It is curious to read, in Bayle’s article Hélène, his critical discussion of the adventures ascribed to her—as if they were genuine matter of history, more or less correctly reported.
[745] Plato, Republic. ix. p. 587. c. 10. ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς Ἑλένης εἴδωλον Στησίχορός φησι περιμάχητον γενέσθαι ἐν Τροίῃ, ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ἀληθοῦς.
Isokrat. Encom. Helen. t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Phædr. c. 44. p. 243-244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Conôn, Narr. 18; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 323. Τὸν μὲν Στησίχορον ἐν τῇ ὕστερον ὠδῇ λέγειν, ὡς τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲ πλεύσειεν ἡ Ἑλένη οὐδάμοσε. Horace, Od. i. 17, Epod. xvii. 42.—
“Infamis Helenæ Castor offensus vice,
Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece,
Adempta vati reddidere lumina.”
Pausan. iii. 19, 5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point of view of the Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with particular tenderness: Deiphobus imputes to her the basest treachery (Æneid, vi. 511. “scelus exitiale Lacænæ;” compare ii. 567).
[746] Herodot. ii. 120. οὐ γὰρ δὴ οὕτω γε φρενοβλαβὴς ἦν ὁ Πρίαμος, οὐδ᾽ οἱ ἄλλοι οἱ προσήκοντες αὐτῷ, etc. The passage is too long to cite, but is highly curious: not the least remarkable part is the religious coloring which he gives to the new version of the story which he is adopting,—“the Trojans, though they had not got Helen, yet could not persuade the Greeks that this was the fact; for it was the divine will that they should be destroyed root and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind that upon great crimes the gods inflict great punishments.”
Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi. p. 333) reasons in the same way as Herodotus against the credibility of the received narrative. On the other hand, Isokratês, in extolling Helen, dwells on the calamities of the Trojan war as a test of the peerless value of the prize (Encom. Hel. p. 360, Aug.): in the view of Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 56), as well as in that of Hesiod (Opp. Di. 165), Helen is the one prize contended for.
Euripidês, in his tragedy of Helen, recognizes the detention of Helen in Egypt and the presence of her εἴδωλον at Troy, but he follows Stesichorus in denying her elopement altogether,—Hermês had carried her to Egypt in a cloud (Helen. 35-45, 706): compare Von Hoff, De Mytho Helenæ Euripideæ, cap. 2. p. 35 (Leyden, 1843).