All of her suitors were required to swear an oath (known as the Oath of Tyndareus) promising to provide military assistance to the winning suitor, if Helen were ever stolen from him. When Amy decides to finally break off the affair, Pete will not leave her alone and his actions become even more irrational and possessive than they were before. Helen was also worshiped in Attica along with her brothers, and on Rhodes as Helen Dendritis (Helen of the Trees, Έλένα Δενδρῖτις); she was a vegetation or a fertility goddess. The German poet and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe re-envisioned the meeting of Faust and Helen. Helen frequently appeared in Athenian comedies of the fifth century BC as a caricature of Pericles's mistress Aspasia.

Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for a Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta. During the contest, Castor and Pollux had a prominent role in dealing with the suitors, although the final decision was in the hands of Tyndareus. Despite its name, both the shrine and the cult originally belonged to Helen; Menelaus was added later as her husband. This version is contradicted by two of Euripides' other tragedies Electra, which predates The Trojan Women, and Helen, as Helen is described as being in Egypt during the events of the Trojan War in each.Cairns, Sextus Propertius, 421–422; Hughes, Helen of Troy, 60; Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 28: "In the Roman period, because Sparta was a destination for tourists, the characteristics that made Sparta distinctive were emphasized. The basic form of the book is to juxtapose two or more authors (namely feminist-psychoanalysts such as Irigary, Montreley, Mitchell, Cixous, Lacan, Sade, etc.

In Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy, the union of Helen and Faust becomes a complex allegory of the meeting of the classical-ideal and modern worlds. Upon seeing Helen, Faustus speaks the famous line: "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium. As depicted in that account, she and Menelaus were completely reconciled and had a harmonious married life—he holding no grudge at her having run away with a lover and she feeling no restraint in telling anecdotes of her life inside besieged Troy. Eidolon is also present in Stesichorus' account, but not in Herodotus' rationalizing version of the myth.Those two chapters alone make this book a classic, a sensitive reading of Lacan's theory (supplemented, in Ch. While the "theory" in this text of Gallop's has not aged gracefully, the writing stands several cuts above contemporaries and others who have taken up her mantle. However, the meeting with Helen in Marlowe's play and the ensuing temptation are not unambiguously positive, since they are closely followed by Faust's death and descent to Hell.