Biography Helen

Helen (Elenh) – daughter of Zeus and Leda, wife of the ancient king lakonskogo Tindareya sister Clytemnestra, celebrated in the Greek epic her beauty. E., originally no doubt a goddess (the very name by sel – light), in the Homeric poems is a mortal woman, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta; because of her abduction by Paris ignited the Trojan War.

During the war, E. lives in Troy, as the wife of Paris, repenting of his misconduct, despising Paris and wishing with all my soul to return to his first wife and abandoned her daughter Hermione. Priam and the elders of the noble Trojans homage to her beauty. After the capture of Troy E. again goes to Menelaus, with whom he returned to Sparta. In poslegomerovskih versions tale of E. complicated and compounded by many new details, probably partly borrowed from various local legends. So, saying that IE was still a young woman, was abducted by Theseus, but returned to the brothers.

Of the two allusions Odyssey (IV, 276; VIII, 517) developed a legend, that the death of Paris she became a wife, his brother Deiphobus whom it is issued for the capture of Troy, Menelaus. Other hints Iliad and Odyssey on the presence of Menelaus with IE in Egypt grew stories that IE was not at all in three and remained the king of Egyptian Proteus, who was returned Menelaius. To reconcile this version of Homer invented that Troy was a ghost E. There was a story that the side of Menelaus sons, after his death, banished from E. Sparta, she fled to Rhodes, where he died by hanging himself from a tree. Upon the death of E. her soul was transferred to on-Lev in, where it was combined with Achilles. Tales of the EA is often played by ancient artists, both the Greek and Etruscan. In Sparta and other places. E. revered as a goddess.