It is in the capacity of wife, and only wife, to Paris that Helen appears to us in the Iliad: where she herself speaks of Menelaus as her πρότερος πόσις[1014].
Now the presumed reasons for not regarding the character of Bathsheba as infamous apply with nearly equal force to Helen. Indeed the character of Helen in one point stands higher in Homer than that of Bathsheba in the Old Testament, because she lived with Paris as a recognised and only wife, and because of her gentleness, and especially of her repentance. Of these as to Bathsheba, we know nothing; but such pleas as tell for her tell in the main also for Helen. We have no indication, either in the Iliad or in the Odyssey, of her having at any time felt either passion or affection towards the worthless Paris. Above all, as it will be attempted to prove, the language of the poems not only does not sustain the idea that she willingly left the house of her husband Menelaus, but it shows something which closely approaches to the direct contrary.
But there is no method of measuring so accurately the view and intention of Homer as to the impression we were meant to receive of Helen, as by comparing the language he applies to her with the widely different terms in which he describes the conduct of Clytemnestra, in conjunction with Ægisthus, during the absence of Agamemnon:
τὴν δ’ ἐθέλων ἐθέλουσαν ἀνήγαγεν ὅνδε δόμονδε[1015].
In speaking of her own abduction, Helen indeed uses the word ἤγαγε[1016]. And again in her sharp expostulation with Aphrodite, she says, ‘What, will you take me (ἄξεις) to some other Phrygian or Mæonian city, where you may have a favourite[1017]?’ Now this by no means implies her having acted freely; the word ἄγειν is that commonly applied to the carrying off captives from a conquered city, as φέρειν is to the removal of inanimate objects. Undoubtedly in one of her passages of self-reproach she says[1018]:
υἱέϊ σῷ ἑπόμην, θάλαμον γνωτούς τε λιποῦσα.
But, in the first place, it is neither here nor anywhere else said that her flight was voluntary; and on the other hand, without doubt, it is not to be pretended that she had resisted with the spirit of a martyr. The real question is as to the first and fatal act of quitting her husband, whether it was premeditated, and whether it was of her free choice. Now both branches of this question appear to be conclusively decided by the word ἁρπάξας in the following passage[1019], spoken by Paris:
οὐ γὰρ πώποτέ μ’ ὧδέ γ’ Ἔρως φρένας ἀμφεκάλυψεν,
οὐδ’ ὅτε σε πρῶτον Λακεδαίμονος ἐξ ἐρατεινῆς
ἔπλεον ἁρπάξας ἐν ποντοπόροισι νέεσσιν.