She
had sought sanctuary at the altar of Athene, where Ajax, the son of
Oileus, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon
himself and upon the army the serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch
that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to death.
Andromache and Helenus were both given to Neoptolemus, who, according to
the _Ilias Minor_, carried away also AEneas as his captive.
Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus; she accompanied him back
to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and dignity,
passing afterward to a happy immortality in the Elysian fields. She was
worshipped as a goddess, with her brothers, the Dioscuri, and her
husband, having her temple, statue, and altar at Therapnae and elsewhere.
Various examples of her miraculous intervention were cited among the
Greeks. The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to denounce her,
conjointly with her sister Clytemnestra, in a tone of rude and
plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripides and Lycophron
afterward, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with
which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches
against her except from her own lips.
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