THE THIRD BEFORE THE PALACE OF MENELAUS IN SPARTA Enter HELENA, with a chorus of captive Trojan women PENTHALIS, leader of the chorus HELENA

The same testimony gives Homer of the old men of Troy, that were spectators of that single combat between Paris and Menelaus at the Seian gate, when Helen stood in presence; they said all, the war was worthily prolonged and undertaken for her sake.

Not only the relation of Odysseus to Penelope and of Hector to Andromache, but those of Achilles to Briseis, and of Menelaus to the returned Helen, are full of dignity and attachment.

For when as Troy was taken, and the wars ended (as Clemens Alexandrinus quotes out of Euripides) angry Menelaus with rage and fury armed, came with his sword drawn, to have killed Helen, with his own hands, as being the sole cause of all those wars and miseries: but when he saw her fair face, as one amazed at her divine beauty, he let his weapon fall, and embraced her besides, he had no power to strike so sweet a creature.