Leda

Queen of Sparta by her marriage to Tyndareus. Zeus came to her in the form of a swan, and the same night she also lay with her husband (Apollodorus 3.10.7). From that double coupling — some traditions carry it into a single egg, others two — she bore four children whose fates shaped the whole heroic age: Helen and Polydeuces marked as Zeus's issue with the immortal stamp, and Castor and Clytemnestra born mortal as Tyndareus's. Homer *Odyssey* 11.298-304 acknowledges only the mortal Dioscuric line and makes both sons Tyndareids; Pindar *Nemean* 10.80 gives the canonical split the Apollodoran tradition follows.

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