Helen Of Troy ...the most inspired character in all literature

Helen
was the most beautiful woman in the entire Greek known world. She was
the daughter of the god Zeus and of Leda, and wife of the King of
Sparta. The hero Theseus, who hoped in time to marry her, abducted her
in childhood but her brothers rescued her. Because Helen was courted by
so many prominent heroes, Menelaus made all of them swear to abide by
Helen's choice of a husband, and to defend that husband's rights should
anyone attempt to take Helen away by force.

Helen's beauty was
the direct cause of the Trojan War. The ten-year conflict began when the
three goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite asked the Trojan prince
Paris to choose the most beautiful among them. After each of the
goddesses had attempted to influence his decision, Paris chose
Aphrodite, who had promised him the world's most beautiful woman.
Soon
afterward Paris sailed to Greece, where Helen and her husband
hospitably received him, Menelaus, king of Sparta. Helen, as the fairest
of her sex, was the prize destined for Paris. Although she was living
happily with Menelaus, Helen fell under the influence of Aphrodite and
allowed Paris to persuade her to run off with him, and he carried her
off to Troy. Menelaus then called upon the Greek leaders, including
Helen's former suitors, to help him rescue his wife, and with few
exceptions they responded to his call. Agamemnon his brother led the
forces to Troy. During ten years of conflict, the Greeks and Trojans
fought irresolutely. Then Paris and Menelaus agreed to meet in single
combat between the opposing armies, and Helen was summoned to view the
duel. As she approached the tower, where the aged King Priam and his
counselors sat, her beauty was still so matchless and her sorrow so
great that no one could feel for her anything but compassion. Although
the Greeks claimed the victory in the battle between the two warriors,
Aphrodite helped Paris escape from the enraged Menelaus by enveloping
him in a cloud and taking him safely to Helen's chamber, where Aphrodite
compelled the unwilling Helen to lie with him.
Unable to capture the
city after a siege of ten years, the Greeks resorted to strategy.
Agamemnon's forces, namely Odysseus, came up with a plan. They sailed
away and left the Trojan horse, filled with armed warriors, on the
shore. Sinon, a Greek spy, persuaded the Trojans to take the horse into
the city, convincing them that to do so would mysteriously make Troy
invulnerable. That night Sinon let out the armed Greek troops; killing
the guards, they opened the gates to the Greeks, and Troy was captured
and burned.

After the death of Paris and the fall of Troy,
Menelaus was reunited with his wife, and they soon left Troy for their
native Greece. They had, however, incurred the displeasure of the gods
and were therefore driven by storms from shore to shore in the
Mediterranean Sea, stopping in Cyprus, Phoenicia, and Egypt. Arriving at
length in Sparta, Menelaus and Helen resumed their reign and lived the
rest of their days in royal splendor. They had one daughter, Hermione.

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