ABSTRACT
Daughter of Thestius, king of Aetolia, and wife of Tyndareos, king of Sparta. She was the mother of the Dioscuri Castor and Polydeuces, and of Helen (wife of Menelaus), Clytemnestra (wife of his brother Agamemnon), Timandra, Philonoe, and Phoebe. Nevertheless it was not agreed who the father of the Dioscuri was. Polydeuces was often said to be Helen’s twin by Zeus, and Castor their half-brother, begotten on the same night by Tyndareos, though he, too, was often said to be a son of Zeus (which is the meaning of the name Dioscuri). Helen’s parentage was also disputed, for she was also said to be the child of Zeus-born from an egg, because the god had made love to her mother in the form of a swan. This story of Helen’s birth from an egg was well known in antiquity
(though Homer does not mention it) and was a favourite artistic subject. Helen was also sometimes said to have been hatched from an egg laid by the goddess Nemesis and to have been merely reared by Leda.
