Half-Olympian daughter of Zeus by Leda, queen of Sparta; born from an egg in the dominant Cypria tradition. The casus belli of the Trojan War: her abduction (or elopement) by Paris triggered the Tyndareus-oath obligation that brought all of Greece to Troy. The Iliad treats her with notable sympathy — Book 3's teichoscopia shows her grief and self-loathing on the Trojan walls; Book 24 her lament for Hector. The Stesichorus/Herodotus/Euripides eidolon tradition has the real Helen waiting in Egypt while a phantom went to Troy.