the conduct of Paris, and they advised the king to send Helen back to
Sparta. But Priam would not listen to their prudent advice, and so she
remained in Troy.

The great beauty of Helen has been celebrated by poets in ancient and
modern times. Tennyson, in his "Dream of Fair Women," introduces her as
one of the forms of the vision he describes:

"I saw a lady within call,
Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there;
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair."




III. THE LEAGUE AGAINST TROY.


The carrying off of Helen was the cause of the Trojan War. Menelaus,
upon hearing what Paris had done, immediately returned to Sparta, and
began to make preparations to avenge the wrong. He called upon the other
kings and princes of Greece to join him with their armies and fleets in
a war against Troy. They were bound to do this by an oath they had taken
at the time of the marriage of Helen and Menelaus.

Helen was the daughter of Tynʹda-rus, who was king of Sparta before
Menelaus. Some say that she was the daughter of Jupiter, and that
Tyndarus was her stepfather. But from her infancy she was brought up at
the royal palace of Sparta as the daughter of Tyndarus and his wife,