Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the sack Menelaus fought through to Helen. Deiphobus, who had taken her after Paris’s death, was killed—Proclus’s *Little Iliad* has Menelaus and Odysseus mutilate him. Facing Helen, Menelaus drew his sword; tradition says the sight of her (and Aphrodite’s will) unstrung his anger, and he led her alive to the ships as his recovered wife rather than as a corpse. Euripides’ *Troades* gives Menelaus a colder public posture—he intends death later in Sparta—while Hecuba urges him not to weaken; the play leaves Helen’s fate verbally open, though mythographic consensus restores her to Menelaus. The *Odyssey* already shows the pair back in Sparta, entertaining Telemachus, with Helen drug-wise and gracious and Menelaus rich from Egyptian wandering—proof that in the mainstream line she survived the sack and the long nostos. This entry stops at the recovery in Troy; their delayed homecoming is a separate nostos unit.