(Pausanias, v. 18), "Menelaus with a sword in his hand, rushing on to
kill Helen--clearly at the sacking of Ilios." How Menelaus passed
from a desire to kill Helen to his absolute complacency in the
Odyssey, Homer does not tell us. According to a statement attributed
to Stesichorus (635, 554, B.C.?), the army of the Achaeans purposed
to stone Helen, but was overawed and compelled to relent by her
extraordinary beauty: "when they beheld her, they cast down their
stones on the ground." It may be conjectured that the reconciliation
followed this futile attempt at punishing a daughter of Zeus. Homer,
then, leaves us without information about the adventures of Helen,
between the sack of Tiny and the reconciliation with Menelaus. He
hints that she was married to Deiphobus, after the death of Paris,
and alludes to the tradition that she mimicked the voices of the
wives of the heroes, and so nearly tempted them to leave their ambush
in the wooden horse. But in the fourth book of the Odyssey, when
Telemachus visits Lacedaemon, he finds Helen the honoured wife of
Menelaus, rich in the marvellous gifts bestowed on her, in her
wanderings from Troy, by the princes of Egypt.

"While yet he pondered these things in his mind and in his heart,
Helen came forth from her fragrant vaulted chamber, like Artemis of
the golden arrows; and with her came Adraste and set for her the
well-wrought chair, and Alcippe bare a rug of soft wool, and Phylo
bare a silver basket which Alcandre gave her, the wife of Polybus,
who dwelt in Thebes of Egypt, where is the chiefest store of wealth
in the houses. He gave two silver baths to Menelaus, and tripods
twain, and ten talents of gold. And besides all this, his wife
bestowed on Helen lovely gifts; a golden distaff did she give, and a
silver basket with wheels beneath, and the rims thereof were finished
with gold. This it was that the handmaid Phylo bare and set beside