HELENUS, in Greek legend, son of Priam and Hecuba, and twin brother of Cassandra. In Homer, he appears as a seer and warrior. In later writers it is related that he and his sister fell asleep in the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus and that snakes came and cleansed their ears, whereby they obtained the gift of pro phecy, and were able to understand the language of birds. After the death of Paris, because Helen rejected him for DeIphobus, Helenus withdrew in indignation to Mt. Ida, where he was cap tured by the Greeks; in other accounts he was captured by a stratagem of Odysseus, or surrendered voluntarily in disgust at the treacherous murder of Achilles (q.v.). He informed the Greeks of the "fates" of Troy, (Palladium, arrows of Heracles, arrival of Neoptolemus, see TROY) and advised the building of the Wooden Horse.
After the capture of Troy he and his sister-in-law Andromache accompanied Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) as captives to Epirus, where Helenus persuaded him to settle. After the death of Neoptolemus, Helenus married Andromache and became ruler of the coun try. He was the reputed founder of Buthrotum and Chaonia, named after a brother or a companion, whom he had accidentally slain while hunting. He was said to have been buried at Argos, where his tomb was shown.
See Homer, Iliad, vi. 76, vii. 44, xii. 94, xiii. 576; Sophocles, Philoctetes, 604, who probably follows the Little Iliad of Lesches; Pausanias i. 11, ii. 23 ; Conon, Narrationes 34 ; Dictys Cretensis, iv. 18; Virgil, Aeneid 294-490; Servius on Aeneid ii. 166, iii. 334.