DID HELEN ELOPE TO TROY? 207 
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,” cidwAov urvovv.! 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.2 The ghost of 
Achilles, when raised by that most famous medium of antiquity, 
Apollonius of Tyana, denied positively that Helen was in 
Tlium.? 
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. 
1 Eurip., Hel., 34. 
2 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. 
Hadt., 2, 112 ff., 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, Like 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 ! 
