Helen of Troy refuge with Leda. The swan gained her affection, and the two mated. Leda then produced an egg, from which Helen emerged. The First Vatican Mythographer introduces the notion that two eggs came from the union: one containing Castor and Pollux; one with Helen and Clytemnestra. Nevertheless, the same author earlier states that Helen, Castor and Pollux were produced from a single egg. Pseudo-Apollodorus states that Leda had intercourse with both Zeus and Tyndareus the night she conceived Helen. On the other hand, in the "Cypria", part of the Epic Cycle, Helen was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis.
Helen of Troy "fifteen times" more beautiful than ordinary mortals. Dio Chrysostom absolved Helen of guilt for the Trojan War by making Paris her first, original husband and claiming that the Greeks started the war out of jealousy. Virgil, in his "Aeneid", makes Aeneas the one to spare Helen's life, rather than Menelaus, and instead portrays the act as a lofty example of self-control. Meanwhile, Virgil also makes Helen more vicious by having her betray her own husband Deiphobos and give him over to Menelaus as a peace offering. The satirist Lucian of Samosata features Helen in his famous "Dialogues of the Dead",