Still others declare that she and her story were allegorical, standing for feminine charm and for its fatal power; that she embodied the Greek idea of superwoman perfection. The same sort of people gravely tell us that Hercules and Crœsus and William Tell were "solar myths"—whatever that may mean—and their descendants will put the myth brand, ten thousand years hence, on Napoleon, Roosevelt, John L. Sullivan, and Lydia Pinkham.
While common sense may balk at the tale of Helen of Troy, common sense would as readily balk at a narrative of the high cost of living or of the All-Europe War. And what is common sense among friends? I am going to tell Helen's story as if it were gospel truth. For all I know, it may be. I am not going to draw on a dull imagination for any of it, but to take it entirely from a dozen of the olden authorities, from Homer down. After all, since we believe in Santa Claus, why not in Helen of Troy?
(I cannot help feeling a little thrill of pride in this preamble. In spots, it is almost scholarly. And so to the story.)
She was the daughter of Tyndareus of Argos, one of the horde of kinglets who split up the Greek archipelago among them. She lived three thousand years ago. And so adorable was she that some one started a rumor that she was not the daughter of Tyndareus, but of great Jove himself. This kind of talk passed as complimentary in those benighted days. Wherefore, Helen's parents did not start a suit for criminal libel against the flatterer, but heaped honors on him.
By the time Helen reached young womanhood, she was the wonder of all Greece. She was tall, slender, and red-haired. In a day of almost universal dowdiness, she knew how to wear her clothes—although she did not use that knowledge to any prodigal extent; clothes, in balmy prehistoric Greece, being used for adornment rather than as coverings.
Her wit and her subtle magnetism vied with her good looks. Suitors came from one end of the archipelago to the other to visit the palace of Tyndareus and to pay court to the Wonder Girl. They were a goodly throng, these suitors; kings one and all, even though most of their kingdoms were smaller than Delaware. Here are a few names culled from the endless list:
Ulysses, craftiest of Greeks, a short-legged man, with the upper body of a giant; Agamemnon, overlord of all Greece, titular King of Mycenæ, a hot-tempered, long-winded potentate; Menelaus of Sparta, Agamemnon's brother, an honest, not overbright, kind-hearted chap, who loved sport better than statesmanship; Nestor, the wisest of men, (yet old enough to have known better than to come a-courting, for already his hair and beard were white); the two Ajaxes, thickheads both, one of whom was later to crown a silly life by defying Jove's lightning to mortal combat; Diomed, champion heavyweight battler of his century; Achilles, fiery demigod and prehistoric matinee hero; these and many another.
Now, in that benighted age, kings had a way of gratifying personal grudges by declaring war on their fellow sovereigns. Tyndareus was a shrewd old fellow. Also, he was fond of his glorious daughter, and he wanted to save her and her future husband from possible misfortune. So, before he allowed Helen to make her choice he bound each and all of the suitors to the following solemn oath: That they would not only abide peacefully by Helen's decision, but would pledge themselves to fight to the death in behalf of the contest's winner if, at any future time, his domestic peace should be threatened, or his wife stolen from him.
This pledge was not as fanciful as it may seem. For, cave-man tactics of "wooing by capture" were still more or less in vogue. A man who fell in love with another's wife was wont to kidnap her and to defy her bereft spouse to get her back.
Thus, Tyndareus was not only preventing civil war in Greece, but he was making it prohibitively perilous for any outsider to try to win Helen. Such a wooer would find himself at odds with practically every country in the whole archipelago. Yes, decidedly Tyndareus knew what he was about. He was assuring his daughter—as far as was humanly possible—a safe married life.