[744] Euripid. Troad. 982 seq.; Lycophrôn ap. Steph. Byz. v. Αἰγύς; Stesichorus ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 239; Fragm. 9 and 10 of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις, Schneidewin:—
Οὕνεκα Τυνδάρεως ῥέζων ἁπᾶσι θεοῖς μιᾶς λαθετ᾽ ἠπιοδώρου
Κύπριδος· κείνα δὲ Τυνδάρεω κούραισι χολωσαμένα
Διγάμους τριγάμους τίθησι
Καὶ λιπεσάνορας ...
Further
... Ἑλένη ἑκοῦσ᾽ ἄπηρε, etc.
He had probably contrasted her with other females carried away by force.
Stesichorus also affirmed that Iphigeneia was the daughter of Helen, by Thêseus, born at Argos before her marriage with Menelaus and made over to Klytæmnêstra: this tale was perpetuated by the temple of Eileithyia at Argos, which the Argeians affirmed to have been erected by Helen (Pausan. ii. 22, 7). The ages ascribed by Hellanikus and other logographers (Hellan. Fr. 74) to Thêseus and Helen—he fifty years of age and she a child of seven—when he carried her off to Aphidnæ, can never have been the original form of any poetical legend: these ages were probably imagined in order to make the mythical chronology run smoothly; for Thêseus belongs to the generation before the Trojan war. But we ought always to recollect that Helen never grows old (τὴν γὰρ φάτις ἔμμεν᾽ ἀγήρω—Quint. Smyrn. x. 312), and that her chronology consists only with an immortal being. Servius observes (ad Æneid. ii. 601)—“Helenam immortalem fuisse indicat tempus. Nam constat fratres ejus cum Argonautis fuisse. Argonautarum filii cum Thebanis (Thebano Eteoclis et Polynicis bello) dimicaverunt. Item illorum filii contra Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis Helena non fuisset, tot sine dubio seculis durare non posset.” So Xenophon, after enumerating many heroes of different ages, all pupils of Cheirôn, says that the life of Cheirôn suffices for all, he being brother of Zeus (De Venatione, c. 1).
The daughters of Tyndareus are Klytæmnêstra, Helen, and Timandra, all open to the charge advanced by Stesichorus: see about Timandra, wife of the Tegeate Echemus, the new fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue, recently restored by Geel (Göttling, Pref. Hesiod. p. lxi.).