C., which Pausanias saw at
Olympia, in A.D. 174. Here, on a band of ivory, was represented, among
other scenes from the tale of Troy, Menelaus rushing, sword in hand, to
slay Helen. According to Stesichorus, the army was about to stone her
after the fall of Ilios, but relented, amazed by her beauty.
Of her later life in Lacedaemon, nothing is known on really ancient
authority, and later traditions vary. The Spartans showed her sepulchre
and her shrine at Therapnae, where she was worshipped. Herodotus tells
us how Helen, as a Goddess, appeared in her temple and healed a deformed
child, making her the fairest woman in Sparta, in the reign of Ariston.
It may, perhaps, be conjectured that in Sparta, Helen occupied the place
of a local Aphrodite. In another late story she dwells in the isle of
Leuke, a shadowy bride of the shadowy Achilles. The mocking Lucian, in
his _Vera Historia_, meets Helen in the Fortunate Islands, whence she
elopes with one of his companions. Again, the sons of Menelaus, by a
concubine, were said to have driven Helen from Sparta on the death of her
lord, and she was murdered in Rhodes, by the vengeance of Polyxo, whose
husband fell at Troy. But, among all these inventions, that of Homer
stands out pre-eminent. Helen and Menelaus do not die, they are too near
akin to Zeus; they dwell immortal, not among the shadows of heroes and of
famous ladies dead and gone, but in Elysium, the paradise at the world's
end, unvisited by storms.
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