DID HELEN ELOPE TO TROY? 297 



Helen was not in Ilium at any time during the siege, and that 

 what the Trojans harboured was not her real self, but only 

 her "living image," uSwXov efitrvovvA The discoverer of 

 this interesting fact was (so ran the slander) Stesichorus, 

 Struck with blindness after writing an attack on Helen, he 

 recovered his sight by composing a Palinodia,^ • The ghost of 

 Achilles, when raised by that most famous medium of antiquity, 

 Apollonius of Tyana, denied positively that Helen was in 

 Ilium. 3 



If Mr. J. A. Symonds be right, " We fought for fame and 

 Priam's wealth," and for naught else, then she " with the 

 star-like sorrows of immortal eyes " was neither causa causans 

 nor any cause of the Fall of Troy. Perhaps " Priam's wealth " 

 is but an intelligent anticipation of Mr. Leaf's theory that the 

 War was fought for " The Freedom of the Sea " (Euxine), 

 and, incidentally, the capture of another nation's profits. 



^ Eurip., Hel., 34. 



" Plat., Phardi., 243A ; Isokr., Hel., 65; Pausanias, III. 19, 13. 



3 Op. cit., IV. 16. In his palinode, of which a few lines {frag. 32, Bergk*) 

 are extant, Stesichorus asserts that it was not Helen herself, but only her 

 semblance or wraith, which Paris carried off to Troy. Greeks and Trojans 

 slew one another for a mere phantom, while the real Helen never left Sparta. 

 Hdt., 2, 112 ft'., gives a rather different turn to the story. According to him, 

 Helen eloped from Sparta with Paris, but was driven back by a storm to 

 Egypt, where Paris told lies and was punished by Proteus. Euripides in his 

 Helena combines the two versions. lake Stesichorus, he makes the truant 

 a mere phantom, an ' eloping angel.' Like Herodotus, he sends the real 

 Helen to Egypt. Menelaus, who, escorting the phantom home from Troy, 

 arrives in Egypt, is there confronted with the real Helen and is sadly puzzled. 

 Just as he begins to think himself a bigamist, the misty Helen evaporates ! 



