the woman, and none
dared upbraid her with secret taunt or open rebuke. Nay, as she had been
a goddess, they beheld her gladly, for dear and desired was she in their
sight."

Thus the Helen legend became the allegory of Greek beauty, and so
exquisite an ideal, uplifting the spirit and satisfying one's longing
for higher things, strikes a responsive chord in the hearts of lovers of
beauty in every clime. The romance of Helen, after lying dormant for
centuries, came to life again in the legend of Faust. Marlowe treated
merely the external phases of the Faust legend; Goethe allegorized the
whole, and in the loves of Faust and Helen symbolized the passion of the
Renaissance for the Greek ideal of beauty; the fruit of the union of the
two is Euphorion, the genius of romantic art. Nor has Helen exerted less
influence on modern English poets. Landor, in numerous poems, portrays
the sweetness of her character and the omnipotence of her beauty and
charm; Swinburne dwells on the innocence and joyfulness of her
childhood; Tennyson speaks of her as

"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair;"

and Andrew Lang has written a lengthy poem on the Helen legend, in which
he ascribes her frailty to the irresistible power of Aphrodite. Thus
Homer and the Homeric Age are inextricably entwined about the name of
Helen. It is significant in the study of Greek women that at the very
dawn of Greek civilization we should find such an ideal conception of
womanhood--one that universally captivates the fancy and has exerted an
influence through all succeeding ages.

Let us now pause a moment to contemplate the most lovable of all the
women of Homer, Hector's spouse, white-armed Andromache. Homer does not
devote much space to her--only the famous parting scene and the two
lamentations which she utters over her fallen husband. Yet, as the ideal
type of the soldier's wife, the loving mother, she has taken a hold on
the modern imagination and is the best known of all the female
characters of Greek epos. We know that she must have been beautiful,
though Homer uses only one epithet to describe her; we know that she
must have been brave and devoted and domestic, for Homer has painted for
us an ideal picture which portrays her with all these and many other
lovable attributes. Andromache is neither Trojan nor Greek; she is
universal; and wherever there are scenes of husband parted from wife, of
uncertainty as to the iss