COURTING DISASTER
Perhaps because of her divine heritage, Helen blossomed into womanhood early and very beautifully. By the time she was twelve she was already considered to be the most beautiful of mortal women, and even at this early stage in life her extreme good looks were causing trouble. Theseus, the fifty-something king of Athens and legendary slayer of the Minotaur, was so taken with Helen's looks that he decided to take Helen, which he did. Theseus and his friend Peirithoös seized Helen as she was dancing in the temple of Artemis Orthia and carried her off towards Athens. After losing their pursuers at Tegea they cast lots to see which of them would get the honor of deflowering Helen (despite the fact that she was under-age, even by the lax standards of the time), with the understanding that the victor would aid the loser in acquiring a wife of his choice in a similar manner. Theseus won and, after consummating their one-sided relationship, hid Helen at Aphidnæ.
Just as Helen had blossomed early into her womanly endowments, her brothers Kastor and Polydeukes (known collectively as the Dioscuri) had burst into all the manly virtues while still young. Being manly men, they immediately raised an army and besieged Athens demanding the return of their sister. When the people of Athens replied (truthfully) that Helen wasn't there and that they didn't know where she was, the Spartan army proceeded to attack Athens and lay waste to the surrounding countryside.
This madness was ended by a man named Akademus, who knew of Helen's concealment in Aphidnæ. Rather than see the Athenians slaughtered for the lust of their king, Akademus told the Dioscuri where they could find their sister. In return for this favor Akademus was highly honored by the Dioscuri while they lived and in later times whenever the Lakedaimonians (Spartans) attacked Attica they would spare the lands of Akademus, known as "Akademia". (Centuries later, Plato would build a school there and call it "the Academy".) While Theseus was making his disastrous trip to the House of Hades the Dioscuri attacked Aphidnæ and rescued Helen. Then they engaged in a little payback for Theseus' audacity. First they enslaved his mother, Æthra, as Helen's handmaiden. Æthra was stuck with this thankless job until the end of the Trojan War. Then they placed Menestheus upon the throne of Athens, so that when Theseus returned from the Underworld he had to go into exile. Other than these bits of personal vengeance, the Dioscuri treated the defeated Athenians rather well, forbearing to pillage and lay waste to their city and only demanding initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. The chaos surrounding this fight for Helen was just a taste of what was to come about later as a result of Helen's good looks.
Despite the fact that her abduction by Theseus had left Helen "damaged goods", when Tyndareos announced that he was accepting suits for his daughter's hand in marriage the response was overwhelming. Virtually every king in Hellas wanted the prestige of having the most beautiful wife in the world. Although Tyndareos wasn't exactly the sharpest spear on the rack, even he could see that this was a disaster waiting to happen. By picking one man as Helen's husband he would automatically alienate every other major king in the area. Worse, the incident with Theseus had proven that the kings not chosen would most likely resort to war and treachery against the chosen suitor in order to claim Helen for themselves. It looked as if war and bloodshed were destined to follow Helen for the rest of her life.
After Tyndareos had stalled them for several months the suitors started getting restless and demanded that a decision be made. This really put Tyndareos between a rock and a hard place. Making a decision was likely to cause a war, but putting the suitors off much longer was likely to cause a war as well. At this point he was offered a way out by the cleverest of Helen's suitors, Odysseus of Ithaka. Odysseus is described by Homer as "the man who is never at a loss" and was probably the smartest and most subtle man of his generation. He proposed that Tyndareos force the suitors for Helen's hand to swear an oath before Zeus to protect whoever was chosen as Helen's husband from anyone who tried to interfere with their marriage. Anyone refusing to take the oath would be taken out of consideration as a suitor. Tyndareos was delighted with this solution and immediately had all the suitors swear the oath proposed by Odysseus. It was such a relief to find a solution to this problem that Tyndareos decided to quit while he was ahead and just wash his hands of the whole affair, so he did something unprecedented: he let Helen choose her own husband.
The list of potential husbands was impressive. Some of the most notable of the suitors were Diomedes (the greatest warrior of the time), Odysseus of Ithaka (the cleverest man of the time, though a little short of stature), Telamonian Aias (a huge wall of a man and probably the strongest mortal since Herakles), Lokrian Aias (a borderline psychotic and mighty warrior), Idomeneus (wealthy overlord of Krete), Philoktetes (best friend of Herakles and the inheritor of his bow), Tlepolemos (one of Herakles' sons), and Agamemnon (son of Atreus and nominal over-king of the Achæans). Despite all these highly qualified candidates Helen chose a man of relatively minor accomplishments: Agamemnon's brother Menelaos. There were at least two main reasons motivating Helen's choice in this matter. First, she didn't want anyone who would divert attention from where it belonged, on her. And secondly, her abduction and rape by Theseus had given Helen very definite and very negative feelings about great warriors and mighty kings, so Menelaos was perfect. He wasn't a king (though his brother was) and although he was a decent warrior he wasn't in the top rank with men like Diomedes or Telamonian Aias.
Despite their family history, the Atreidæ ("sons of Atreus") had a very good relationship. Instead of being like their father and uncle [see Chapter One], Agamemnon and Menelaos were two brothers who would stick together no matter what. In general, Agamemnon's low self esteem would not allow him to concede defeat graciously, but when his brother was the victor in the contest for Helen's hand he was content enough to settle for second place. In this particular instance "second place" consisted of Helen's sister, Klytæmnestra. The idea that Agamemnon "settled" for Klytæmnestra instead of Helen did little to endear him to his new wife and probably laid the first stone in the foundation of their later marital difficulties.
With disaster seemingly averted with the settlement of Helen's nuptials, life took on an idyllic character. Menelaos stayed in Sparta with Helen and eventually inherited the kingship upon the death of Tyndareos. (Kastor and Polydeukes were usually too busy killing things to deal with the day-to-day responsibilities of royalty.) Agamemnon returned to Mycenæ with Klytæmnestra and all was peaceful . . . for a while.