Helen Of Troy: The Face That Launched One Thousand Ships

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was said to have been blinded for saying that Helen went to Troy and only recovered his sight when he wrote the following Palinode (recantation):
No, that story is not true
You did not sail in the well-decked ships
Nor did you reach the citadel of Troy....

The alternative story was that Paris took a phantom off to Troy while the real Helen spent the whole period of the war in Egypt. This story is told in Euripides' Helen.
Helen (often called "Helen of Troy") was the daughter of Leda and Zeus, and was the sister of the Dioscuri and Clytemnestra. Since Zeus visited Leda in the form of a swan, Helen was often presented as being born from an egg. She was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. When Helen was still a child, she was abducted by Theseus. Since she was not yet old enough to be married, he sent her to Aphidnae and left her in the care of his mother, Aethra. The Dioscuri rescued her and returned her to her home in Lacedaemon, taking Aethra prisoner at the ...

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a beautiful and wanton woman who brought disaster upon those around her. In still other accounts, she never went to Troy at all: Hermes, acting on Zeus's orders, spirited her away to Egypt and fashioned a phantom out of clouds to accompany Paris; the real Helen was reunited with Menelaus after the Trojan War
Perhaps one of the most well known tales of ancient Greek mythology is that of Helen of Troy. Many believe that her spellbinding beauty played a key role in one of the most famous battles of all time – the Trojan War. She symbolizes the Greeks’ view that attractiveness, although a superficial aspect of someone, is a strong force which can bring with it the power to corrupt ...

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