Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

ANCIENT GREEK CULTURE

[From: Kyriazis, Constantine D. Eternal Greece. Translated by Harry T. Hionides. A Chat Publication.]

Demigods and Heros - Achilles - Aegisthus - Agamemnon - Ajax the Locrian - Ajax the Telamonian - Alcestis - Amphiaraos - Amphitrite - Antigone - Atalanta - Belerophon - Cadmus - Clytemnestra - Daedalus - Danae - Dioscuri - Electra - Europa - Eurydice - Ganymede - Hector - Hecuba - Helen - Heracles - Hippolytus - Icarus - Io - Iphigenia - Jason - Leda - Menelaus - Minos - Nestor - Niobe - Odysseus - Oedipus - Orestes - Medea - Orpheus - Paris - Pasiphae - Pelops - Penelope - Perseus - Phaedra - Phaethon - Phrixus - Priam - Telemachus - Theseus - Triptolemus

Helen


The daughter of Zeus and Leda or of Zeus and Nemesis, the former legend being the most accepted. Assuming the shape of a swan, Zeus mated with Leda and from the egg that resulted Helen was born. And so she was the sister of the Dioscuri and of Clytemnestra, and has as her recognized father none other than Tyndareus. There are many successive stories concerning Helen, and it is with great difficulty that one can distinguish the original. These include two different legends of her abduction. One was by Theseus when she was not yet a grown woman, and another relates the more famous story in which Paris of Troy carried her off leading to the outbreak of the Trojan War since all Greeks were offended by the abduction. Wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, she had one daughter by him, Hermione by name, before she eloped with Paris. At Troy, Helen who had taken with her many valuables belonging to Menelaus, married Paris and after his death from the arrows of Philoctetes, she wed his brother Deiphobus. After the fall of Troy, Deiphobus was slain by Menelaus and Helen was reconciled with her first husband returning with him after a long journey to Sparta. By virtue of being the most beautiful woman who ever walked the earth, the gods granted her, in accordance with one legend, the right to dwell with Menelaus in the [p. 63] Elysian fields or in the isle of the blessed. Another variation of the tale relates that she became the husband of Achilles after she had gained immortality and dwelt on the island of Leuce where she had a son by him named Euphorion. Helen became the object of worship in many parts of Greece, but mainly in Sparta and in Therapne. [pp. 63-64]

[Kyriazis, Constantine D. Eternal Greece. Translated by Harry T. Hionides. A Chat Publication.]




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