Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/555

 Zeus ever pursued and longed in his heart to catch her. Now she took the form of a fish and sped over the waves of the loud-roaring sea, and now over Ocean's stream and the furthest bounds of Earth, and now she sped over the furrowed land, always turning into such dread creatures as the dry land nurtures, that she might escape him."

The writer of the Cyprian histories says that (Helen's third child was) Pleisthenes and that she took him with her to Cyprus, and that the child she bore Alexandrus was Aganus.

For it is said in the Cypria that Alexandrus came with Helen to Ilium from Sparta in three days, enjoying a favourable wind and calm sea.

For Helen had been previously carried off by Theseus, and it was in consequence of this earlier rape that Aphidna, a town in Attica, was sacked and Castor was wounded in the right thigh by Aphidnus who was king at that time. Then the Dioscuri, failing to find Theseus, sacked Athens. The story is in the Cyclic writers.

Hereas relates that Alycus was killed by Theseus himself near Aphidna, and quotes the following verses in evidence:

"In spacious Aphidna Theseus slew him in battle long ago for rich-haired Helen's sake."

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