Helen

Also known as: HEL. / HELEN / Helena · Family: Spartan · Role: wife of Menelaos · First appears: Aeschylus, Agamemnon — Scene 1

Helen is the daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, sister to Clytemnestra, Phoebe, Castor, and Pollux, and is also called a daughter of Zeus. After Tyndareus bound her suitors by oath, she chose Menelaus as her husband. In one account, Paris later came to Sparta and carried her away to Ida, with Aphrodite held responsible for presenting Helen as his promised reward; in another, Hera replaced her with an image while Hermes carried the real Helen to Proteus’ house in Egypt to preserve Menelaus’ marriage bed.

At Troy, Helen was blamed for the war and its deaths. Hecuba and Andromache condemned her for the ruin of Troy and the deaths of Priam, Achilles, and others, while Rhesus’ fate was linked to her flight from her bridal home to Paris’ bed. After Troy’s fall, she became a captive assigned to Menelaus, who was given power over her life and ordered her taken to the ships; in another account, Deiphobus had forcibly taken her as his wife after Paris’ death. Orestes and Pylades later plotted to kill her, and Electra joined the attack, but Apollo revealed that Zeus had preserved her immortal.

In Egypt, Helen was reunited with Menelaus after the phantom had vanished, and he learned that the woman taken to Troy had been only her image. She appealed to Theonoe to conceal him, then helped him escape by falsely declaring him dead, accepting Theoclymenus’ funeral arrangements and supposed marriage plans as part of the deception. Helen disguised Menelaus, boarded the ship with him, encouraged the Greeks during their fight with Theoclymenus’ sailors, and sailed with her husband toward Greece. Castor and Pollux promised to guide them home and said that after her mortal life she would become a goddess and share their worship.