = in Greece. 
 
LORD BYRON 183 
 
 See mixing at the trumpet's call. 
 
 And to die in strife 
 
 Is the law of life, 
 
 That is certain once for all ;' 
 
 He repels the warning voices : 
 
 ' Shall I view it, safe and gladly ? 
 No ! to dare it will I hie.' 
 
 A pair of wings folds itself out : 
 
 ' 'Tis my hest to fly P 
 
 ' He easts himself into the air ; his garments 
 support him for a moment, his head radiates, a 
 train of Ught follows him.' 
 
 Here, then, is Euphorion — Byron glorified. 
 But the ' beautiful rushes down at the feet of 
 the parents, you recognise in the dead a well- 
 known form ; yet the bodily part instantly 
 disappears ; the gold crownlet mounts hke a 
 comet to the sky; coat, mantle, and lyre are 
 left Ijring.'i 
 
 This Euphorion of Goethe was, it seems, to 
 represent or symbolize the rise of a new poesy 
 and art, born from Greek antiquity and the 
 romantic ages. And yet this is, perhaps, not 
 quite convincing. In so far as a personal repre- 
 sentation goes, there is no doubt that Goethe 
 
 1 Compare here the last of Lord Byron's ' Occasional 
 Pieces,' written at Missolonghi, January 22, 1824, his last 
 birthday. 
 
184 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 had Lord Byron in mind, with whom he was 
 bound in admiring friendship, and whose then 
 recent death — April 19, 1824, at Missolonghi — 
 seems to have made him alter his plan in that 
 part of the poem. Carlyle could not see that 
 this Euphorion is Byron, rather sneers at those 
 who did see it ; but Carlyle ever had some anti- 
 Byronic feeling. Another English critic thinks 
 that not Byron, but rather Goethe himself, should 
 be taken as the child of such union. ^ And a 
 third would Uke to substitute Shelley for Byron. 
 Shall we add that some of the verses in that 
 latter part of Goethe's Helena are a little stiff 
 and unclear — have a httle of that formal stride 
 of limbs stiffened somewhat by age, to which 
 unfavourable critics have given the name of the 
 Geheimeratstyl, and which is now and again with- 
 out that swing, that limpid flow and crystalline 
 form, that characterizes most of Goethe's earlier 
 work and the earlier part of his Helena itself? 
 Sometimes, said the Ancients, even the godlike 
 Homer nods a httle. Be that as it may, let us 
 listen to Euphorion's last words. They are 
 spoken ' from beneath ': 
 
 ' Let me not to realms below 
 Descend, Mother, alone !' 
 
 1 Dr. Coupland in The Spirit of Goethe's Faust, 1885, 
 p. 272. 
 
HELENA'S ADIEUX 185 
 
 The Chorus sing a dirge over the remains, and 
 then, the two parents having expressed that 
 
 ' Joy soon changes to woe, 
 And mirth to heaviest moan.' 
 
 Helena addresses Faust in leave-taking : 
 
 ' A sad old saying proves itself again in me, 
 Good hap with beauty hath no long abode. 
 So with Love's band is Life's asunder rent : 
 Lamenting both, I clasp thee in my arms 
 Once more, and bid thee, painfully, farewell. 
 Persephoneia, take my boy, and with him me.' 
 
 She embraces Faust ; her body melts away ; 
 garment and veil remain in his arms. 
 
 Then Phorkyas to Faust, demons appearing, 
 not encouraged by Mephisto : 
 
 ' Hold fast what now alone remains to thee. 
 That Garment quit not. They are tugging there already. 
 These demons, at the skirt of it ; would fain 
 To the Nether Kingdom take it down. Hold fast ! 
 The goddess it is not, whom thou hast lost. 
 Yet godlike is it. See thou use aright 
 The priceless high bequest, and soar aloft ; 
 'Twill lift thee away above the common world. 
 Far up to Mther, so thou canst endure,^ 
 We meet again, far, very far from hence.' 
 
 Helena's garments unfold into clouds, encircle 
 Faust, raise him aloft, and float away with him. 
 Phorkyas- Mephisto then falls into a sarcastic 
 
 ^ These words were, perhaps, better translated thus : 
 'So long as life will be granted you.' 
 
 24 
 
186 GOETHE'S HELENA 
 
 speech against minor poets. The Chorus dis- 
 solves. Panthalis alone follows Helen into the 
 Nether World, as she would follow her any- 
 where faithfully, ora e sempre. This agrees with 
 Goethe's later ideas on the matter of personal 
 immortality. Only those who have earnestly 
 striven for noble aims, have made of themselves 
 an entelecheia, an ennobling completeness, be 
 it by achievement of their own or faithfully 
 devoted attachment, deserve or have a claim to 
 immortality :^ 
 
 ' Nur der verdient die Freiheit wie das Leben, 
 Der taglich sie erobern muss.' 
 
 But also : 
 
 ' Wer keinen Namen sich erwarb, noch Edles will 
 Gehort den Elementen an ; ^ 
 
 and 
 ' Nicht nur Verdienst, auch Treue wahrt uns die Person.' 
 
 The Trojan girls, on their part, have no wish 
 to return to the shades with their mistress, nor 
 
 1 Eckermann, March 11, 1828; September 1, 1829; 
 March 3, 1830. Also Diintzer's edition of Eckermann, 
 vol. ii., p. 266, with reference to Aristotle. 
 
 ^ ' He only deserves freedom and life who, day by day, 
 has to conquer them '; and ' He who has not achieved name 
 and fame, nor striven for a noble aim, belongs to the 
 elements merely.' Also : 'Not merit achieved only, but 
 faithfulness, too, secures a personal continuance of 
 existence.' 
 
ALTRUISM 187 
 
 have they a personality to preserve. They dis- 
 perse — and that is in accordance with Goethe's 
 early pantheism — into outward bodies, leading a 
 but semi-conscious life, or an inconscious one, as 
 Nymphs of Wood and Water, The verses are 
 pretty, but seem an almost needless addition, and 
 their length drags a little, after the pathetic end. 
 Once more, at the beginning of the next act 
 of the great Faust poem, Helen, or rather the 
 cloud, appears, but it is only to shape itself into 
 pictures and at last into dreams of early youth — 
 which, too, rise into the Ether, taking with 
 them what seemed best in his soul. Active life 
 appeals to him, and altruism will claim him.^ 
 
 ^ On the Euphorion episode cf. also Ueher die Helena 
 und Euphorion, pp. 327-355 of Wilhelm Scherer's Aufsdtze 
 iiber Goethe, 1886. An early notice, appreciative on the 
 whole, occurs in a letter written from Goettingen, October 
 21, 1827, by Beddoes, and published by Edmund Gosse 
 in the letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1894, pp. 148, 
 149. 
 
 24—2 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 We have finished Avith Goethe's Helena, and 
 nearly and essentially with the whole subject. 
 There are, however, a few other Helenas in 
 literature, though none of them lays such hold of 
 us as do Homer's and Goethe's. Still, let us 
 see what a little aftermath may yield us. 
 
 In our days she slightly passes over the scene 
 in Jules Lemaitre's charming tale of Briseis, 
 with its Homeric groundwork. She speaks in 
 the verses and music of Saint-Saens opera,^ 
 which, nialgre Madame Melba's soprano, could 
 not yet hold the stage of Covent Garden, and 
 had but a passing success. 
 
 She figures in several plays of Euripides be- 
 side the one we have analyzed.^ She serves the 
 witty Aristophanes, in one of his outrageous 
 comedies, Tfbe Meeting of the Women, for an 
 episode, in which he uses the Egyptian version.^ 
 
 1 Helene: Poeme lyrigue en un acte. Paris, Durand, 
 1904. 2 P. 115 et seq. 
 
 ^ ThesmophoriazuscE, Act XL 
 
 188 
 
SHAKESPEARE— SCHILLER 189 
 
 You recollect her passing appearance in Shake- 
 speare. We have met her with that Simon 
 Magus of the Acts of the Apostles, and now, 
 for a long while, she descends to the witches, 
 and becomes a familiar to irreligious conjurers. 
 
 Schiller, seeing in Helena's beauty the cause 
 of so much evil, compares to her Mary, Queen 
 ofScoJs, and lays on the lips of Queen Eliza- 
 beth's faithful servant the words (Act I., 
 scene i.) : 
 
 ' O, Fluch dem Tag, da dieses Landes Kuste 
 Gastfreundlich diese Helena empfing.'' 
 
 It is Mary Stuart who, like Helen, 
 
 ' Mit der Liebesfackel dieses Reich entziindet.' 
 
 We come across her, at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, in the published text of a 
 popular English play.^ The Siege of Troy was 
 represented at the Southwark Fair^ — ^of which 
 Hogarth, by a remarkable drawing,^ has pre- 
 served the memory — in 1707, with much pomp, 
 or expense of staging. The anonymous writer 
 is all for Helena. She is throughout — at the 
 ' Great Booth of Lee and Harper' — a loving wife 
 to Paris, and to him alone. Fair Helen falls 
 with Troy. From a tower she witnesses the 
 
 1 Vide p. 142. 
 
 2 In the Print Room of the British Museum. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 general massacre and sees Paris killed. Ex- 
 claiming, 
 
 ' I see what fate does my dear Paris share ; 
 For him alone was I fair,' 
 
 she throws herself from the battlements of 
 the tower into the fire beneath. It is perhaps 
 worth noting that Menelaos comforts himself 
 easily : 
 
 ' 'Tis done, 'tis done, this brace of traitors slain ; 
 This one night's joy rewards my ten years' pain.' 
 
 Far into the last century, bits of Caxton 
 maintain a popular existence in little modestly 
 got-up booklets. Thus, A New History of the 
 Trojan Wars, published so late as 1845, in 
 Dublin, is in great part identical with a Glasgow 
 chap-book, both echoes of Caxton, going down 
 from Troy to the founding, by Brute, of Troy- 
 Novant, or London. King Albion is conquered, 
 and his brothers, Gog and Magog, are made 
 slaves or serving-men. 
 
 A charming instance, too, of the deep reaches 
 into which the story of Troy penetrated may be 
 seen in Izaak Walton.^ When that worthy 
 
 1 Baring-Gould, In a Quiet Village (Isbister, 1900), 
 p. 151 ; and the original Izaak Walton's Compkte Angler, 
 chap. 4 (Ephemera's edition, 1881), p. 97. Or was the 
 reference to Troy in Cornwall ? 
 
IZAAK WALTON— P. J. BAILEY 191 
 
 Angler, somewhere in the first half of the seven- 
 teenth century, meets again the prim Dairy Maid 
 and her mother, he asks her for one of her songs. 
 She does not at once recollect which she has 
 sung to him before, or which he prefers. So she 
 rattles off a hst of those she is famUiar with. 
 Was it this ? Was it that ? Was it, perhaps, 
 the song of Troy Town ? It would be a far cry 
 from our Helen to a singing Dairy Maid, 
 supposing any such persons to exist in our en- 
 lightened age. 
 
 Helen has somewhat to say in that curious 
 book Festus, by Philip James Bailey, which 
 once had a very great hold on the public, in the 
 middle of last century, and whose existence was 
 weU-nigh forgotten at its end, though the author 
 was still among us. Having long outlived his 
 renown, he died, at the age of eighty-seven, on 
 September 7, 1902, at Nottingham, his birth- 
 place. Every edition of this, his chief and 
 almost only work, grew bulkier and bulkier, and 
 the number of readers decreased in inverse 
 ratio. ^ Helen appears late in the piece ; she 
 estabhshes a kind of Court of Love, and is 
 elected Queen, Not much happens: people 
 come, talk, and go. Clara appears to be the 
 
 1 First edition, 1839, large 8vo., 361 pp. ; fourth edition, 
 1877, V0.8, smaller print, yet enlarged to 688 pp. 
 
192 EPILOGUE 
 
 principal lady, closely near to Festus. And a 
 new world is to be created in the place of this 
 rather unsatisfactory one, devils of all sizes and 
 of both sexes being duly excluded. 
 
 Walter Savage Landor has introduced Helen 
 into his Hellenics with great effect. Khngemann^ 
 has used the poor soul for a love-scene with a 
 ghastly end, as has been already alluded to, and 
 may be read, if need were, in Carlyle. She is 
 absent in Maler Miiller's Faust, and in Klinger's,^ 
 whose book was translated into English by the 
 youthful Borrow, afterwards famous for his Bible 
 in Spain and his knowledge of Romany. The 
 author of this rather coarse performance con- 
 nects Faust with Fust, one of the inventors 
 of printing with movable type, and his work 
 is similar, in this point only, to Heine. Uhland 
 briefly pays due tribute to her beauty in the 
 Liebesklagen. In G. W. M. Beynold's Faust 
 (1847) she had to stand aside for Lucrezia Borgia. 
 
 Helena is absent from Chamisso's Faust, from 
 Lenau's long poem, and from Lenz's short Faust 
 fragment.^ Nor does Count Soden (1754 to 
 1831) introduce her into any of his numerous 
 
 1 1815. Vide Carlyle's essay on ' German Playwrights ' 
 (Miscellanies, vol. ii., pp. 85-119). 
 
 ^ Faustus: His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell. 
 Translated from the German, 1825. 
 
 3 Teutsches Museum, 1777, i. 250-256. 
 
WITH MODERN WRITERS 193 
 
 plays. In Heinrich von Kleist's beautiful drama 
 of Pentliesilea ^ she is mentioned but briefly, and 
 Achilles speaks of her with perhaps worse than 
 indifference. Lord Byron found no place for her 
 in his magnificent Manfred- Fav^t, and the few 
 verses on Canova's statue of Helen seem all the 
 mention the great poet granted to the memory 
 of the divine one. Nor — si parva licet covi- 
 ponere magnis — is she introduced by the Hon. 
 Roden Noel, with his excellent intentions, in his 
 Modern Faust? 
 
 She is not present in Berlioz's wonderful Davi- 
 nation de Faust, nor in his Prise de Troie, where 
 Cassandra is the principal lady ; nor in Schumann's, 
 nor in Spohr's, nor in Gounod's Faust opera, 
 though she appears in his ballet (1882), where 
 she rivals Cleopatra, Aspasia, and Lais, but is 
 conquered for a moment by Phryne tiU Mar- 
 guerite appears in a glory. 
 
 But she is with us in all her charm in the 
 second part of Boito's Mefistofele as a soprano, 
 whUe Panthalis is a contralto. 
 
 1 The Penthesilea was published by Cotta in 1808 — 
 curiously, without indication of date. Tieck collected 
 Kleist's works in 1826, and Julian Schmidt's new edition, 
 of them in 1859, produced a great impression. 
 
 ^ London, Kegan Paul and Co., 1888. An attractive 
 memoir of the author is found in the Humane Review of 
 January, 1903. 
 
 25 
 
194 EPILOGUE 
 
 Karl von Holte;, in the generation preceding 
 ours a popular play-writer, has written a Faust, 
 introducing a Helena, partly on the ground of 
 the Volksbucli. He must have been impressed 
 with the Helena of Goethe's phantasmagory, of 
 which he gives a faint and poor reproduction ; 
 the whole of Goethe's second Faust was evidently 
 not known to him.^ 
 
 A work of greater value was to be expected 
 from Leopold Schefer, the thoughtful and once 
 highly esteemed author of the Laienb?~evier 
 (1784-1862). Towards the end of his hfe he 
 wrote Der Raub Helena's, a hexametric poem of 
 considerable length, which is, indeed, so little 
 known that it seemed to escape the research 
 of his careful biographer, Brenning. Did it 
 appear in some German periodical, or Taschen- 
 buch, about 1860, or have we only to think 
 of his Judgment of Paris 'i^ 
 
 1 Zelter, in his frequent communications with Goethe, 
 spoke unfavourably of the piece. Countess Helena appears 
 first at the Court of Parma, falls violently in love with 
 Faust, wants to go to Troy, is spurned, goes at last into 
 Greek costume and into verse, when Menelaos wishes to 
 take her home. But she intends to get Fausfs child from 
 Margaret. Zelter, in the introduction to his correspond- 
 ence with Goethe, mentions this : Dr. Johannes Famst : 
 Melodrama in drei Akten. Now in Dramatische Werke, 
 Breslau, 1848. 
 
 ^ Mentioned in note ^, p. 13. 
 
AMONG MODERN BOOKS 195 
 
 John Addington Sjanonds speaks of Helena 
 lovingly in his Studies of the Greek Poets. 
 Gladstone, in his Homeric Studies} is rather 
 favourable to her, and mentions 'the extreme 
 tenderness of the colouring that Homer has 
 employed in bringing Helen before us.' Paul de 
 St. Victor (1827-1881) has charmingly summed 
 up Helen's character. ^ Sir Lewis JMorris, with 
 a very remarkable searchingness, has probed the 
 heart of her in the Epic of Hades. In William 
 Morris's Earthly Paradise her name has called 
 forth a striking and pathetic echo. Henry 
 Schliemann, the indefatigable explorer, has felt 
 the magic of Helen. ' In no popular poetry,' 
 says he^^diofiSLaay figure exist which represents 
 sojaljy as ^^el£n-the.^demonic power of beauty.' ^ 
 Few among my readers will connect the name 
 of Dr. Kenealy with Helen. He is, if at all, 
 remembered as a lawyer in the unpleasant Tich- 
 borne case, and for a very little while with respect 
 to his subsequent short Parliamentary career. 
 He was, however, a poet, and in his very long 
 
 ^ Hmneric Studies, vol. iii., p. 395. 
 
 2 Alfred de Vigny, it appears, wrote a Helena, but I 
 cannot find it in the seven volumes of the CEuvres 
 completes, Paris, 1837-1839, nor in Brussels or Leipzig 
 editions. 
 
 ^ Troja, Dr. Henry Schliemann (London, J. Murray, 
 1884), p. 162. 
 
 25—2 
 
196 EPILOGUE 
 
 dramatic poem, Goethe, Helen has a niche as 
 ' a phantom ofbeauty.' ^ 
 
 Andrew Lang has given us a fine poem, 
 Helen of Troy, with an interesting dissertation.^ 
 Such a dissertation, too, was appended by Hein- 
 rich Heine to his Faust, where he lovingly 
 devotes to Helena a whole act (the third) of his 
 original, though somewhat frivolous, T'anzpoem. 
 
 It will suffice here to repeat that Goethe's 
 Helena play has been enacted, with inevitable 
 cuts, at the theatres of Berlin, Hanover, etc. 
 
 Perhaps, in thus descending, we should occupy 
 ourselves for a minute or two with La Belle 
 HeUne of Offenbach, the light creation of a 
 departed taste, or untaste. But perhaps I can 
 do something better, I think, by reminding you 
 of the few words in which our newest dramatic 
 poet refers to our heroine. In Act I, of Ulysses 
 Mr. Stephen Phillips makes Athena say to 
 Telemachos : 
 
 ' Up ! up ! here is thy Troy, thy Helen here !' 
 
 1 E. V. H. Kenealy, Goethe, 1863 ; Poems and Transla- 
 tions, 1864 ; The Poetical Works of Edward Vaughan 
 Kenealy, 3 vols., 1875-1879. Both in the second and the 
 third of these works the initial Faust-sketch received con- 
 siderable extension. In this respect only is the work 
 similar to Bailey's and to Goethe's. 
 
 2 1882 and 1883. Vide also an article in the Edin- 
 hurgh Review, 1892, p. 319 et seq. 
 
STEPHEN PHILLIPS 197 
 
 And in the Minstrel's song we listen to the 
 words : 
 
 ' Oh, set the sails, for Troy, for Troy is fallen, 
 And Helen cometh home.'' 
 
 And now may I close by venturing to say that 
 Helen has really come home to those who have 
 thus far kindly and patiently followed me ? 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abelabd and Heloise, 35 
 Achilles, principal figure to- 
 gether with Helen, 2 
 
 son of Thetis and Peleus, 7 
 
 his birth foretold by Catul- 
 lus, 8 
 
 rendered nearly invulner- 
 able, 18 
 
 meets Helen for the first 
 time, 37-39 
 
 angry with Agamemnon, 
 44 
 
 slays Hector, 54 
 
 is slain by Paris, or by 
 Apollo, 54 
 
 his body taken to the Isle 
 of Leuke, 55 
 
 in Goethe's poem Achilleis, 
 65 
 
 Alexander Rogers on the 
 Achilleis, 53 n. 
 
 his cairn, 55 
 
 the Achilleion, 56 
 
 Polyxena's mock -marriage 
 to him, and her death, 78 
 
 his shade united to that of 
 Helen, 99, 100, 111 
 
 Achilles-Faust, 114 
 Acts of the Apostles, 142, 189 
 ^lian, the dowry of Homer's 
 daughter, 3 n. 
 
 refers to children aban- 
 doned, 27 and n. 
 
 refers to the portrait of 
 Helen, by Zeuxis, 94 
 jEneas threatens Helen, 65 
 
 at the Rape of Helen, 41 n. 
 Agamemnon, 23, 60 
 
 interceding for Helen, 69 
 and a. 
 
 Aithra, the mother of Theseus, 
 30, 74, and n. 
 at length in Quintus Smyr- 
 
 nasus, 74 n. 
 mentioned by Konrad von 
 
 Wiirzburg, 74 n. 
 in Polygnotus' pictures, 
 
 74 
 mentioned by Goethe, 76 
 her grandson Demophon, 76 
 Ajax demands the death of 
 
 Helen, 78 
 Alexandros, vide Paris 
 Altruism, 187 
 Amazons, the, 63 
 Ampere, J. J., 176, 177 
 Anchises, a lover of Venus and 
 
 father of iEneas, 66, 67 
 Andromache, the wife of Hector : 
 adieux to Hector, 49 
 marries Helenus, 59 
 in the pictures of Polyg- 
 notus, 75 
 bitter words as a, prisoner, 
 78,79 
 Antenor, a Trojan chief, 50 
 and the Palladium, 61 n. 
 visits the Greek camp, 61 n. 
 Aphrodite : her cult in Cyprus, 2 
 at the Judgment of Paris, 
 
 13,17 
 sends Paris to Sparta, 38 
 at the palace of Paris, 48 
 leads Helen to Achilles, 37 
 persuading Helen, 38, 41, 
 
 48 
 appears to ^neas, 66 
 her lover Anchises, 69 
 ' the Stranger,' her temple 
 at Memphis, 102 
 Apollodorus, the story of (Enone, 
 10 n. 
 
 198 
 
INDEX 
 
 199 
 
 ApoUodorus, (Enone's death, 
 58 n. 
 the finding of the Helen- 
 egg, 24 n. 
 the wooing of Helena, 31, 
 32 
 ApoUonius of Tyoiia cites the 
 ghost of Achilles, and obtains 
 a testimony to Helen's pre- 
 sence iu Egypt, not in Troy, 
 120 
 Apuleius, his relation of the 
 
 Judgment of Paris, 11 
 Aristophon, an artist, represent- 
 ing Helen and others, 96, 188 
 Aristotle refers to the Cyprian 
 poems and the 'Little Iliad,' 
 3n. 
 Arnim and Brentano : Helena in 
 Des Knaben Wunderhom, 144 
 Arthur, King, 52, 85 
 Athena at the wedding of 
 ITietis, 8 
 entices Pandarus to break 
 the treaty, 49 
 Atreus, father of Agamemnon 
 and Menelaos, 32 
 
 B 
 
 Bailey, Ph. Jas., Festus, 191 
 Balder, the nearly invulnerable, 
 
 20 
 Beauty, the Sleeping, 89 
 Beddoes, Th. L., on Goethe's 
 
 Helena, 187 n. 
 Benoit de Sainte-More, 129 n., 
 
 131 
 Berlioz, Hector, La Damnation 
 
 de Faust, 193 
 Bizet, opera of Carmen and the 
 
 points of Beauty, as observed 
 
 in Helen, 96 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 151 u. 
 Boccaccio, Decameron, 130 
 Boecklin, painter, 29 n., 157 
 
 and n, 
 Boito, his portrait of Helena, 90 
 
 duet with Faust, 178, 193 
 Borrow, George, translates 
 
 Klinger's Faust, 192 
 Bradshaw, Watson, his transla- 
 
 tion of Seneca's Trq/on Womm,, 
 79 n. 
 Brantome : Menelaos pardons 
 Helena, 71 n. 
 on the Helen by Zeuxis, 95 
 Bretigny, essay on Dion Chry- 
 
 sostomos, 124 n. 
 Brisei's, in the pictures of Polyg- 
 notus, 73 
 by Lemaitre, 188 
 Bromhead, Sir E. F., The Re- 
 mains of Stesichonis, 108 
 Brunhild, vi and 89 
 Byron, Lord, on Canova's bust 
 of Helen, 93 
 his friendship with Goethe, 
 
 159 
 Euphorion, 183 and n. 
 Manfred, 193 
 
 Calverley, translation from 
 Theocritus : 
 'The Sons of Leda,' 25 n. 
 ' The Bridal of Helen,' 33 n. 
 •A Countryman's Wooing,' 
 33 n. 
 Calderon, Ulysses' appeal to 
 Juno, he having defended her 
 honour when obscured by the 
 Judgment of Paris, 15 
 Canova, statue of Paris, 17 
 
 bust of Helen, 93 
 Carlyle, Thomas, vi, the Spar- 
 tan girls, 75 n. 
 Helen as vision. 111 
 ' immortal by a kiss,' Teu- 
 felsdrockh after Marlowe, 
 148 n. 
 essay on Klingemann's 
 
 Faust, 146 n. 
 translation of Goethe's 
 Helena article in Kunst 
 und Alterthum, 159 
 translations from Goethe's 
 
 Helena drama, 163-185 
 on the Helena of Goethe : 
 ' Not some hollow phan- 
 tasm attired in her shape 
 . . . but in soul and life 
 the same Helena, whom 
 
200 
 
 INDEX 
 
 the son of Atreus wedded,' 
 etc., 160 n. 
 Carsten, A. J., painter, 'The 
 
 Skaean Gate,' 46 n. 
 Cassandra in Rossetti's pictures, 
 
 97, 193 
 Castor, vide the Dioscuri 
 Catullus, his epithalamium for 
 
 Peleus and Thetis, 8 
 Caxton, Wm., translation of Le 
 Fevre's Recuyell of Historyes of 
 Troye, 135, 190 
 Chalcocondyles, a late Greek 
 
 writer, 127 
 Chamisso, A. von, Faust, 192 
 Chapman, George, translation 
 
 of Homer, 136 
 Charlemagne, 85 
 Chaucer, G., translates part of 
 the Romaunt of the Rose, 
 12 n. 
 Troylus and Oryseide, the 
 Book of the I>uchess,132, 
 133 
 Children, new-horn and exposed, 
 
 20 
 Chiron at the wedding of Thetis, 
 8 
 assists Helen's flight from 
 
 Theseus, 29 and n. 
 meets Faust, 156 
 Cleopatra, vii, 150, 193 
 Clytemnestra, 23 
 
 adopts Helen's daughter 
 Iphigenia, 28 
 Coluthus Lycopolites, ' The 
 
 Judgment of Paris,' 12 
 Colvin, Sidney, 17 u. 
 
 edition of Finiguerra, 93 
 Congreve, William, "^The Judg- 
 ment of Paris,' 12 and n. 
 Conington, John, translation of 
 
 the JEneid, 65, 68 n. 
 Cornigero on the thirty points 
 
 of beauty in Helen, 95 
 Corregio painted several Ledas, 
 
 23 
 Coupland, W. C, Spirit of 
 
 Goethe's Faust, 142, 184 
 Cousin, Victor, on Proclus, 4 
 Crete, 35 and n. 
 
 Creutzer, on the Dioscuri and 
 Helen 25 n. 
 
 Creutzer, abduction of Helen, 
 28 n. 
 
 Helen rescued, 29 n. 
 
 a myth only ? 84 
 Cyclic poems, 4 n. 
 Cyprian verses, 3 
 Cyprus, the cult of Aphrodite, 2 
 Cypselos, the chest of, 69 
 Cythera, 42 
 
 D 
 
 Dante on Helen in hell, 129 
 Dares the Phrygian, 128 
 
 his portrait of Helen, 90 
 referred to by Acland, 3 n. 
 Deiphobus, a son of Priam, 58 
 inspectingthe wooden horse, 
 
 63,64 
 killed by ^neas, 67, 68 
 assisting in the Rape of 
 
 Helen, 40 n. 
 marries Helen, 58 
 remembrance of, 171 
 Delphi, the pictures of Polyg- 
 notus, 72 
 the treasure-house sacked, 
 89 
 Demodokos, the minstrel of 
 King Alcinous, has no 
 reproach to make to 
 Helen, 64 
 the death of Deiphobus, 67 
 Derby, Lord, translation of the 
 Iliad, 14 
 ' On the Skaean Gate,' 46, 47 
 Helen's dirge on Hector's 
 bier, 51, 52 
 Deukalion and Pyrrha, 1 
 Devil in Luther's life, the, 108 
 Dictys, the Cretan, 78, 128 
 
 on the theft of the Palla- 
 dium, 61 n. 
 on Ajax demanding the 
 death of Helen, 78 
 Diomedes, a Greek leader before 
 Troy, 60 
 and the Palladium, 61 n. 
 in the pictures of Polyg- 
 notus, 73 
 Dion Chrysostomos, his version 
 of the Paris and Helena story, 
 31 
 
INDEX 
 
 201 
 
 Dion ChrysostomoSj against the 
 Homeric traditioUj 121 
 his Egyptian authorities, 
 122-124 
 Dionysius Halicarnassus, the 
 
 Palladium, 61 
 Dioscuri, 23 n., 25 u., 47, 109, 
 
 111, 112 n., 119 
 Dowden, Edward, Helen Poem, 
 
 30 
 Drakeford, D. J. P., Faust, a 
 
 Phaiitasia, 146 
 Drydeu, translation from Virgil, 
 
 66 n. 
 Diintzer, on Goethe's view of 
 
 Immortality, 186 
 
 Duruy, Victor, the Judgment of 
 
 Paris, a fable later than 
 
 Homer and Hesiod, 11 n. 
 
 Aphrodite persuades Helen, 
 
 38 n. 
 the Rape of Helen, 41 n. 
 Dutt, Romesh, an Indian Helen, 
 
 86,87 
 Duster, 173 n. 
 
 E 
 
 Eckermann, 186 n. 
 
 Edda Legends, 6 
 
 Electra binds Helen's sandals, 
 
 74 
 Elizabeth, the Queen, and Helen, 
 
 150 
 Encyclopmdia Britannica, 9th ed., 
 
 vi, 84 n. 
 Engel, Karl, taustschriften, 
 
 141 n. 
 Eris in the place of Nemesis, 2 
 not invited, 9 
 her golden apple, 9 
 Euphorion, first mention, 65 
 son of Helen and Achilles, 
 
 100 
 a son of Helen and Faust, 
 181-185 
 Euripides, his play of the Trojan 
 Women, 78 
 Helena in Egypt, 105, 115, 
 
 119 
 Helena in Egypt, referred to 
 approvingly by Goethe, 
 125 
 
 Eurybates, the herald of Odys- 
 seus, 73 
 Eurypylos, the Mysian, 63 
 
 Faust, Justus, a son of Dr. Faust 
 
 and Helena, 143, 144, 181 
 
 the existence of a real Dr. 
 
 Faustus, 143 
 and the Volksbiicher, 141 
 Finiguerra, picture of Helen 
 
 and Paris, 93 
 Flaxman, Venus receiving the 
 apple from Paris, 17 
 inviting Helen to the Cham- 
 ber of Paris, 48 n. 
 Fleming, Abraham, on a por- 
 trait of Helen, 94 n. 
 Frigga, the mother of Balder, 20 
 Fust, one of the inventors of 
 printing with moveable type, 
 143 
 
 Gaia, 1 
 
 Gail, L. C, Mythologie dramatique 
 
 de Lucien, 11 n. 
 Gandhari nearly invulnerable, 
 
 19 
 Garnett, Richard, Iphigenia in 
 Delphi, 100, 112 
 Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein, 
 154 n. 
 Gautier, Theophile, 23 
 Gibbon, Edward, a curious 
 memory of Troy, 127 
 the Rise of the Modern 
 Kingdoms, 180 
 Gladstone on Helen, 63, 195 
 Godfrey of Boulogna, 2 
 Goethe, iii, his description of the 
 pictures of Polygnotus, 
 71-75 
 his glorification of Helena, 
 
 73, 75, 77 
 Panthalis, leader of Trojan, 
 
 chorus, 74 
 the wooing of Helen, 32 n., 
 
 33 n. 
 Menelaos in Crete, 35 n. 
 Helen in Egypt, 101, 125 
 King Thoas, 105, 119 
 26 
 
INDEX 
 
 Goethe^ Helen's Union with 
 
 Achilles, 111 
 Iphigenia, 119 
 the Greek view of Helena 
 
 idealized, 124, 125 
 on the marionette theatre, 
 
 145 
 Goethe's Helena, the whole 
 
 of Chapter VI. 
 her first appearance in the 
 
 Witches' Kitchen, 152 
 her second appearance, not 
 
 yet endowed with speech, 
 
 153 
 Faust brought hack from 
 
 the Court to his study, 
 
 153 
 creation of the Homunculus, 
 
 153-155 
 the search for Helena, 155 
 the drama of Helena, 159- 
 
 185 
 theatrical representations 
 
 of his Helena, 153 n., 196 
 Gosse, Edmund, 187 n. 
 Gounod, Ch. Fr., Faust, opera 
 
 and ballad, 193 
 Gower, C'on/essio Amantin, 132 
 Graal Legends, the, 6 
 Grote, George, on Stesichorus, 
 
 29 n. 
 Helen and Odysseus, 60 n., 
 
 61 
 on Helen's reunion with 
 
 Menelaos, 63 n. 
 
 H 
 
 Hallam, H., on the Romaunt of 
 
 the Rose, 12 n. 
 Hamilton's Faust, 147 
 Hans Sachs, his Helena poem, 
 
 138-140 
 Harris, Ella Isabel, translation 
 
 of Seneca's Troades, 79 
 Head, Percy, English art critic, 
 
 23 
 Hector chides Paris, 44 
 
 takes Paris to battle again, 
 49 ^ ' 
 
 his death, 50, 51 
 takes leave from his wife, 49 
 
 Hector in Rossetti's picture of 
 
 Cassandi-a, 97 
 Hecuba, her dream, 20 
 
 bewails the death of Paris, 
 
 58 
 after the fall of Troy, 79 
 Heicks, Th., author of De Helena 
 
 dea, 2, 25, 88 
 Heine, H., iii, his Faust accepts 
 Helen, as against Judith 
 and Cleopatra, 147 
 his Tanepoem, 196 
 Heinrich von Veldecke, the 
 story of the Trojan Mneas, 
 131 
 Helen of Troy, 1, and Nemesis, 2 
 and Achilles, principal 
 
 figures, 2 
 the Rape of, 2 
 to be mated with Paris, 8 
 the 'lovely haired,' at 
 
 Sparta, 13 
 with Theseus, 28 sq. 
 her suitors, 31 
 Tyndareus decides in favour 
 
 of Menelaos, 32 
 admits favouring Patroclus, 
 
 32 
 her welcome to Paris, 31 n. 
 her children, 33 and n. 
 love-letters of Helen and 
 
 Paris, 35, 36 
 meets Achilles near Troy, 
 
 36-39 
 flight from Sparta with Paris, 
 
 39 
 joy on arrival in Troy, 42 
 on the Sksean Gate, 46 
 upbraids the defeated Paris, 
 
 48 
 reconciliation, 48 
 encouraging Paris to return 
 
 to fight, 49 
 her dirge at Hector's biei,- 
 
 51 
 does not see Paris again, 
 
 but weeps for him, 58 
 the dying Paris calls for her, 
 
 58 
 her nocturnal visit to An- 
 
 tenor, 61 n. 
 visits the wooden horse, 62- 
 64 
 
INDEX 
 
 203 
 
 Helen of Troy receives the visit 
 of TelemachoSj 63 
 
 threatened by ^neas, 65 
 
 threatened by Menelaosj 69, 
 70,71 
 
 Menelaos' love for her re- 
 turning, 71, 80 n. 
 
 at the death of Polyxena, 78 
 
 marches with the captive 
 women, 79 
 
 triumphantly enters Sparta, 
 80 
 
 return to Sparta, 81 
 
 on the pictures of Polyg- 
 notus, 71-75 
 
 the glorification of, 75-77 
 
 bewails the death of QSnone, 
 
 ' never ages,' 81 
 
 her death, 82, 83 
 
 Dendritis, 83 
 
 her life threatened by Ores- 
 tes and Pylades, 83 
 
 placed by Phcebus -Apollo 
 among the stars, 83 
 
 a myth only ? 84 
 
 her charms, 89 
 
 her necklace, 89 
 
 in Rossetti's Cassandra draw- 
 ing, 97 
 
 in Leighton's picture, 98 
 
 in Sandys' picture, 98 
 
 her temple at Therapne, 
 99 
 
 rendering children pretty, 
 99 
 
 her shade united to that of 
 Achilles, 99 
 
 the Egyptian version, 103- 
 107 
 
 calumniated by, and avenged 
 on Stesichorus, 108-113 
 
 his Palinody, 111 
 
 as the wife of Simon Magus, 
 later on Kaust, 143 
 
 mother of Justus Faust, 144 
 
 in Klingemann's Faust, 146 
 
 in Marlowe's Faust, 148, 149 
 
 in Hamilton's Faust, 149 
 
 in Goethe's Helena drama, 
 160-185 
 
 mother of Euphorion, 181 
 
 leaves the Upper World 
 finally, 185 
 
 Helen of Troy, pictures of her, 
 by Zeuxis, Canova and 
 others, 94-96 
 question of her age, 156 n. 
 Fausf s descent into Hell in 
 search of her, 157 
 Helena, the island where she 
 
 landed, 161, 162 
 Helena or Alexandra, a daughter 
 
 of Fair Helen, 33 n. 
 Helenium, a plant, called from 
 
 Helen's name, 51 
 Helenus, a son of Priam, 58 
 
 a suitor to the hand of the 
 
 widow Helen, 58 
 jealous, is said to hand over 
 the Palladium to the 
 Greeks, 61 
 in the pictures of Polygno- 
 
 tus, 74 
 remains alive, the only one 
 of all the sons of Priam, 59 
 establishes a kingdom in 
 
 Epirus, 59 
 marries Andromache, 59 
 Hephaistos at the wedding of 
 
 "Thetis, 8 
 Hera, jealous of Thetis, 6 n. 
 at the wedding of Pelion, 8 
 her offer to Paris, 13 
 Herbert von Fritzlar, Middle 
 Age treatment of Trojan 
 legend, 131 
 Hercules, his temple ou the 
 coast of Egypt, Paris de- 
 nounced there by his slaves, 
 102 
 Hermione, the daughter of 
 Helen, 33 
 at her mother's death, 82 
 Herodotus, the ' father of his- 
 tory,' 3 
 disbelieves in Homer's 
 authorship of the Cyprian 
 verses, 3 
 his story of Helen's temple at 
 Therapore, and of pretty 
 children, 99 
 his Egyptian version of 
 
 Helen's story, 101 
 inclined to believe this ver- 
 sion, as against the Trojan 
 one, but never doubts 
 26—2 
 
INDEX 
 
 the personal evidenctt of 
 Helen, 106 
 Hesiod, 1 
 
 Hesione, Priam's sister, a pris- 
 oner in the hands of the 
 Greeks, 11 n. 
 Heywood, Thomas, the Iron 
 Age, 31 
 Helen's speech to Paris, on 
 his arrival in Sparta, 31 n. 
 their love-making continued, 
 
 36 
 Helen's death, 82 
 ' that launched a thousand 
 ships,' from Marlowe, 148 
 Hogarth, 189 
 
 Holtei, Karl von, Faust, 194 
 Homer and the Cyprian verses, 3 
 his daughter and Stesinus, 3 
 Iliad and Odyssey, 5 
 Homeric hymns, 26 
 Horace, the flight of Helen with 
 Paris, 41 n. 
 Helena and the Dioscuri, 
 112, 113 
 Houssaye, Arsene, French writer, 
 
 23 
 Hyginus, Latin writer ; Apollo, 
 in the form of Paris, 54 
 
 I 
 
 Ida, Mount, Paris a shepherd 
 there, 9 
 Paris receives there the 
 goddesses, 10, 79 
 Ilium, 20 
 
 Immortality, 186, 187 
 Iphigenia, Helen's daughter, 
 
 adopted by Clytemnestra, 27 
 Irenteus, on Helena as the wife 
 of Simon Magus, 142, 143 
 ' Contra Ha^reticos,' refers 
 to Helen and Stesichorus, 
 113 n. 
 Iris influences Helen, 46 
 Isocrates, his eulogy of Helen, 
 113 and n. 
 
 Judgment of Paris, 10-17, and 
 
 notes 
 Jiilg, Professor, records a Mon- 
 
 gol tradition, more or less 
 parallel with the Helen legend, 
 87 
 Juno, vide Hera 
 
 K 
 
 Keats, John, sonnet on Chap- 
 man's Homer, 136 
 
 Kenealy, W., Helen in his 
 Goethe, 195, 196 
 
 King, Henry, translations of 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses, 64 
 
 Kleist, Heinrich v., Penthesiles, 
 193 
 
 Klingemann, Helen and Faust, 
 145 and n., 192 
 
 Klinger, Max von, Faust, 192 
 
 Konrad von Wiirzburg, Trojan- 
 ischer Krieg, 131 and n. 
 Aithra, 70 n. 
 
 Korting, G., writer on the Tro- 
 jan story in the forms it took 
 in the Middle Ages, 129, 131 
 
 Kronion, father of Zeus, 7 
 
 Kugler, Kunstgeschichte, 73 n. 
 
 Landor, W. S., his prose, 8 
 Judgment of Paris, 13 
 Peleus and Thetis, 18 
 the wooing of Helen, 32 
 Helen's meeting with Achil- 
 les near Troy, 37-39, 55 
 ffinone, 68 n. 
 Helen threatened by Mene- 
 
 laos, 70, 71 
 The Hellenics, 34 and n., 
 
 192 
 on Polyxena, 79 n. 
 portrait of Helen, 90, 91 
 Lang, Andrew, the Plomeric 
 
 hymns, 27 
 the face of Helen, 69 
 poem and dissertation on 
 
 Helen, 196, vii n. 
 Larcher, edition of Herodotus, 
 
 3 
 chronology, 28 n. 
 Larousse, 4 n. 
 
 the ' Mirrors of Venus,' 70 
 
 and n. 
 
INDEX 
 
 205 
 
 Leconte de Lisle, Judgment of 
 PariSj 13 
 Helen's change of mood, 
 36 
 Leda, the mother or nurse of 
 Helen, 2, 23 
 pictures of her, ascribed 
 to Leonardo da Vinci and 
 Michael Angelo, 23 
 identified with Leta or La- 
 tona, 88 
 Lehrs, K., Aufsiltze, 33 
 Leighton, Lord, his picture of 
 
 Helen, 98 
 Lemaitre, Jules, Brizeis, 188 
 Lenz, Reinhold, Faunt fragment, 
 
 192 
 Leonardo da Vinci, portrait, as- 
 cribed to him, of Leda, 23 
 Lesches, author of one of the 
 Cyclics, 72 
 referred to by Pausanias, 
 108 u. 
 Leuke, ziame of the island where 
 Achilles and Helen were ulti- 
 mately united, 109 
 Lichtemberger, E., on Goethe's 
 
 Helena, vi n. 
 Lindos, temple to Helen, 92 
 Lingg, Hermann, Volkerwande- 
 
 rung, 180 
 ' Little Iliad,' the, mentioned by 
 Aristotle, 3 n. 
 mentioned by Pausanias, 3, 
 
 n. 5 
 mentioned by Welcker, 
 59 n. 
 Lorris and Meun, Romaunt of the 
 
 Bone, 12 and n. 
 Lourdes, the Virgin of, 108 
 Lucian IJialogues, 7 n., 11 n. 
 The Judgment of Paris, 
 11 n. 
 Luther and the Devil, 108 
 Lydgate, the Judgment of Paris, 
 in his Reson and Sen- 
 sualyte, 12 n. 
 characterizes Helen, 42 n. 
 The Histm-ie of the Warres 
 between Gh-ecians and Troy- 
 ans, 133, 134 
 Lykophron, Greek writer of the 
 third century, admits the arri- 
 
 val of Helen in Egypt, but not 
 in Troy, 106, 107 
 Lytton (first). Lord Bulwer, Hec- 
 tor's bridal in Spiritland, 
 100, 114 
 Calumny and Palinody of 
 Stesichorus, 112 
 
 M 
 
 MacCarthy, Denis Florence, 
 translator of Calderon, 15 
 and n. 
 Macdowell, H. C, The Famt of 
 
 the Marionnettes, 145 n. 
 Maeterlinck, 69 
 Magician, one called Simon, 
 
 later on Faustus, 143 
 Mahafi^y, Professor, the Cyclic 
 poems, 4, n. 4 
 the Palinody of Stesichorus, 
 
 113 and n. 
 unfavourable to the Egyp- 
 tian version, and in so 
 far, to Euripides, IIC n. 
 Maja, an Indian deity, 88 
 Manto introduces Orpheus and 
 Faust into the Lower Re- 
 gions, 157 
 Marillier'sbook on liossetti, 50 n., 
 
 97 n. 
 Marionnette theatre, 144 
 
 last performance, 1844, 146 
 Marlowe's Faust, 147-149 
 Married Woman's Property Act, 
 
 43 
 Martin, Sir Theodore, on 
 Goethe's Faust, vi 
 translation of Catullus, 8 
 translation of the yEneid, 65, 
 68 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, vii, 189 
 Meistersingers occupy them- 
 selves with Helen, 140 
 Memuon, King, 53 
 Memphis, residence of Egyptian 
 
 King, 101 
 Menelaos, in reference to Helen, 
 8 
 husband of Helen, 13 
 absent in Crete, 35 
 fight with Paris, 48 
 home again, 60 
 
206 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Menelaos receives the visit of 
 Telemachos, 63, 81 
 threatens Helen, 69, 71 
 reconciled with Helen, 71, 
 
 80 n. 
 withstands Ajax's demand 
 
 for her death, 78 
 wanderings after the fall of 
 
 Troy, 80, 81 
 said to he huried, together 
 
 with Helen, 99 
 in Egypt, 103-105 
 the Egyptian version, 118 
 Mephistopheles, 153 
 
 as Phorkyas, 157-185 
 Merimee, Prosper, on the thirty 
 points of beauty as observed 
 in Helen, 96 
 Meun (Mehung), Romaunt of 
 
 the Rose, 12 
 Milliet, Paul, Helen's duet with 
 
 Fuust, 178 
 Millin, A. L., the antiquary, 
 possessed several Helena 
 statues, 38 n. 
 Monuments inedits, 71 
 Milliii, J., successor of A. L., 
 
 and his Helena statue, 38 n. 
 Minerva, vide Athena 
 Mirrors of Venus, 70 and n. 
 Misserini, his work on Thor- 
 
 waldsen, 17 n., 49 
 Mommsen, Th., meaning of 
 
 temple, 101 n. 
 Momos, advises Zeus, 6 and n. 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo, his criti- 
 cism of Lord Leighton's 
 Helena, 98 
 Morris, Sir Lewis, iii 
 
 Helen's willing flight, 42 
 
 and 161 n. 
 Helen in front of the 
 
 wooden horse, 63 
 after her return, 82 
 her death, 83 
 her heart probed, 193 
 Morris, William, iii 
 
 translation of ^neid, 68 
 the death of Paris, 57, 58, 
 
 195 
 translation of the JEneid, 
 68 n. 
 Miiller, painter, 192 
 
 Miiller, Max, 86 
 
 Helen a counterpart of the 
 
 Indian Dawn-goddess, 86 
 
 Murray, Professor Gilbert, his 
 
 translation of The Trojan 
 
 Women, by Euripides, 79, 80 
 
 Myer, E., translation oi Pindar, 
 
 25 n. 
 
 N 
 
 National Gallery, Picture of the 
 Judgment of Paris, 16 
 of the Rape of Helen, 40 
 Naples Museum, bas-reliefs re- 
 ferring to Paris and Helen, 
 38 
 Nemesis, 2, 23 n. 
 Neoptolemos, vide Pyrrhus 
 Nepenthe, a means to still the 
 memory of past suffering, 60, 
 91, 92 n. 
 Nibelungen, 6 
 
 Niebuhr, vii n., hidden truth in 
 Myths vii n. 
 foundation of Rome, 6, n. 1 
 a myth only ? 84, 85 
 Noel, Roden, the Modem Faust, 
 
 193 
 Nostoi, one of the Cycle poems, 
 55 
 
 O 
 
 Odysseus, visits Troy as a beggar, 
 
 60 
 pleads for Helen's life 
 
 against Ajax, 78 
 applies to Juno for help, as 
 
 having stood by her at 
 
 the Judgment of Paris, 
 
 14 
 CEnone, the beautiful-browed, 
 
 10 
 Tennyson's verses, 10, 69 n. 
 ApoUodorus, Parthenius, 
 
 her history, 10, 59 
 her love for Paris, 21 
 abandoned by Paris, 22 
 her healing power, 57 
 William Morris' verses, 57, 
 
 58 
 death, 58 
 Quintus SmyniEeus, 58 
 
INDEX 
 
 207 
 
 Offenbach, La belle Helena, 196 
 Oswald, E., essay ou and trans- 
 lations from Toniasin, 129 
 Ovid, the love-letters of Helen 
 and Paris, 35, 36 
 on the death of Achilles, 54 
 
 Palladium, 59, 61 
 
 Pandarus enticed by Athena to 
 
 break the treaty, 49 
 Panof ka, Menelaos, disarmed on 
 
 vase, 69, 70 
 Pauthalis, in the pictures of 
 Polygnotus, 74 
 leader of Trojan chorus, 74, 
 
 66 n., 162 
 follows Helen back into the 
 
 Other World, 185 
 in Boito's work, 196 
 Paracelsus, 154 and n. 
 Paris, the Judgment of Paris, 
 5 n., 6 
 to be mated with Helen, 8 
 his love for CEnone, 21 
 received at Priam's Court, 
 
 22 
 exposed in the woods, 20 
 visits Sparta, 35 
 flees with Helen, 39 
 offers duel to Menelaos, 45 
 defeated by Menelaos, 48 
 reproached by Helen, 48 
 returns, with Hector, to 
 
 battle, 49 
 supposed to kill Achilles, 
 
 64 
 famous statue, 56 n. 
 rejected by (Enone, his 
 
 death, 57 
 his judgment referred to 
 
 again, 77 
 in Rossetti's Cassandra, 97 
 in the Egj'ptian version, 
 
 102 
 arrested and conducted to 
 
 Memphis, 103 
 forced to leave Egypt, 
 leaving Helen there, 103 
 PartheniuSj the death of CEnone, 
 68 
 
 Patroclus, 32 
 
 Pausanius, the traveller, knew 
 the Cyprian verses, 3 
 also the ' Little Iliad ' and 
 Lesches, as well as the 
 Destruction of Troy, 3, 
 n. 5 
 on Nemesis, Leda and 
 
 Helen, 23 
 Helen being freed by the 
 
 Dioscuri, 28 n. 
 the coffer of Cypselos, 69 
 description of the pictures 
 
 at Delphi, 78 
 the death of Helen, 82 
 story of Menelaos being 
 buried with Helen, 99 n. 
 knows the Fall of Troy by 
 
 Stesichorus, 108 n. 
 landing of Helena on her 
 return, 161 
 Peitho (Persuasion) at the Rape 
 
 of Helen, 41 
 Peleus, his marriage with Thetis, 
 
 7 
 Pelion, the wedding on, 8 
 Penthesilea, Queen of the 
 
 Amazons, 63 
 Phidias, statue of Helen, 23 n. 
 Phillips, Stephen, Ulysses, 196, 
 
 197 
 Philoctetas and his arrows, 57 
 Phorkyas-Mephistopheles, 101 
 Photius, Byzantine writer, 4 and 
 
 n. 2 
 Pindar, refers to the Stasinus 
 dowry, 3, n. to jElien 
 the lovely-haired Helen, 15 
 the Dioscuri, 24 n. 
 Pliny the Elder, does not men- 
 tion the Judgment of 
 Paris, 5 n. 
 on the plant He.leniiim, 51 
 on a statue of Paris, 56 n. 
 decoction of Thymus in^- 
 
 cannus, 92 n. 
 Helen's bowl in the temple 
 of Lindos, 92 
 Pollux, vide the Dioscuri 
 Polydamas, a Trojan, 40, 53 
 Polydamna, Queen in Egypt 
 
 present to Helen, 60, 89 
 Polydeukes, vide the Dioscuri 
 
208 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Polygnotus, his pictures, 63 n., 
 
 71-75 
 Polyxena, her sacrifice foretoldj 
 8n. 
 her sacrifice takes place, 78 
 Pompeii, Herculaneum and 
 
 Stabiae, Helena pictures, 38 
 Poynter, Sir Edward, 23 
 Priam, King of Troy, father of 
 Paris, 20 
 relationship with, claimed 
 
 by Helen, 43 
 sacrifice by him previous to 
 
 duel, 45 
 on the Sksean Gate, 46 
 address to Helen, 47 
 at the grave of Hector, 58 
 Proclus, Byzantine writer, 4 and 
 
 n. 1 
 Prometheus advises Zeus, 2, 
 
 6n. 
 Property claimed by Helen, 43 
 Proteus, the sea-god, congratu- 
 lates Menelaos, 27 
 a King of Egypt, 101, 102 
 Prudhon, Paris et Hilene recon- 
 
 cilies par V4nus, 48 
 Purcellj Music to Congreve's 
 
 Judgment of Paris, 12 n. 
 
 Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, 59 
 
 kills Polyxena, 78 
 
 Q 
 
 Quintus Smyrnaeus, writer of 
 fourth century, seems to 
 have known the Cyclics, 
 5 
 
 on Penthesilea, etc., 53 
 
 on the death of Achilles, 64 
 
 on the death of (Enone, 58 
 
 visit of Telemachos to Odys- 
 seus, 60 
 
 the Palladium, 61 n. 
 
 the life of Helen threatened 
 by Menelaos, 67 
 
 Aithra and her grandsons, 
 74 n. 
 
 march of Helen, as prisoner, 
 to the ships, 80 
 
 reconciliation of Helen and 
 Menelaos, 80 n. 
 
 Helen ' never ages,' 81 
 
 Quintus Smyrnaeus, discovery of 
 his book, 136 
 Sainte-Beuve's estimate of 
 him, 137 
 
 R 
 
 Racine, his Tphigenie, 28 n. 
 
 Rape of Helen, 39-42 
 
 Eecueil des Histoires de Troyes, 
 
 the Rape of Helen, 40 n. 
 Renaissance, 174 
 Reynolds, G. W. M., Faust, 192 
 Rhampsinite, King of Egypt, 
 
 mentioned by Herodotus in 
 
 connection with the Helena 
 
 story, 103 
 Richards, G. K., translation of 
 
 the Jlneid, 68 n. 
 Riepenhausen brothers, their 
 
 pictures from the descriptions 
 
 of Pausanias, 72 
 Rig- Veda, 86 
 
 Llomaunt of the Base, 12 and n. 
 Rosenberg, C. A., his book on 
 
 Thorwaldsen, 49 n. 
 Rome, the foundation of, 6 and 
 
 n. 1 
 Rosamonde, a rival to Helen, 
 
 150, 151 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, his 
 ' Cassandra ' drawing, 
 49 n. 
 Ballad of Troy Town, 92 
 portrait of Helen, 97 
 Rubens, his Judgment of Paris, 
 
 16 
 
 Sachs, Hans, his Helena poem, 
 
 138-140 
 St. George aiding the Crusaders, 
 
 107 
 Saint-Saens, Helena opera, 188 
 Saint- Victor, Paul de, P'rench 
 
 vn.-iter, 23, 48, 98, 196 
 Sainte-Beuve, Etude sur Virgile, 
 
 suivie d'une etude sur Quintus 
 
 de Smyrne, 137 
 Sandys, F., his two pictures of 
 
 Helen, 98 
 Saturnus, father of Zeus, 7 
 
INDEX 
 
 209 
 
 Schefer, Leopold^ Judgment of 
 
 Paris, 13, 194 
 Scherer, William, on Helena and 
 
 Euphorion, 187 n. 
 Schiller, Hector's adieux to 
 Andromache, 49 
 the taking of Troy, 65 n. 
 compares Helen with Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, 189 
 Schliemanii the explorer, 32, 
 
 93, 195 
 Schumann, R., Faust, 193 
 Schwab, Gustav, Volksbucher, 
 
 141 n. 
 Selene = Helena? 84 n. 
 Shakespeare, iii 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, 50 n. 
 on Helen, 130, 131 
 Shelley, 184 
 
 Shelley, Mrs., her Frankenstein 
 
 compared to Faust's Homun- 
 
 culus, 154 
 
 Seneca, The Trojan Women, the 
 
 play of, 78 
 
 translation by Miss Harris, 
 
 79 
 translation by W. Brad- 
 shaw, 79 
 Sidon, 42 
 Siegfried rendered invulnerable, 
 
 18 
 Sieper, E., edits Lydgate's 
 Reson and Sensualyte, 12 
 and n. 
 Simon Magus and Helen, 142 
 Simrock, C., Volksbuchund Pup- 
 
 penspiel, 145 and n., 146 
 SkiEan Gate, the, 46 and ii. 
 Smith, Miss Emily James, her 
 
 Selections from Lucian, 11 n. 
 Solomon, S. J., his painting of the 
 
 Judgment of Paris, 17 
 Sommer, Oskar, elaborate edition 
 
 of Caxton, 135 
 South wark Fair, 189 
 Sparta, Paris sent there, 13 
 King Tyndareus, 22 
 Helen triumphant there, 80 
 and n. 
 Spenser, iii, 127 
 Spohr, Louis, Faust, 192 
 Stael, Mme. de. On rhyme, 179 
 
 Stesinus, son-in-law of Homer, 3 
 Stesichorus, The Destruction of 
 Troy, 3, n. 5 
 Iphigenia, the daughter of 
 
 Helen, 29 n. 
 punished for maligning 
 Helen, his Palinody, 107- 
 114 
 referred to by Goethe, 125 
 Strabo on the locality of the 
 
 Judgment of Paris, 9 n. 
 Sudermann, H., Johannes, 108 
 Swanwick, Miss Anna, 177 
 Swinburne, C, Helen in Atalanta 
 in Calydon, 24 
 Sonnets on Rossetti's Cas- 
 sandra, 97 
 Symmons, G., translation of the 
 
 ^neid, 65 
 Symonds, John Addington, on 
 Helen's dirge for Hector, 
 52 
 his studies of the Greek 
 poets, 52 n., 195 
 
 Tales from Blackwood, 161 n. 
 Talthybius, officer and messen- 
 ger, 79 
 Telemachos, in search of his 
 father, 60 
 after hearing Helen's and 
 Menelaos' relations, 65 
 Tennyson, Alfred, iii 
 
 on the wedding of Thetis, 9 
 the story of CEnone, 10 
 (Enone's death, 58 
 Theoclymen, King of Egypt, in 
 Euripides' Helena play, 105, 
 117, 119 
 Theocritus, Idylls, 25 ii. 
 
 The 'I5ridal Song of Helen,' 
 33 
 Theseus, the King, abducts 
 
 Helen, 28 
 Thetis, Zeus in love with her, 6 
 advises Zeus, 7 
 marries Peleus, 7 
 takes the body of her son 
 to the isle of Leuke, 55 
 
 27 
 
210 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Thetis leads Helen to meet 
 
 Achilles, .37 
 Thonis, Egyptian Governor at 
 the coast, informs against 
 Paris, 103 
 Thorwaldsen, statue of Venus 
 at the Judgment of Paris, 
 17 n. 
 group of Hector, Helena 
 
 and Paris, 49 n. 
 Rosenberg's book on him, 
 49 n. 
 Thomasin, a Germanized Italian, 
 
 on Helen, 129 
 Thymus incannus, Helen's de- 
 coction, 91 
 Pliny, 92 
 Tille, A., Volkslieder vom. Doktor 
 
 Faust, 144 
 Titian, 91 
 
 Troilns and Gressida, Boccaccio, 
 Chaucer, Shakespeare, 130, 
 131 
 Trojan traditions familiar in the 
 
 Middle Ages, 126-128 
 Troy, the City near Mount Ida, 
 
 10 
 Tyndareus, King of Sparta, 22 
 
 favours Menelaos, 32 
 Tzetses, the brothers, Greek 
 writers of the twelfth century, 
 editors of Lykophron's poem 
 on Helen, 107 
 
 Uranus, 7 
 
 U 
 
 V 
 
 Vacaresco, Helene, on the Achil- 
 
 leion, 53, 54 
 Venus, vide Aphrodite 
 
 mirrors of, 70 and n. 
 Vigny, Alfred de, Helena, 195 n. 
 Villemain, Aventures d'Amour, 
 
 10 n. 
 Villon, the. Greater Testament, 
 
 134, 135 
 Virgil, vi., the theft of the 
 Palladium, 59 n. 
 iEiieas meete Helen in hos- 
 tile mood, 65-67 
 
 Vischer, F. Th., Faiust, der 
 Tragoedie dritter Theil, 1862 
 and 1886, 155 and n. 
 
 Volkerwanderung, 180 
 
 Vulcan, ^nde Hephaistos 
 
 W 
 
 Wallace Collectiou, pictures of 
 the Judgment of Paris, 
 16 
 pictures of the Rape of 
 Helen, 40 
 Walpurgvmacht C'lassische, Chi- 
 ron introduced, 29 
 Walton, Izaak, the song of Troy 
 
 Town, 190 
 Watts, George Frederick, three 
 pictures of the Judgment of 
 Paris, 16 
 Way, Arthur S., The Epodes of 
 
 Horace, 112 n. 
 Welcker, F. G., author of Der 
 epische Cydus, 2, nn. 1 
 and 2 
 as to Proclus, 4, n. 1 
 as to thirteen epic poems, 
 
 6 n, 
 Le Jugement de Paris, 5 n. 
 consults with Thetis, 7 n. 
 as to Helen's husband, 8 
 Achilles with the God-given 
 
 lance, 9 
 verses in Homer on the 
 Judgment of Paris, 10, 
 n. 2 
 on the exposure of Paris, 
 
 20 n. 
 on Helen and Deipliobus, 59 
 Wieland, Judgment of Paris, 
 10 n. 
 in connection with Stesi- 
 
 chorus, 114 
 reference to Pastnachtspiel, 
 145 and n. 
 Wilstach, J. A., translation of 
 
 the jEneid, 65, 66 
 Winckelmann, Monuments in^- 
 dits, 40 n. 
 Helen's elopement, 40 n 
 mirrors of Venus, 70 n 
 
INDEX 
 
 211 
 
 Z 
 
 Zahn, great work on Pompeij 23 
 Helen and PariSj 38 n. 
 Cyprian of Antiochia, 143 n. 
 Zelter, Goethe's friendj 194 
 ZeuSj Gaia appears before his 
 throne, 1 
 
 Zeus creates Nemesis, 2 
 creates Helen, 2 
 at the wedding on Pelion, 
 
 8, 9 
 the swan-form, 23 
 Zeuxis, his picture of Helen at 
 Croton, 94 
 at Lavinium, 95 
 
 THE END 
 
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