2.116.2
This is apparent from the passage in the Iliad
(and nowhere else does he return to the story) where he relates the wanderings of Alexander, and shows how he and Helen were carried off course, and wandered to, among other places, Sidon in Phoenicia.
2.116.3
This is in the story of the Prowess of Diomedes, where the verses run as follows:
There were the robes, all embroidered,
The work of women of Sidon, whom godlike Alexandrus himself
Brought from Sidon, crossing the broad sea,
The same voyage on which he brought back Helen of noble descent.
Hom. Il. 6.289-92
2.116.4
[He mentions it in the Odyssey
also:
The daughter of Zeus had such ingenious drugs,
Good ones, which she had from Thon's wife, Polydamna, an Egyptian,
Whose country's fertile plains bear the most drugs,
Many mixed for good, many for harm:
Hom. Od. 4.227-30 ]
2.116.5
and again Menelaus says to Telemachus:
I was eager to return here, but the gods still held me in Egypt,
Since I had not sacrificed entire hecatombs to them.
Hom. Od. 4. 351-2
2.116.6
In these verses the poet shows that he knew of Alexander's wanderings to Egypt; for Syria borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, dwell in Syria.
ch. 117
2.117.1
These verses and this passage prove most clearly that the Cyprian poems are not the work of Homer but of someone else. For the Cyprian poems relate that Alexandrus reached Ilion with Helen in three days from Sparta, having a fair wind and a smooth sea; but according to the Iliad
, he wandered from his course in bringing her.
ch. 118
2.118.1
Enough, then, of Homer and the Cyprian poems. But, when I asked the priests whether the Greek account of what happened at Troy were idle or not, they gave me the following answer, saying that they had inquired and knew from Menelaus himself.
2.118.2
After the rape of Helen, a great force of Greeks came to the Trojan land on Menelaus' behalf. After disembarking and disposing their forces, they sent messengers to Ilion, one of whom was Menelaus himself.
2.118.3
When these were let inside the city walls, they demanded the restitution of Helen and of the property which Alexandrus had stolen from Menelaus and carried off, and they demanded reparation for the wrongs; but the Trojans gave the same testimony then and later, sworn and unsworn: that they did not have Helen or the property claimed, but all of that was in Egypt, and they could not justly make reparation for what Proteus the Egyptian had.
2.118.4
But the Greeks, thinking that the Trojans were mocking them, laid siege to the city, until they took it; but there was no Helen there when they breached the wall, but they heard the same account as before; so, crediting the original testimony, they sent Menelaus himself to Proteus.
