In Greek mythology, Tyndareus was a legendary king of Sparta, the husband of Leda and father of a famous brood that included Castor and Clytemnestra. He is best remembered as the stepfather of Helen of Troy and Pollux, the children Leda bore to Zeus, and for devising the Oath of Tyndareus, by which Helen's many suitors swore to defend her chosen husband's marriage. That oath later bound the Greek kings to retrieve Helen when Paris carried her to Troy, helping to precipitate the Trojan War.
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I.Family
Tyndareus belonged to the royal house of Lacedaemon. He was the son of Oebalus, or in other accounts of Perieres, and his mother is named as Gorgophone or, in some sources, as Bateia. His brothers included Hippocoon, who would seize the Spartan throne, and Icarius, the father of Penelope, the loyal wife of Odysseus.
Tyndareus married Leda, an Aetolian princess, and with her he fathered the mortal children Castor, Clytemnestra, Timandra, Phoebe, and Philonoe. Through Leda he was also the stepfather of Helen of Troy and of Pollux (Polydeuces), the two children whom Leda conceived by Zeus. He raised all of them as his own, even though by the most famous telling the divine pair were not his by blood.
II.Early years
Tyndareus's early reign was disrupted when his brother Hippocoon seized power and drove him into exile. He was restored to the throne through the intervention of Heracles, who came to Sparta, killed Hippocoon and his sons, and reinstated Tyndareus as king.
His brother Icarius likewise figures in the lineage as the father of Penelope. The marriage of Tyndareus and Leda gave rise to one of mythology's most celebrated episodes: Zeus, disguised as a swan, seduced Leda. From this union Leda laid two eggs, each producing a pair of twins — Castor and Pollux from one, Helen and Clytemnestra from the other — entwining the mortal children of Tyndareus with the divine offspring of Zeus.
III.Curse of the goddess
According to the poet Stesichorus, Tyndareus once neglected to honour Aphrodite while making sacrifices to the gods. Angered by the omission, the goddess cursed his daughters, making them twice- and thrice-wed and deserters of their husbands.
Hesiod is said to have elaborated this curse, telling how laughter-loving Aphrodite, in her jealousy, made the daughters of Tyndareus inconstant: Timandra abandoned her husband for another man; Clytemnestra deserted Agamemnon to lie with Aegisthus, choosing a worse mate; and Helen dishonoured the bed of golden-haired Menelaus by leaving with Paris.
IV.Helen and the Trojan War
Helen's beauty drew suitors from across the Greek world — among them Odysseus, Ajax the Great, Diomedes, Idomeneus, and the brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus — who came to Sparta or sent envoys bearing gifts to court her. Tyndareus found himself in a delicate position: to accept any one suitor's gifts would offend all the others, while to reject them all risked dangerous quarrels.
Odysseus offered a solution. In return for Tyndareus's help in winning Penelope, the daughter of his brother Icarius, Odysseus advised that all the suitors swear a solemn oath to defend the marriage of whichever man Helen chose against anyone who might wrong him. The suitors took the oath, Helen was given to Menelaus, and Tyndareus in time yielded the throne of Sparta to his son-in-law.
Years later Paris of Troy came to Sparta and carried Helen away, whether by her own consent or by abduction according to the source. The violation of Helen's marriage led Menelaus to call upon her former suitors to honour their oath and help recover her, and so the Trojan War was set in motion.
V.Afterwards
The accounts of Tyndareus's later life disagree. In Euripides's tragedy Orestes, Tyndareus is still alive when Menelaus returns from Troy and seeks the death penalty for his grandson Orestes, who had killed Clytemnestra, Tyndareus's own daughter. Other sources, by contrast, hold that Tyndareus died before the Trojan War began.
Some versions reconcile the chronology by claiming that the healer-god Asclepius raised Tyndareus from the dead, restoring him to life before the events that followed the war.