her hands, and spake: 'Lo! I too give thee this gift, dear child, a
memorial of the hands of Helen, for thy bride to wear upon the day of
thy desire, even of thy marriage. But meanwhile let it lie with thy
mother in her chamber. And may joy go with thee to thy well-builded
house, and thine own country.'"

Helen's last words, in Homer, are words of good omen, her prophecy to
Telemachus that Odysseus shall return home after long wanderings, and
take vengeance on the rovers. We see Helen no more, but Homer does
not leave us in doubt as to her later fortunes. He quotes the
prophecy which Proteus, the ancient one of the sea, delivered to
Menelaus:-

"But thou, Menelaus, son of Zeus, art not ordained to die and meet
thy fate in Argos, the pasture-land of horses, but the deathless gods
will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world's end, where is
Rhadamanthus of the fair hair, where life is easiest for men. No
snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain; but alway ocean
sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill West to blow cool on men:
yea, for thou hast Helen to wife, and thereby they deem thee to be
son of Zeus."

We must believe, with Isocrates, that Helen was translated, with her
lord, to that field of Elysium, "where falls not hail, or rain, or
any snow." This version of the end of Helen's history we have
adopted, but many other legends were known in Greece. Pausanias
tells us that, in a battle between the Crotoniats and the Locrians,
one Leonymus charged the empty space in the Locrian line, which was
entrusted to the care of the ghost of Aias. Leonymus was wounded by
the invisible spear of the hero, and could not be healed of the hurt.