While I was born red-faced and squalling from the commonplace indignity of childbirth, my sister supposedly tapped her way delicately through a pure white eggshell and hatched whole and beautiful. She had her pick of the finest men in Greece, but Helen had eyes only for the awkward Menelaus, who shifted his powerful bulk uncomfortably and stared mutely back at her.ĭaughter of Zeus, that’s what the stories said of Helen. Far more handsome suitors stood before my sister-indeed, the great hall in which they gathered seemed to swell and groan with the sheer volume of sculpted cheekbones and fine shoulders, jutting jawbones and flashing eyes. Menelaus’ beard glinted with a reddish tint, while Agamemnon’s was dark, like the curls that clustered tightly around his head. The two brothers were full of vitality and vigor-not handsome, exactly, but compelling, nonetheless. Everyone knew of it, but when the Atreidae, Agamemnon and Menelaus, stood before me and my twin sister in Sparta a lifetime ago, well, the silly stories of infants cooked and served up to their parents seemed to shimmer and crumble like dust motes in sunlight. The history of the family was full of brutal murder, adultery, monstrous ambition, and rather more cannibalism than one would expect. A particularly gruesome one, even by the standards of divine torment.
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