318 
H E L H E L 
been killed in the Trojan war, which had been caufed by made no fcruple of commemorating it by a religious fer- 
thedebaucheriesofHelen,therefore(hemeditatedrevenge. vice. Helena remained in Paleftine, and built a church, 
While Helen one day retired to bathe in the river, Po- confecrated to the Son of God, at Bethlehem, and ano- 
lyxo difguifed her attendants in the habits of furies, ther On the mount of Olives. She alfo bellowed her 
and fent them with orders to murder her enemy. Helen wealth liberally upon the poor, and the religious com- 
was tied to a tree and flrangled, and her misfortunes munities; and then made a progrefs through the prin- 
were afterwards remembered, and the crimes of Polyxo cipal churches of the Eaft, every-where fignalizing her 
expiated, by the temple which the Rhodians raifed to piety and munificence. She died at the age of eighty, 
Helen Dendrites, or tied lo a tree. There is a tradition and was interred in the imperial maufoleum at Rome, 
mentioned by Herodotus, which fays that Paris was Her fon honoured her memory by giving the name of 
driven, .as he returned from Sparta, upon the coaft of Helenopolis to her native place, Drepanum. She is 
Egypt, where Proteus, king qf the country, expelled canonifed as a faint by the Roman-catholic church, 
him from his dominions for his ingratitude'to Menelaus, HELE'NA. See Saint Helena, for the iflands and 
and confined Helen. From that circumflance, there- towns of this name. 
fore, Priam informed the Grecian ambaffadors that nei¬ 
ther Helen nor her poffellions were in Troy, but in the 
hands of the king of Egypt. In fpite of this affection 
the Greeks befieged the town, and took it after ten years 
fiege ; and Menelaus, by viliting Egypt as he returned 
home, recovered Helen at the court of Proteus, and was 
convinced that the Trojan war had been undertaken 
upon very unjuft and unpardonable grounds. Helen 
was honoured after death as a goddefs, and the Spartans 
built her a temple at Therapne, which had power of 
giving beauty to all the deformed women that entered 
it. Helen, according to fome, was carried into the ifland 
of 'Deuce after death, where fhe married Achilles, who 
had been once one of her warmeft admirers. The age 
of Helen has been a matter of deep enquiry among the 
chronologills. If fhe was born of the fame eggs as Caf- 
tor and Pollux, who accompanied the Argonauts in their 
expedition againft Colchis about thirty-five years before 
the Trojan war, according to fome, fhe was no lefs than 
fixty years old when Troy was reduced to aflies, fup- 
pofing that her brothers were only fifteen when they 
embarked with the Argonauts. Rut (he is reprefented 
by Homer fo incomparably beautiful during the fiege of 
Troy, that, though feen at a diflance, fhe influenced the 
counfellors of Priam by the brightnefs of her charms ; 
therefore we muftfuppofe, with others, that her beauty 
remained long undiminifhed,and was extinguifhed only 
at her death. 
HELE'NA, in ancient geography, an ifland on the 
coafl of Attica, where Helen came after the fiege of 
Troy. Pliny. ' 
HEL'EN A, mother of Conflantine the Great, faid to 
have been the daughter of an innkeeper of Dreptmum 
in Bithynia. She attracled the notice of Confiantius 
Chlorus on one of his journeys ; and their commerce ter¬ 
minated in marriage. It was a condition of the adoption 
•of Confiantius by Maximian in 292, that he fhouid di¬ 
vorce his low-born wife, and take a fpoufe of imperial 
blood. From this time Helena lived in obfcurity till 
the death of Confiantius, and the aceeflion of her fon 
Conftantine to the imperial throne. She had now the 
title of Augulla and emprefs at court, and in the armies ; 
and the entire difpofai of a large revenue. She had the 
influence to keep from all public employments the three 
half-brothers of Conflantine ; a 'conduit, which the em¬ 
peror Julian fligmatifes as proceeding from the unjuft 
artifice of a flep-mother, while her encomiafts have im¬ 
puted it to prudence and wife policy. About the year 
326, fhe paid a vifit to the holy places of Jerufalem, and 
this was the epoch of that memorable event of ecclefi- 
riflical hiftory, called the invention of the true crofs. 
Having caufed a temple .of. Menus built over the fup- 
pofed fite of the holy fepulchre to be demolifhed, a ca¬ 
vern was difeovered, in which were depofited three 
erodes, fuppofed to be thofe on which Chrifl and the 
two thieves fuftered. Helena, tranfported with joy at the 
polfedlon of fuch a treafure, had one of them cut into two 
parts, the larged of which fhe left with Macarius bifhop 
of Jerufalem, and fent the other to her fon. Though 
Eufebius in his Ecclefiaftical Hiftory is filent concern¬ 
ing this great event, it is recorded by fo many other 
writers of grave authority, that the catholic church has 
4 
IIELE'NIA, a feftival inftituted in Laconia, in ho¬ 
nour of Helen, who received there divine honours. It 
was celebrated by virgins riding upon mules, and in cha¬ 
riots made of reeds and bullrufhes. 
HELE'NIA and'HELENIAS'TRUM, /. in botany. 
See Helenium. 
HELE'NIUM, f. [from Helen, the wife of Menelaus, 
who, as Hefyehius fays, cultivated a plant that deftroy- 
ed ferpents ; according to others, this plant lprung from 
her tears.] In botany, a genus of the clafs fyngenefia, 
order polygamia fuperflua, natural order of compofitse 
difeoideae, (corymbiferae, JuJf.) The generic characters 
are—Calyx : common Staple, one-leafed, many-parted, 
fpreading; leaflets about twenty, gradually drawing to 
a point, (oblong, (harp, equal, Gartner.) Corolla: com. 
pound radiate ; corollets hermaphrodite, numerous in 
the dilk ; females as many as there are parts of the ca¬ 
lyx, in the ray. Proper of the hermaphrodites tubular, 
fhorter than the calyx, five-toothed ; of the females li- 
gTilate, broader outwards, trifid at the tip, longer than 
the calyx. Stamina : in the hermaphodites : filaments 
five, capillary, very fhort; antheras cylindric, tubular. 
Piftillum : in the hermaphrodites; germ oblong; flyle 
filiform, length of the ftamens; ftigma bifid. In tire fe¬ 
males; germ oblong; flyle very fhort; ftigma bifid. 
Pericarpium : none ; calyx unchanged. Seeds: in the 
hermaphrodites folitary, obovate, angular, crowned with 
a fmall five-toothed calycle; in the females’, very like 
the others. Receptaculum : naked, convex ; the caly- 
cine chaffs only of the ray feparating the florets.— EJJ’en- 
tial CharaEler. Calyx, Ample, many-parted; corollets 
of the ray femi-trifid ; down five-awned ; receptaculum, 
naked, excepting the calycine chaffs in the ray. 
Species. 1. Helenium autumnale, orfmooth helenium : 
leaves very fmooth. Miller, following Vaillant, has 
made two fpecies out of this: the firft with entire leaves, 
which he names H. autumnale ; the fecond with ferrate 
leaves, which he names H. latifolium. He thus de- 
feribes them : “Thefe plants rife to the height of fix 
or (even feet in good ground ; the roots, when large, 
fend up a great number of ftalks, which branch toward 
the top ; thofe of the firft have fmooth leaves, three 
inches and a half long, and half an inch broad in the 
middle, with entire edges, fitting clofe to the ftalks, and 
from their bafe is fextended a leafy border along the (talk, 
fo as to form what was generally termed a winged Jlalk, 
but Linnaeus calls it a decurrent leaf-, the upper part of 
the llalk divides, and from each divifion arifes a naked 
peduncle about three inches long, fuftaining one yellow 
flower at the top, fhaped like a fun-flower, but much 
.fmaller, having long rays, which are jagged pretty deep 
into four or five fegments ; thefe appear in Augufl, anti 
there is a fucceflionof flowers on the plants till the froft 
puts a flop to them. The fecond has the appearance of 
the firft, but the leaves are not three inches long, and 
are more than an inch broad in the middle, ending in 
acute points, and are fharply ferrate on their edges. 
The flowers ‘Hand upon fhorter peduncles, growing 
clofer together, for the ftalks of this do not branch near 
fo much as thofe of the other; they both flower at the 
fame feafon. There is alfo another with leaves as nar¬ 
row as the firft, which are acutely indented on the edges. 
-rhp 
