Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/339

 HELEN STE SICHORUS. 307 and made sensible of his impiety; t>ut having repented and com posed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was per- mitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been to Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image or eidolon. 1 It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest. Other versions were afterwards started, forming a sort of com- promise between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen had never really been at Troy, without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on his de- parture from Sparta, had been driven thither by storms, and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he contra Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis Helena non fuisset, tot sine dubio seculis durare non posset." So Xenophon, after enumerating many heroes of different ages, all pupils of Cheiron, says that the life of Cheiron suffices for all, he being brother of Zeus ("De Venatione, c. I). The daughters of Tyndareus are Klytoemnestra, Helen, and Timandra, all open to the charge advanced by Stesichorus : see about Timandra, wife of the Tegeatc Echemus, the new fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue, recently restored by Geel (Gb'ttling, Pref. Hesiod. p. Ixi.J. It is curious to read, in Bayle's article Hel&ne, his critical discussion of the adventures ascribed to her as if they were genuine matter of history, more or less correctly reported. 1 Plato, Kepublic. ix. p. 587. c. 10. uairep rb 7% 'Elevrie eldulov LTI)- ai^opof (j>ijffi Trept.[ta%i)rov yEveafiai iv Tpoir/, ayvoia TOV dA^tfovc. Isokrat. Encom. Helen, t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Phacdr. c. 44. p. 243- 244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Conon, Narr. 18; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 323. Tov fiev Sr^tn^opov kv ry varepov udy T^ejeiv, wf rb irapa- irav ov6e irbeiiaeiev i] 'Ehevi) ovAdfioae. Horace, Od. i. 17, Epod. xvii. 42. " Infamis Helenas Castor offensus vice, Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece, Adempta vati reddidere lumina." Pausan. iii. 19, 5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point of view of the Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with particular tenderness : Deiphobus imputes to her the basest treachery (JEneid, vL 511. "sceliu vritiale Laexnce. ;" compare ii. 567 ).