Together they fled in the dewy morning, Paris urging his horses with guilty haste to the ships. And there, with Menelaus thundering along the road after them, they set sail for Troy, fulfilling the old prophecy, and lighting a brand by their deed which should burn the sacred city to the ground. For Tyndareus, when he chose a husband for Helen amongst her many suitors, had won a promise that they would all defend the one who gained her. Agamemnon, brother to Menelaus, and the great overlord of the Hellenic princes, now summoned the allies to avenge his brother, and for ten years they toiled at fitting out a fleet. Then they ‘launched a thousand ships,’ and sailed to punish Ilios for the sin of Paris.

HELEN OF TROY
Lord Leighton
By permission of Henry Graves & Co Ltd

Meantime, Helen had wakened sadly from the spell of Aphrodite. Little by little memory of her home came back, and with it came remorse. She was lonely too, and disillusion crept upon her. The Trojans, who at first had welcomed her as a goddess, soon began to look askance at her when rumours came of the great siege that was preparing. Mothers and wives of the Trojan princes held aloof; and soon the only friends left to her were the kind old king and Hector, the noble defender of the city. But there was worse behind. Little by little the truth dawned that Paris, for whom she had lost so much, and who had seemed so godlike in his strength and beauty, was very poor humanity indeed. The story of Enone was told to her; and that showed him unfaithful. And when the Leaguer actually lay beneath the walls, she soon found that Paris was a coward too.

Now, in this Third Iliad, we find that the cruel siege had wasted Troy for nearly ten years. The armies, reduced by death and pestilence and famine, were beginning to murmur against the worthless cause of all their misery; and Paris, for very shame, could no longer shelter himself within the city. At this eleventh hour he issued out to meet Menelaus in single combat. Helen was sitting in her inner hall, weaving a purple web and embroidering upon it the battle scenes which ebbed and flowed around the walls. Time and sorrow had only given her beauty an added charm. She was still young, fresh, and exquisitely fair, as on that spring morning in Lacedaemon when Aphrodite graced her for the meeting with Paris. To her, as her sweet face bent over the web, the goddess Iris brought the news of the impending combat: “They that erst waged tearful war upon each other in the plain, eager for deadly battle, even they sit now in silence, and the battle is stayed, and they lean upon their shields, and the tall spears are planted by their sides. But Paris and Menelaus dear to Ares will fight with their tall spears for thee; and thou wilt be declared the dear wife of him that conquereth.”

At the name of Menelaus a wave of homesickness filled Helen’s heart. Great tears flooded her eyes, and drawing on a shining veil, she left her embroideries and hastened out to the Skaian gates to watch the duel. But there, sitting upon the tower, were Priam and his counsellors; and Helen and her maids hesitated at sight of them. They were feeble old men. The fire and strength of youth had gone, leaving in their place the cold wisdom of age. They and their people had suffered deeply because of Helen; and they had every cause to hate her. Yet as she approached, veiled and slackening her pace from fear when she saw them, all their wrongs were forgotten in wonderment at her beauty. They who had potent reasons to revile her were saying softly among themselves, almost in awe, as those who had seen a vision: “’Small blame is it that Trojans and well-greaved Achaians should for such a woman long time suffer hardships; marvellously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look upon.’ ... So said they; and Priam lifted up his voice and called to Helen: ‘Come hither, dear child, and sit before me, that thou mayst see thy former husband and thy kinsfolk and thy friends. I hold thee not to blame; nay, I hold the gods to blame who brought on me the dolorous war of the Achaians’.” “And Helen, fair among women, spake, and answered him: ‘Reverend art thou to me and dread, dear father of my lord. Would that sore death had been my pleasure when I followed thy son hither, and left my home and my kinsfolk and my daughter in her girlhood and the lovely company of mine age-fellows. But that was not so, wherefore I pine with weeping’.”[[2]]

Then Helen pointed out to the king and the elders the great heroes of the Greek line: “This is wide-ruling Agamemnon, one that is both a goodly king and mighty spearman. And he was husband’s brother to me, ah shameless me; if ever such an one there was.” Odysseus, too, and Ajax and Idomeneus, she can see; but two whom her eyes seek longingly are not there, her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux. “Either they came not in the company from lovely Lacedaemon; or they came hither indeed in their seafaring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors, for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine.”[[2]]

Presently, Paris and Menelaus are engaged in fight below the walls, with Helen looking on from above in fearful expectancy. It was an unequal fight. Aphrodite had joined the side of Paris; and when, despite her tricks, Menelaus was gaining on his opponent, the goddess enveloped Paris in a cloud and carried him off. In plain words, he ran away; and Helen, shamed and indignant, received a summons from Aphrodite to go to her cowardly lover. She turned in wrath upon the goddess: “Strange queen, why art thou desirous now to beguile me? Go and sit thou by his side, and depart from the way of the gods; neither let thy feet ever bear thee back to Olympus, but still be vexed for his sake and guard him till he make thee his wife or perchance his slave. But thither will I not go—that were a sinful thing—to array the bed of him; all the women of Troy will blame me hereafter; and I have griefs untold within my soul.”[[2]]

Aphrodite triumphs, however, menacing Helen with terrible threats; and leads her back to the house of Paris. Meanwhile, the gods ‘on golden pavement round the board of Zeus’ had decreed that Troy should fall: Hera and Athena were to wreak their vengeance upon it, for the insult of Paris. The truce broken, the armies rushed into conflict again, and two of the gods who were warring for Troy, were driven back to Olympus. Then Hector came into the palace to rouse his brother, and found him sitting in Helen’s room, polishing his armour. To the scornful reproaches of Hector, Paris gave only puerile answers, and Helen turned from him to Hector in passionate scorn. “Dear brother mine, would that on the day that my mother bare me, a billow of the loud-sounding sea might have swept me away before all these things came to pass. Howbeit, seeing that the gods devised all these ills in this wise, would that then I had been mated with a better man, that felt dishonour and the multitude of men’s reproachings. But as for him, neither has he now sound heart, nor ever will have; therefore deem I moreover that he will reap the fruit.”[[2]]

Hector answered her with a gentle word, and went out, bearing on his shoulders the doom of Troy. In his chivalrous kindness to Helen, he is a worthy son of Priam; and when he was slain at last, fighting for his beloved city alone with the terrible Achilles, Helen joined her lament to those of his mother and his wife, in perhaps the most noble tribute to his memory: “Hector, of all my brethren of Troy, far dearest to my heart. Truly my lord is godlike Paris who brought me to Troy-land; would that I had died ere then. For this is now the twentieth year since I went thence and am gone from my own native land, but never yet heard I evil or despiteful word from thee; nay, if any other haply upbraided me in the palace halls, whether brother or sister of thine or brother’s fair-robed wife, or thy mother, then wouldst thou soothe such with words and refrain them, by the gentleness of thy spirit and by thy gentle words. Therefore bewail I thee with pain at heart, and my hapless self with thee, for no more is any left in wide Troy-land to be my friend and kind to me, but all men shudder at me.”[[2]]