At the name of Menelaus a wave of homesickness filled Helen’s heart. Great tears flooded her eyes, and drawing on a shining veil, she left her embroideries and hastened out to the Skaian gates to watch the duel. But there, sitting upon the tower, were Priam and his counsellors; and Helen and her maids hesitated at sight of them. They were feeble old men. The fire and strength of youth had gone, leaving in their place the cold wisdom of age. They and their people had suffered deeply because of Helen; and they had every cause to hate her. Yet as she approached, veiled and slackening her pace from fear when she saw them, all their wrongs were forgotten in wonderment at her beauty. They who had potent reasons to revile her were saying softly among themselves, almost in awe, as those who had seen a vision: “’Small blame is it that Trojans and well-greaved Achaians should for such a woman long time suffer hardships; marvellously like is she to the immortal goddesses to look upon.’ ... So said they; and Priam lifted up his voice and called to Helen: ‘Come hither, dear child, and sit before me, that thou mayst see thy former husband and thy kinsfolk and thy friends. I hold thee not to blame; nay, I hold the gods to blame who brought on me the dolorous war of the Achaians’.” “And Helen, fair among women, spake, and answered him: ‘Reverend art thou to me and dread, dear father of my lord. Would that sore death had been my pleasure when I followed thy son hither, and left my home and my kinsfolk and my daughter in her girlhood and the lovely company of mine age-fellows. But that was not so, wherefore I pine with weeping’.”[2] Then Helen pointed out to the king and the elders the great heroes of the Greek line: “This is wide-ruling Agamemnon, one that is both a goodly king and mighty spearman. And he was husband’s brother to me, ah shameless me; if ever such an one there was.” Odysseus, too, and Ajax and Idomeneus, she can see; but two whom her eyes seek longingly are not there, her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux. “Either they came not in the company from lovely Lacedaemon; or they came hither indeed in their seafaring ships, but now will not enter into the battle of the warriors, for fear of the many scornings and revilings that are mine.”[2]