daughter, inevitably, would cause her parents alarm and distress. Desperate measures might have to be taken. So shockingly plain had one baby been, it was said, that her nurse, clutching at straws, had finally taken her to Helen’s tomb. There, outside the sanctuary, a mysterious woman had appeared and stroked the young girl’s hair. The baby, this apparition had prophesied, “would grow up the loveliest woman in Lacedaemon.”35 And so it had come to pass: the girl had become a celebrated beauty and ended up the wife of a Spartan king. Evidently, the spirit of Helen still sometimes walked her
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