in the Scaean gate, and
prophecy was fulfilled. He himself fell by another shaft, perhaps the
poisoned shaft of Philoctetes. In the fourth or fifth century of our era
a late poet, Quintus Smyrnaeus, described Paris's journey, in quest of a
healing spell, to the forsaken OEnone, and her refusal to aid him; her
death on his funeral pyre. Quintus is a poet of extraordinary merit for
his age, and scarcely deserves the reproach of laziness affixed on him by
Lord Tennyson.

On the whole, Homer seems to have a kind of half-contemptuous liking for
the beautiful Paris. Later art represents him as a bowman of girlish
charms, wearing a Phrygian cap. There is a late legend that he had a
son, Corythus, by OEnone, and that he killed the lad in a moment of
jealousy, finding him with Helen and failing to recognise him. On the
death of Paris, perhaps by virtue of the custom of the Levirate, Helen
became the wife of his brother, Deiphobus.

How her reconciliation with Menelaus was brought about we do not learn
from Homer, who, in the "Odyssey," accepts it as a fact. The earliest
traditional hint on the subject is given by the famous "Coffer of
Cypselus," a work of the seventh century, B.C., which Pausanias saw at
Olympia, in A.D. 174. Here, on a band of ivory, was represented, among
other scenes from the tale of Troy, Menelaus rushing, sword in hand, to
slay Helen. According to Stesichorus, the army was about to stone her
after the fall of Ilios, but relented, amazed by her beauty.

Of her later life in Lacedaemon, nothing is known on really ancient
authority, and later traditions vary. The Spartans showed her sepulchre
and her shrine at Therapnae, where she was worshipped. Herodotus tells
us how Helen, as a Goddess, appeared in her temple and healed a deformed
child, making her the fairest woman in Sparta, in the reign of Ariston.
It may, perhaps, be conjectured that in Sparta, Helen occupied the place
of a local Aphrodite. In another late story she dwells in the isle of
Leuke, a shadowy bride of the shadowy Achilles. The mocking Lucian, in
his _Vera Historia_, meets Helen in the Fortunate Islands, whence she
elopes with one of his companions. Again, the sons of Menelaus, by a
concubine, were said to have driven Helen from Sparta on the death of her
lord, and she was murdered in Rhodes, by the vengeance of Polyxo, whose
husband fell at Troy. But, among all these inventions, that of Homer
stands out pre-eminent. Helen a