The Histories · 2.116

This the priests said was the manner of Helen's coming to Proteus; and I suppose that Homer also had heard this story, but since it was not so suitable to the composition of his poem as the other which he followed, he dismissed it finally, making it clear at the same time that he was acquainted with that story also: and according to the manner in which he described the wanderings of Alexander in the Iliad (nor did he elsewhere retract that which he had said) it is clear that when he brought Helen he was carried out of his course, wandering to various lands, and that he came among other places to Sidon in Phenicia. Of this the poet has made mention in the "prowess of Diomede," and the verses run this: "There she had robes many-coloured, the works of women of Sidon, Those whom her son himself the god-like of form Alexander Carried from Sidon, what time the broad sea-path he sailed over…

Herodotus of Halicarnassus · trans. G. C. Macaulay, 1890
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