288 HISTORY OF GREECE. Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodite, who promised him in recompense the possession of Helena, wife of the Spartan Menelaus, the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the instance of Aphrodite, ships were built for him, and he embarked on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to his native city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Helenus, and the always neglected wamings of Kassan- dra.i Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Menelaus as well as by Kastor and Pollux, and was enabled to present the rich gifts which he had brought to Helen. 2 Menelaus then departed to Krete, leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan guest a favorable moment which was employed by Aphrodite to bring about the intrigue and the elopement. Paris carried away with him both Helen and a large sum of money belonging to Menelaus made a prosperous voyage to Troy and arrived there safely with his prize on the third day. 3 Menelaus, informed by Iris in Krete of the perfidious return made by Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and seriously maintained, as it seems, by Chrysippus, ap. Plutarch. Stoic. Rep. p. 1049 : but the poets do not commonly go back farther than the passion of Paris for Helen (Theognis, 1232 ; Simonid. Amorg. Fragm. 6, 118). The judgment of Paris was one of the scenes represented on the ancient chest of Kypselus at Olympia (Pausan. v. 19, 1). 1 Argument of the '707 KvTrpta (ap. Duntzer, p. 10). These warnings of Kassandra form the subject of the obscure and affected poem of Lycophron. J According to the Cyprian Verses, Helena was daughter of Zeus by Ne- mesis, who had in vain tried to evade the connection (Athenae. viii. 334). Hesiod (Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150) represented her as daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, an oceanic nymph: Sappho (Fragm. 17, Schneidewin), Pausa- nias (i. 33, 7), Apollodorus (iii. 10, 7), and Isokrates (Encom. Helen, v. ii. p. 366, Auger) reconcile the pretensions of Leda and Nemesis to a sort of joint maternity (see Heinrichsen, De Carminibns Cypriis, p. 45-46J. 3 Herodot. ii. 117. He gives distinctly the assertion of the Cyprian Verses, which contradicts the argument of the poem as it appears in Proclus (Fragm. 1. 1.), according to which latter, Paris is driven out of his course by a storm and captures the city of Sidon. Homer (Iliad, vi. 293) seems however to countenance the statement in the argument. That Paris was guilty of robbery, as well as of the abduction of Helen, is several times mentioned in the Iliad (iii. 144; vii. 350-363), also in the argu- ment of the Cyprian Verses (sec JEschyl. Agam. 534)
