Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

After Paris died of Philoctetes’ bow-shot, Helen did not at once revert to Menelaus. Among the sons of Priam, Deiphobus—already a noted Trojan warrior in the *Iliad*—took her as wife. Apollodorus and the Cycle place the marriage in the last phase of the war; some traditions say Helen chose him, others that the Trojans awarded her to him as Paris’s brother and next claimant. Helenus, rival for her or for the succession of prophetic authority, left Troy or was captured—his prophecies then aiding the Greeks (separate entry). On the night of the sack, Menelaus and Odysseus made for Deiphobus’s house, where Helen now lived. The *Little Iliad* has them kill Deiphobus; later narrative (and Vergil’s Underworld encounter) elaborates a brutal death and mutilation—ears and nose severed—while Helen’s role shifts by teller: helper of the Greeks with a torch or signal, terrified captive, or ambiguous double agent. Homer’s Menelaus already recalls hiding in the horse while Helen paced outside, and Demodocus sings Odysseus’s hardest fight in Deiphobus’s hall. Menelaus recovered Helen from that house; Deiphobus became the last Trojan husband and a type of the sack’s intimate slaughter—killed not on the open field but in the marriage chamber the war had made.