The most beautiful woman in the world was already married.
She was Helen, who was now married to King Menelaus of Sparta. With Aphrodite's help, Paris sailed to Sparta as the Trojan ambassador. Helen's husband made him more than welcome, giving him feasts in his honor. Menelaus did not suspect that he had designs on his wife but Aphrodite once again encouraged Paris. She suggested that he make his love clear to Helen and then elope with her. He did this and the most beautiful woman in the world eloped with a man she hardly knew. She was married but to compound the problem, they stole many of Sparta's wonderful treasures. They returned to Troy where they intended to live happily ever after.
But such was not to be the case. Instead, Troy, along with all its inhabitants including Helen and Paris, were thrust into a long-enduring war - the stuff of which legends and epic poems are made of. Menelaus sought revenge and the return of Sparta's treasures and set out on the war path.
Authors and historians, both ancient and modern, dispute over what kind of woman Helen actually was. To some, she is a woman who dared the conventions of her time. Women were to be seen and not heard, and they were not to intrude in political or male affairs. Helen refused to keep her place as Menelaus' wife and dared to make a choice of her own - to fall in love and elope with a man other than her husband.
Other historians claim in a negative sense that Helen was a shameful woman, who tricked her husband, who flaunted what it meant to be a Greek woman and who caused the death of many thousands of soldiers, both Greek and Spartan. To yet other historians, she is the type of woman who bring trial and tribulation to all men, because she is seen as a captive and helpless. Since she eloped with Paris, it is claimed she acted in lust and this more than anything else, embodied her as an antithesis to what a perfect Greek woman and wife should be.
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