Book 3
11.1
Now Menelaus had by Helen a daughter Hermione and, according to some, a son Nicostratus;Homer definitely affirms (Hom. Od. 4.12-14; compare Hom. Il. 3.174ff.) that Helen had only one child, her daughter Hermione. But according to Hesiod, whose verses are quoted by the Scholiast on Soph. El. 539, Helen afterwards bore a son Nicostratus to Menelaus. Compare Scholiast on Hom. Od. iv.11, who tells us further that according to more recent writers Helen had a son Corythus or Helenus by Alexander (Paris). According to Dictys Cretensis v.5, Helen had three sons by Alexander, namely, Bunomus, Corythus, and Idaeus, who were accidentally killed at Troy through the collapse of a vaulted roof. The Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.175, says that the Lacedaemonians worshipped two sons of Helen, to wit, Nicostratus and Aethiolas. He further mentions, on the authority of Ariaethus, that Helen had by Menelaus a son Maraphius, from whom the Persian family of the Maraphions was descended. See Dindorf's edition of the Scholiast on the Iliad vol. i. pp. 147ff., vol. iii. p. 171. According to one account, Helen had a daughter by Theseus before she was married to Menelaus; this daughter was Iphigenia; Helen entrusted her to her sister Clytaemnestra, who reared the child and passed her off on her husband Agamemnon as her own offspring. This account of the parentage of Iphigenia was supported by the authority of Stesichorus and other poets. See Paus. 2.22.6ff.; Ant. Lib. 27. Sophocles represents Menelaus as having two children before he sailed for Troy (Soph. Elec. 539ff.). and by a female slave Pieris, an Aetolian, or, according to Acusilaus, by Tereis, he had a son Megapenthes;Compare Hom. Od. 4.10-12. and by a nymph Cnossia, according to Eumelus, he had a son Xenodamus.
