Helen's Husbands
Her many sexual partners – the hero Theseus, her husband Menelaus, her lover Paris, her second Trojan husband Deiphobus, and (some whispered) Achilles after both he and Helen were dead – are trotted out by ancient and modern authors alike as the gossip columns would the client-list of a high-class prostitute.
Menelaus (1), king of Sparta and husband of Helen | Oxford Classical Dictionary.
Paris appeared. As was customary by the laws of hospitality in ancient Greece, they gave him lodging and entertained him with banquets and gifts. Paris and Helen fell madly in love from the moment they met. Helen escaped with Paris and together they went to Troy.
Helen was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta (a fact Aphrodite neglected to mention), so Paris had to raid Menelaus's house to steal Helen from him—according to some accounts, she fell in love with Paris and left willingly.
Menelaus had meant to kill Helen because she had deserted him. When he saw her again, however, he was overcome by her beauty and forgave her. After the Greek victory Menelaus and Helen returned to Sparta, where they lived happily until their deaths.
Family. Helen and Paris had three sons, Bunomus, Aganus ("gentle"), Idaeus and a daughter also called Helen.
Helen of Troy, Greek Helene, in Greek legend, the most beautiful woman of Greece and the indirect cause of the Trojan War. She was daughter of Zeus, either by Leda or by Nemesis, and sister of the Dioscuri. As a young girl, she was carried off by Theseus, but she was rescued by her brothers.
Troy shows Helen growing closer to Andromache and the other women in Troy, but The Trojan Women shows her as being shunned by them. Another variation of Helen's fate shows up in Euripides' Orestes, which claims that Helen was rescued by the god Apollo immediately after the fall of Troy, and was taken to Mount Olympus.
After the fall of Troy, Menelaus recovered Helen and brought her home. Menelaus was a prominent figure in the Iliad and the Odyssey, where he was promised a place in Elysium after his death because he was married to a daughter of Zeus.
According to the Odyssey, Menelaus had only one child by Helen, a daughter Hermione, and an illegitimate son Megapenthes by a slave. Other sources mention other sons of Menelaus by either Helen, or slaves.
Assisted by Aphrodite, Paris convinced Helen to leave her husband and took her back with him to Troy. Menelaus and Agamemnon went after them, and the war that resulted lasted for ten years. Finally, due to Odysseus' craftiness in devising the Trojan horse, the Trojans were defeated and Helen was returned to Menelaus.
The story of Helen leaving Menelaus has been portrayed in many ways; from her being kidnapped by Paris, to her willingly deserting her husband in interest of the King of Sparta, Paris himself.
What did Helen look like? Today's movies and paintings make her a blonde, but ancient Greek paintings show her as a brunette. Homer merely tells us she was “white-armed, long robed, and richly tressed,” leaving the rest up to our imagination. Ancient artist's rendering of Helen, with Eros urging her on.
Helen of Sparta became Helen of Troy when she eloped with (or was abducted by) Paris, a Trojan prince. She remained in Troy until the end of the war, at which point she went back to Sparta with her husband, Menelaus.
The goddess of sex, love, and passion is Aphrodite, and she is considered the most beautiful Greek goddess in Mythology. There are two versions of how Aphrodite was born.
So Helen's daughter may have been murdered to get her mother back. Most versions of Helen's tale, though, feature Hermione as Helen's only child. In the eyes of the heroic Greeks, that would've made Helen a failure at her one and only job: producing a male child for her husband.
Achilles, distraught and wanting to avenge the death of his friend Patroclus, returns to the war and kills Hector. He drags Hector's body behind his chariot to the camp and then around the tomb of Patroclus. Aphrodite and Apollo, however, preserve the body from corruption and mutilation.
Troy (Greek: Τροία, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 Truwiša/Taruiša) or Ilion (Greek: Ίλιον, Hittite: 𒌷𒃾𒇻𒊭 Wiluša) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey.
The poet Homer probably wrote the epic in the eighth or ninth century, B.C., several hundred years after the war is supposed to have taken place. Much of it is no doubt fantasy. There is, for example, no evidence that Achilles or even Helen existed.
Helen was widely considered the most beautiful of all mortal women. In his Works and Days, Hesiod describes her as "fair-haired Helen" (165). Homer repeatedly describes her in his works as "Helen of the lovely hair" (Odyssey,15:58), "white-armed Helen" (Iliad, 3:119) and "Helen, queen among women" (Iliad, 3:422).
According to most myths, Helen of Troy was born in Sparta and called Helen of Sparta until just before the beginning of the Trojan War. When she left Sparta and became married to Paris of Troy, she became known as Helen of Troy.
Hermione eventually joined her parents in Elysium. A scholiast for Nemean X says that, according to Ibycus, Hermione married Diomedes after his apotheosis and that he now lives with her uncles, the Dioscuri, as an immortal god.
When Helen was only twelve years old, the Greek hero Theseus (pronounced THEE-see-uhs) kidnapped her and planned to make her his wife. He took her to Attica (pronounced AT-i-kuh) in Greece and locked her away under the care of his mother.
The Children of Helen
It is also said occasionally that Helen became pregnant by Paris during her time in Troy and became mother of Bunomu, Corythus, Aganus, Idaeus, and of a daughter Helena; all though were said to have been dead by the time Troy fell.