Sappho fr. 16V is often read as a repudiation of the heroic military ethos of Homer’s Iliad. It is argued here instead that the fragment presents Helen as an exemplar of how to negotiate erotic and personal preferences that lie outside of Homeric epic’s binaries. With Sedgwick’s “third alternative” as its model, the chapter traces some of the patterns that link Helen to Troy, in both epic and lyric, and explores how these intersect with the desire the singer of Sappho fr. 16V feels for her absent lover, Anactoria. Sappho, it is argued, chooses for herself the “third alternative” that the Iliad refuses, modeling her Anactoria on an almost-queer male hero from that poem, and at the same time celebrating Helen’s subversive orientation toward the poetics of female memory in the Odyssey.