In the “Odyssey,” she is at home again, playing the gracious part of hostess to Odysseus’s wandering son, pouring into the bowl the magic herb of Egypt, “which brings forgetfulness of sorrow.”  The wandering son of Odysseus departs with a gift for his bride, “to wear upon the day of her desire, a memorial of the hands of Helen,” the beautiful hands, that in Troy or Argos were never idle.

Of Helen, from Homer, we know no more.  Grace, penitence in exile, peace at home, these are the portion of her who set East and West at war and ruined the city of Priam of the ashen spear.  As in the strange legend preserved by Servius, the commentator on Virgil, who tells us that Helen wore a red “star-stone,” whence fell gouts of blood that vanished ere they touched her swan’s neck; so all the blood shed for her sake leaves Helen stainless.  Of Homer’s Helen we know no more.

The later Greek fancy, playing about this form of beauty, wove a myriad of new fancies, or disinterred from legend old beliefs untouched by Homer.  Helen was the daughter of the Swan—­that is, as was later explained, of Zeus in the shape of a swan.  Her loveliness, even in childhood, plunged her in many adventures.  Theseus carried her off; her brothers rescued her.  All the princes of Achaea competed for her hand, having first taken an oath to avenge whomsoever she might choose for her husband.  The choice fell on the correct and honourable, but rather inconspicuous, Menelaus, and they dwelt in Sparta, beside the Eurotas, “in a hollow of the rifted hills.”  Then, from across the sea, came the beautiful and fatal Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy.  As a child, Paris had been exposed on the mountains, because his mother dreamed that she brought forth a firebrand.  He was rescued and fostered by a shepherd; he tended the flocks; he loved the daughter of a river god, OEnone.  Then came the naked Goddesses, to seek at the hand of the most beautiful of mortals the prize of beauty.  Aphrodite won the golden apple from the queen of heaven, Hera, and from the Goddess of war and wisdom, Athena, bribing the judge by the promise of the fairest wife in the world.  No incident is more frequently celebrated in poetry and art, to which it lends such gracious opportunities.  Paris was later recognised as of the royal blood of Troy.  He came to Lacedaemon on an embassy, he saw Helen, and destiny had its way.

Concerning the details in this most ancient love-story, we learn nothing from Homer, who merely makes Paris remind Helen of their bridal night in the isle of Cranae.  But from Homer we learn that Paris carried off not only the wife of Menelaus, but many of his treasures.  To the poet of the “Iliad,” the psychology of the wooing would have seemed a simple matter.  Like the later vase-painters, he would have shown us Paris beside Helen, Aphrodite standing near, accompanied by the figure of Peitho—­Persuasion.