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54 conquests, met with, somewhat too warm a welcome from his brother, whom he had left viceroy of Egypt. He invited the hero and his family to a banquet, heaped wood all round the building, and set fire to it. Sesostris only escaped by sacrificing (by the mother's advice) two of his six sons, whose bodies he used to bridge the circle of flame. Having inflicted condign punishment on his brother, he then proceeded to utilise the vast multitudes of captives whom he had brought with him. By the employment of this forced labour he changed the face of Egypt, completely intersecting it with canals, and filling it with public buildings of unparalleled magnificence. The second king after Sesostris bore a Greek name, but must be regarded as a very apocryphal personage—Proteus, who was said to have entertained at his court no less famous a visitor than Helen, the heroine of the Trojan war. For the Egyptian priests had their version, too, of that wondrous Tale. According to them, the Spartan princess was driven by stress of weather to Egypt on her forced elopement with. Paris, while Troy was besieged by the Greeks, in the belief that she was there. King Proteus, when he heard the story, gave Helen refuge, but dismissed Paris at once with disgrace. Herodotus accuses Homer of knowing this legend, which was a more probable version of the story than his own, and suppressing it for poetical purposes, since he speaks of the long wanderings of Helen, and of Menelaus's visit to Egypt. The priests told him that their predecessors had the story from Menelaus himself, who went to Egypt to fetch Helen, when he found, after the capture of Troy, that she was not there. Herodotus himself saw in the sacred precincts at Memphis a temple to "Venus the