Helen of Troy - Part 4

The siege of Troy truly occurred but no one knows the real reason why. Most people from the informal poll taken over the last three weeks on this page, believe she was the one who instigated the Trojan War. However, we will never know for certain since time has erased much of personal history.

One version, not often heard of, and not found in the Homeric epics, was that Helen never went to Troy. Rather, Hermes took the real Helen to Egypt while Paris took . . . can you guess who he took along with him to Troy? If you said, Helen's double, you are right!

The siege of Troy was a long, drawn out affair. It took ten years for the Greeks to make any head way. When the final moments came, the Greeks actually had to resort to trickery. They built a huge wooden horse and when it was ready, many soldiers readied themselves inside. The rest of the Greek army sailed away. On seeing this, the Trojans were relieved that the war had ended relatively painlessly. Thinking that the Greeks had left the wooden horse as a gift, they went outside the gates, rolled it inside the gates and that's when they received a surprise that cost them greatly. Greek men, among them Menelaus and Odysseus, jumped out. They set fire to the city of Troy, killed most of the men and captured the women and made slaves out of them.

What happened to Helen? It is said that Odysseus discovered her and returned her to her husband, Menelaus. In order for her husband to accept her back into his arms, Odysseus made up a story that Helen had helped him to steal a valuable Trojan statue. Believing she was loyal to the Greeks despite what she had been through, Menelaus took her back. It took them seven years to return to Sparta and the pair lived happily ever after.

Naturally, you'll ask, "But if Helen lived happily ever after, then what happened to her lover, Paris?" He was killed during the siege of Troy. An old Greek prophecy had said that they would never win a victory over Troy without Philoctetes, who a son of Priam, a principal Trojan prophet. This man also happened to have the bow and arrows that rightfully belonged to Hercules. He was tricked into returning to the Trojan War after he had been isolated by the Greeks on an island. Philoctetes killed Paris with Hercules' bow and arrow.

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