InGreek mythology,Menelaus (/ˌmɛnəˈleɪ.əs/;Ancient Greek:Μενέλαος,Menélaos)[1] was aGreek king ofMycenaean (pre-Dorian)Sparta. According to theIliad, theTrojan War began as a result of Menelaus's wife,Helen, fleeing to Troy with the Trojan princeParis. Menelaus was a central figure in the Trojan War, leading the Spartan contingent of the Greek army, under his elder brotherAgamemnon, king ofMycenae. Prominent in both theIliad andOdyssey, Menelaus was also popular in Greek vase painting andGreek tragedy, the latter more as a hero of the Trojan War than as a member of the doomed House ofAtreus.
Menelaus was a descendant ofPelops son ofTantalus.[3] He was the younger brother ofAgamemnon, and the husband ofHelen of Troy. According to the usual version of the story, followed by theIliad andOdyssey ofHomer, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons ofAtreus, king ofMycenae, andAerope, daughter of theCretan kingCatreus.[4] However, according to another tradition, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Atreus's sonPleisthenes, with their mother being Aerope,Cleolla, or Eriphyle. According to this tradition Pleisthenes died young, with Agamemnon and Menelaus being raised by Atreus.[5] Agamemnon and Menelaus had a sisterAnaxibia (orAstyoche) who marriedStrophius, the son ofCrisus.[6]
According to theOdyssey, Menelaus had only one child by Helen, a daughter namedHermione; and an illegitimate son,Megapenthes, by a slave.[7] Other sources mention other sons of Menelaus by either Helen, or slaves. A scholiast onSophocles'sElectra quotesHesiod as saying that after Hermione, Helen also bore Menelaus a sonNicostratus,[8] while according to aCypria fragment, Menelaus and Helen had a sonPleisthenes.[9] The mythographerApollodorus, tells us that Megapenthes's mother was a slave "Pieris, an Aetolian, or, according toAcusilaus, ...Tereis", and that Menelaus had another illegitimate son Xenodamas by another slave girl, Cnossia,[10] while according to the geographerPausanias, Megapenthesand Nicostratus were sons of Menelaus by a slave.[11] The scholiast onIliad 3.175 mentions Nicostratus andAethiolas as two sons of Helen (by Menelaus?) worshipped by theLacedaemonians and another son of Helen by Menelaus, Maraphius, from whom descended the Persian Maraphions.[12]
Although early authors, such asAeschylus, refer in passing to Menelaus's early life, detailed sources are quite late, post-dating 5th-century BC Greektragedy.[13] According to these sources, Menelaus's father,Atreus, had been feuding with his brotherThyestes over the throne ofMycenae. After a back-and-forth struggle that featuredadultery,incest, andcannibalism, Thyestes gained the throne after his sonAegisthus murderedAtreus. As a result, Atreus's sons, Menelaus andAgamemnon, went into exile. They first stayed with KingPolypheides ofSicyon, and later with KingOeneus ofCalydon. But when they thought the time was ripe to dethrone Mycenae's hostile ruler, they returned. Assisted by KingTyndareus ofSparta, they drove Thyestes away, and Agamemnon took thethrone for himself.
When it was time forTyndareus's stepdaughterHelen to marry,many kings and princes came to seek her hand. Among the contenders wereOdysseus,Menestheus,Ajax the Great,Patroclus, andIdomeneus. Most offered opulent gifts. Tyndareus would accept none of the gifts, nor would he send any of the suitors away for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Tyndareus's niecePenelope, the daughter ofIcarius. Tyndareus readily agreed, and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband in any quarrel. Then it was decreed that straws were to be drawn for Helen's hand. The suitor who won was Menelaus (Tyndareus, not to displease the mighty Agamemnon offered him another of his daughters,Clytaemnestra).[14] The rest of the suitors swore their oaths, and Helen and Menelaus were married, Menelaus becoming a ruler of Sparta with Helen after Tyndareus andLeda abdicated the thrones.
Their supposed palace (ἀνάκτορον) has been discovered (the excavations started in 1926 and continued until 1995) inPellana,Laconia, to the north-west of modern (and classical) Sparta.[15] Other archaeologists consider thatPellana is too far away from other Mycenaean centres to have been the "capital of Menelaus".[16]
According to tradition Menelaus founded the port-cityMenelai Portus on the coast ofMarmarica in Northern Africa.[17]
According to legend, in return for awarding her a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest,"Aphrodite promisedParis the most beautiful woman in all the world. After concluding a diplomatic mission to Sparta during the latter part of which Menelaus was absent to attend the funeral of his maternal grandfatherCatreus inCrete, Paris ran off to Troy with Helen despite his brotherHector's prohibition. Invoking the oath ofTyndareus, Menelaus andAgamemnon raised a fleet of a thousand ships and went to Troy to secure Helen's return; the Trojans refused, providing acasus belli for theTrojan War.
Homer'sIliad is the most comprehensive source for Menelaus's exploits during the Trojan War. In Book 3, Menelaus challenges Paris to a duel for Helen's return. Menelaus soundly beats Paris, but before he can kill him and claim victory, Aphrodite spirits Paris away inside the walls of Troy. In Book 4, while the Greeks and Trojans squabble over the duel's winner,Athena inspires the TrojanPandarus to shoot Menelaus with his bow and arrow. However, Athena never intended for Menelaus to die and she protects him from the arrow of Pandarus.[18] Menelaus is wounded in the abdomen, and the fighting resumes. Later, in Book 17, Homer gives Menelaus an extendedaristeia as the hero retrieves the corpse of Patroclus from the battlefield.
According toHyginus, Menelaus killed eight men in the war, and was one of the Greeks hidden inside theTrojan Horse. During the sack of Troy, Menelaus killedDeiphobus, who had married Helen after the death of Paris.
There are four versions of Menelaus's and Helen's reunion on the night of the sack of Troy:
Menelaus sought out Helen in the conquered city. Raging at her infidelity, he raised his sword to kill her, but as he saw her weeping at his feet, begging for her life, Menelaus's wrath instantly left him. He took pity on her and decided to take her back as his wife.
Menelaus resolved to kill Helen, but her irresistible beauty prompted him to drop his sword and take her back to his ship "to punish her at Sparta", as he claimed.[19]
According to theBibliotheca, Menelaus raised his sword in front of thetemple in the central square of Troy to kill her, but his wrath went away when he saw her rending her clothes in anguish, revealing her naked breasts.
A similar version byStesichorus in "Ilion's Conquest" narrated that Menelaus surrendered her to his soldiers to stone her to death, but when she ripped the front of her robes, the Achaean warriors were stunned by her beauty and the stones fell harmlessly from their hands as they stared at her.
Book 4 of theOdyssey provides an account of Menelaus's return from Troy and his homelife in Sparta. When visited by Odysseus's sonTelemachus, Menelaus recounts his voyage home. As happened to many Greeks, Menelaus's homebound fleet was blown by storms to Crete and Egypt where they were becalmed, unable to sail away. They trappedProteus and forced him to reveal how to make the voyage home. Once back in Sparta, he and Helen are shown to be reconciled and have a harmonious married life—he holding no grudge at her having run away with a lover and she feeling no restraint in telling anecdotes of her life inside besieged Troy. Menelaus does seem to be pained that he and Helen have no male heir, and is shown to be fond ofMegapenthes andNicostratus, his sons by slave women. According to Euripides'sHelen, Menelaus is reunited with Helen after death, on theIsle of the Blessed.[20]
Menelaus appears in Greek vase painting in the 6th to 4th centuries BC, such as: Menelaus's reception of Paris at Sparta; his retrieval of Patroclus's corpse; and his reunion with Helen.[21]
^Frazer'snote 1 to Apollodorus 3.11.1; Gantz, p. 322; Scholia onSophocles'sElectra 539a [=Hesiodfr. 248 Most = 175 MW; *9 H]. See alsoApollodorus,3.11.1. CompareCinaethon,fr. 3 [=Porphyry ap. schol. (D)Iliad 3.175], which seems to understand Nicostratus as being the son of Helen and Menelaus, see Gantz. According to Frazer, the scholiast onIliad 3.175 mentions Nicostratus as a son of Helen (see also Gantz, p. 573).
^Collar and Cropp 2008b,p. 79 n. 1; Gantz, pp. 322 (which says that "the implication of our scholiast source is that this child was in lieu of Nikostratos"), 573 (which says this Pleisthenes "seems nowhere else mentioned").
^Grimal, s.v. Menelaus; Parada, s.v. Menelaus;Apollodorus,3.11.1. According to Grimal, Cnossia was presumably a slave whose name indicated she was born inCnossos onCrete. Such ethnics were a common way of naming slaves, see Fowler,p. 529.
Dictys Cretensis,The Trojan War. The Chronicles of Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, translated by R. M. Frazer (Jr.). Indiana University Press. 1966.
Grimal, Pierre,The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.ISBN978-0-631-20102-1.
Hard, Robin,The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004,ISBN9780415186360.Google Books.
Parada, Carlos,Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology, Jonsered, Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993.ISBN978-91-7081-062-6.
Pausanias,Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Tzetzes, John,Allegories of the Iliad translated by Goldwyn, Adam J. and Kokkini, Dimitra. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, Harvard University Press, 2015.ISBN978-0-674-96785-4
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