Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Helenus.
The gallery
Helenus and Andromache Give Presents to Aeneas (Aeneid, Book III)
Master of the Aeneid, c. 1530–1535
A Limoges painted enamel plaque by the Master of the Aeneid, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (25.40.1), stages Virgil's Buthrotum episode: the prophetic Trojan prince Helenus and his wife Andromache present gifts to Aeneas. Helenus appears here as the surviving twin of Cassandra — foresight that lived to counsel the Trojan remnant on their Italian voyage.
Aeneas and Helenus Sacrificing
Master of the Aeneid, c. 1530
Another Limoges enamel from the same Aeneid cycle, now in the Louvre (OA 7557), shows Aeneas and Helenus at sacrifice. The plaque keeps Helenus in his Virgilian role as priest-king of the rebuilt Troy at Buthrotum — the prophet who reads the gods for the exile who will found Rome.
Reconstruction of the Iliupersis of Polygnotus (with Helenus)
Carl Robert (after Polygnotus), 1893 (reconstruction of a 5th-century BC mural)
Carl Robert's 1893 reconstruction of Polygnotus' lost Iliupersis in the Lesche of the Knidians at Delphi follows Pausanias, who places Helenus seated in deepest dejection near Helen among the captive Trojans. The modern drawing recovers the Classical image of the prophetic prince at Troy's fall — foresight that survived the sack.