Helen - Greek HELENE, in Greek legend, the most beautiful woman of Greece and
the indirect cause of the Trojan War. She was daughter of Zeus, either by Leda
or by Nemesis, and sister of the Dioscuri. She was also the sister of Clytemnestra,
who married Agamemnon,
and wife of Menelaus,
Agamemnon's younger brother. During an absence of Menelaus, however, Helen fled
to Troy
with Paris,
son of the Trojan king Priam;
when Paris was slain, she married his brother Deïphobus, whom she betrayed
to Menelaus when Troy was
subsequently captured. Menelaus and she then returned
to Sparta, where they lived happily until their deaths. According to a variant
of the story, Helen, in widowhood, was driven out by her stepsons and fled to
Rhodes, whose queen, Polyxo, hanged her in revenge for the loss of her husband
Tlepolemus in the Trojan War.