ight. In his poem of recantation (the famous _Palinode_ now
unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative,
affirming that Helen had never been at Troy at all, and that the Trojans
had carried thither nothing but her image or _eidolon_. It is, probably,
to the excited religious feelings of Stesichorus that we owe the first
idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never
have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest.

Other versions were afterward started, forming a sort of compromise
between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen had never really
been at Troy, without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the
story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the
siege. Paris, on his departure from Sparta, had been driven thither by
storms, and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong
which he had committed toward Menelaus, had sent him away from the
country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful husband
should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the
Trojans assured them solemnly that she neither was nor ever had been in
the town; but the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent,
prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the
correctness of the statement. Menelaus did not recover Helen until, on
his return from Troy, he visited Egypt. Such was the story told by the
Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his
historicizing mind. "For if Helen had really been at Troy," he argues,
"she would certainly have been given up, even had she been mistress of
Priam himself instead of Paris: the Trojan king, with all his family and
all his subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and
irretrievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her: their
misfortune was that, while they did not possess and therefore could not
restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks that
such was the fact." Assuming the historical character of the war of
Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply; nor can we greatly
wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen's Egyptian detention, as
a substitute for the "incredible insanity" which the genuine legend
imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground and by
the same mode of reasoning, pronounced that the Trojan horse must have
been, in point of fact, a battering-