The first name in romance, the most ancient and the most enduring, is that of Argive Helen. During three thousand years fair women have been born, have lived, and been loved, "that there might be a song in the ears of men of later time," but, compared to the renown of Helen, their glory is dim. Cleopatra, who held the world's fate in her hands, and lay in the arms of Caesar; Mary Stuart (_Maria Verticordia_), for whose sake, as a northern novelist tells, peasants have lain awake, sorrowing that she is dead; Agnes Sorel, Fair Rosamond, la belle Stuart, "the Pompadour and the Parabere," can still enchant us from the page of history and chronicle. "Zeus gave them beauty, which naturally rules even strength itself," to quote the Greek orator on the mistress of them all, on her who, having never lived, can never die, the Daughter of the Swan. While Helen enjoys this immortality, and is the ideal of beauty upon earth, it is curious to reflect on the _modernite_ of her story, the oldest of the love stories of the world. In Homer we first meet her, the fairest of women in the song of the greatest of poets. It might almost seem as if Homer meant to justify, by his dealing with Helen, some of the most recent theories of literary art. In the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" the tale of Helen is without a beginning and without an end, like a frieze on a Greek temple. She crosses the stage as a figure familiar to all, the poet's audience clearly did not need to be told who Helen was, nor anything about her youth. The famous judgment of Paris, the beginning of evil to Achaeans and Ilian men, is only mentioned once by Homer, late, and in a passage of doubtful authenticity. Of her reconciliation to her wedded lord, Menelaus, not a word is said; of her end we are told no more than that for her and him a mansion in Elysium is prepared-- "Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow."