Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/121

Rh Page xvi, Heaven-built Troy.]Lycophron says (v. 620.) that Diomede had, after his death, a statue erected to him in Italy, on a column formed of stones, brought as ballast in his ship, which had formed part of the walls of Troy.

Page xvi. Beautiful Helen.]Euripides supposes that Helen never was at Troy, and ascribes the substitution of a phantom in her room, to Juno. Lycophron attributes it to Proteus, but he says that Paris was not deprived of his prize, for he enjoyed the love of Helen at Salamis. They both agree that the Trojan prince only brought a cloud, a visionary resemblance of the beautiful Spartan, to Troy. . v. Helen, 33. The anonymous author of the also mentions this opinion, which the Scholiast thinks, refers to what Lycophron had said, v. ed. Morell. Paris, 1595, 12mo.

And Lycophron, says the Scholiast, took his opinion from Stesichorus, who wrote

Const. Manasses (ed. Meurs. p. 390.) makes Proteus, when Paris landed in Egypt, take Helen away from him; and he returned to Troy empty-handed, or as the text has it, having touched Helen only with the tip of his finger.

So also the Antehom. of Tzetzes, v. 148, p. 23, ed. Jacobs. Helen had five other husbands whom Lycophron enumerates. Achilles, however, who was one, wedded her in the Elysian fields.

Pausanias (lib. iii. c. 16.) says, that in the temple of Hilaira and Phœbe, an egg was suspended from the roof, bound with fillets, which was, they say, the egg that Leda brought forth. The lamentation of Hermione for the loss of her mother Helen, is the only poetical passage in the poem of Coluthus, which is little else than a cento of scraps from Homer, Q. Smyrnæus, and Musæus, v. 333, et seq. Gray, in the concluding lines of his Agrippina, says,