HELEN OF TROY 



2761 



HELGOLAND 



HELEN OF TROY, the fairest woman of the 

 ancient world, whose name to every age since 

 her own time has stood for all that is most 

 beautiful. It was of her the poet Marlowe 

 wrote : 



Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships 

 And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? 



According to popular myth, she was the 

 daughter of great Jupiter and Leda, whom the 

 king of all the gods had courted in the sem- 



THE ABDUCTION OF HELEN 



"Then from her husband's stranger-sheltering 



home, 

 He tempted Helen o'er the ocean's foam." 



blance of a swan. When but a child she was 

 so beautiful that Theseus bore her off to be his 

 bride, but she was brought back to her Spartan 



home, and as she grew she increased in beauty 

 so that thirty ardent suitors sought her hand. 

 Proclaiming Menelaus, king of Sparta, as her 

 choice, she bound the other suitors by an oath 

 that they would help her husband in his need. 

 When Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, be- 

 came a guest in Menelaus' home, he pleaded 

 with Helen that she go with him back to his 

 father's house, and he won his suit. Some of 

 the legends declare she went willingly, while 

 others assume that Paris carried her to Troy 

 by force. Forsaken Menelaus called on all 

 those Grecian chiefs whose sacred oath he held, 

 and they came forward to avenge his wrong. 

 This was the cause of the great Trojan War, 

 the most terrific conflict of old times. 



When Troy had fallen, and false Paris, too, 

 the lovely cause of all the loss of life, whose 

 beauty still could drive men to despair, re- 

 turned to Menelaus, whom she found ready to 

 take her once more as his wife. Their later 

 life in Sparta, their old home, passed happily 

 for them, but all her days were saddened by the 

 thoughts of all the woe which Greece had suf- 

 fered for her beauty's sake. In poetry her 

 name is often found, and Tennyson, in A 

 Dream of Fair Women, described her in these 

 words, which make her beauty and her sadness 

 felt: 



At length I saw a lady within call, 



Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there ; 



A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, 

 And most divinely fair. 



Her loveliness with shame and with surprise 

 Froze my swift speech ; she, turning on my face 



The starlike sorrows o^ immortal eyes, 



Spoke slowly in her place. A.MC c. 



HELGOLAND, hel' go laknt, until 1919 a most 

 important island in the North Sea, belonging 

 to Germany, and covering an area of only one- 

 fifth of a square mile. It is thirty-five miles 



_nr"jr_ 



THE ISLAND OF HELGOLAND 



