Helen

Most beautiful mortal woman, daughter of Zeus by Leda of Sparta — Zeus came to her mother as a swan, and Helen was born from one of two eggs Leda laid (Castor, Polydeuces, and Clytemnestra emerged from the same Spartan night). Wooed by every Achaean prince, she was given by Tyndareus to Menelaus on Odysseus's advice that the unsuccessful suitors first swear collective protection. Her abduction by Paris ignited the Trojan War; Homer's *Iliad* gives her remorseful and clear-eyed scenes — naming the Achaean leaders from the wall for Priam (book 3), rebuking Paris alongside Hector (book 6), and lamenting Hector with the women of Troy (book 24). Stesichorus's lost *Palinode* introduced a contrarian tradition (taken up by Euripides's *Helen*) that the real Helen never reached Troy — only an *eidolon* did.

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