From the earliest times, even from times before Homer (whose audience is
supposed to know all about Helen), the imagination of Greece, and later,
the imagination of the civilised world, has played around Helen, devising
about her all that possibly could be devised. She was the daughter of
Zeus by Nemesis, or by Leda; or the daughter of the swan, or a child of
the changeful moon, brooding on "the formless and multi-form waters." She
could speak in the voices of all women, hence she was named "Echo," and
we might fancy that, like the witch of the Brocken, she could appear to
every man in the likeness of his own first love. The ancient Egyptians
either knew her, or invented legends of her to amuse the inquiring
Greeks. She had touched at Sidon, and perhaps Astaroth is only her
Sidonian name. Whatever could be told of beauty, in its charm, its
perils, the dangers with which it surrounds its lovers, the purity which
it retains, unsmirched by all the sins that are done for beauty's sake,
could be told of Helen.
Like a golden cup, as M. Paul de St. Victor says, she was carried from
lips to lips of heroes, but the gold remains unsullied and unalloyed. To
heaven she returns again, to heaven which is her own, and looks down
serenely on men slain, and women widowed, and sinking ships, and burning
towns. Yet with death she gives immortality by her kiss, and Paris and
Menelaus live, because they have touched the lips of Helen.
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