Without a doubt Helen of Sparta is the most beautiful woman in the world, but no man can swear to have seen her with his own eyes, even here in the plains of Troy, where they live and fight and die for her sake. And so in their mind's eyes, they give her the features of the loves they left behind, assign her color and complexion they find most striking, make her base and brazen to suit their fantasies--for what does that matter, when she is as above their reach as the rainbows above?
"A pity," Cassandra muses from the walls, and her sister-in-law, small and drab and heartily tired of being blamed for a war she did not cause, agrees sadly.