Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust falls in love with and marries Helen, embodying for Goethe his 'imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks'. " One of those great works of literature into which a writer has been able to combine his ranging preoccupations and understanding as he worked."
-A. S. Byatt, from the Preface