King of Sparta, husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon, whose broken marriage summoned the Achaeans to Troy and whose return wandered through Egypt.1
Apollodorus calls Menelaus a son of Atreus and Aerope. He married Helen, received the Spartan kingship from Tyndareus, and called on Agamemnon when Paris carried Helen away.2
Homer finds him home in Sparta celebrating two marriages: Hermione, Helen's only child, was being sent to Neoptolemus, while Megapenthes, Menelaus' son by a slave woman, received his own bride.3
Telemachus came to his hall from Pylos with Nestor's son Peisistratus. Menelaus received the prince kindly, told how he had heard in Egypt from Proteus' daughter that Odysseus was alive but detained on Calypso's isle, and warned that the suitors were plotting murder on the homeward road — the first sure news Telemachus had that his father still lived.4
Storms drove Menelaus through Crete, Libya, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt. Apollodorus reports a tradition in which he recovered the real Helen from Proteus after Troy had contained only a cloud phantom; Hyginus instead has Proteus teach him how to appease the gods and return in the eighth year.5
Pausanias records that Sparta preferred Orestes' Tyndarid claim over Nicostratus and Megapenthes, sons of Menelaus by a slave woman. The succession therefore passed through Hermione rather than Menelaus' sons.6
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
