In
Greek mythology, Menelaus (/ˌmɛnəˈleɪ.əs/;
Greek: ΜενέλαοςMenelaos, 'wrath of the people',[1] from
Ancient Greekμένος (menos) 'vigor, rage, power', and λαός (laos) 'people') was a
Greek king of
Mycenaean (pre-
Dorian)
Sparta. According to the Iliad, the Trojan war began as a result of Menelaus’s wife, Helen, fleeing to Troy with the Trojan prince
Paris. Menelaus was a central figure in the
Trojan War, leading the Spartan contingent of the Greek army, under his elder brother
Agamemnon, king of
Mycenae. Prominent in both the Iliad and Odyssey, Menelaus was also popular in Greek vase painting and
Greek tragedy, the latter more as a hero of the Trojan War than as a member of the doomed House of
Atreus.
Description
In the account of
Dares the Phrygian, Menelaus was described as ". . .of moderate stature, auburn-haired, and handsome. He had a pleasing personality."[2]
Family
Menelaus was a descendant of
Pelops son of
Tantalus.[3] He was the younger brother of
Agamemnon, and the husband of
Helen of Troy. According to the usual version of the story, followed by the Iliad and Odyssey of
Homer, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of
Atreus, king of
Mycenae, and
Aerope, daughter of the
Cretan king
Catreus.[4] However, according to another tradition, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Atreus' son
Pleisthenes, 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 sister
Anaxibia (or
Astyoche) who married
Strophius, the son of
Crisus.[6]
According to the Odyssey, Menelaus had only one child by Helen, a daughter
Hermione, and an illegitimate son
Megapenthes by a female slave.[7] Other sources mention other sons of Menelaus by either Helen, or slaves. A scholiast on
Sophocles' Electra quotes
Hesiod as saying that after Hermione, Helen also bore Menelaus a son
Nicostratus,[8] while according to a Cypria fragment, Menelaus and Helen had a son
Pleisthenes.[9] The mythographer
Apollodorus, tells us that Megapenthes' mother was a slave "
Pieris, an Aetolian, or, according to
Acusilaus, ...
Tereis", and that Menelaus had another illegitimate son Xenodamas by another slave girl Cnossia,[10] while according to the geographer
Pausanias, Megapenthes and Nicostratus were sons of Menelaus by a slave.[11] The scholiast on Iliad 3.175 mentions Nicostratus and Aethiolas as two sons of Helen (by Menelaus?) worshipped by the
Lacedaemonians and another son of Helen by Menelaus, Maraphius, from whom descended the Persian Maraphions.[12]
Mythology
Ascension and reign
Although early authors, such as
Aeschylus refer in passing to Menelaus' early life, detailed sources are quite late, post-dating 5th-century BC Greek
tragedy.[13] According to these sources, Menelaus' father,
Atreus, had been feuding with his brother
Thyestes over the throne of
Mycenae. After a back-and-forth struggle that featured
adultery,
incest, and
cannibalism, Thyestes gained the throne after his son
Aegisthus murdered
Atreus. As a result, Atreus' sons, Menelaus and
Agamemnon, went into exile. They first stayed with King
Polypheides of
Sicyon, and later with King
Oeneus of
Calydon. But when they thought the time was ripe to dethrone Mycenae's hostile ruler, they returned. Assisted by King
Tyndareus of
Sparta, they drove Thyestes away, and Agamemnon took the
throne for himself.
When it was time for
Tyndareus' stepdaughter
Helen to marry,
many kings and princes came to seek her hand. Among the contenders were
Odysseus,
Menestheus,
Ajax the Great,
Patroclus, and
Idomeneus. 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 niece
Penelope, the daughter of
Icarius. 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 and
Leda abdicated the thrones.
Their supposed palace (ἀνάκτορον) has been discovered (the excavations started in 1926 and continued until 1995) in
Pellana,
Laconia, to the north-west of modern (and classical) Sparta.[15] Other archaeologists consider that
Pellana is too far away from other Mycenaean centres to have been the "capital of Menelaus".[16]
According to tradition Menelaus founded the port-city
Menelai Portus on the coast of
Marmarica in Northern Africa.[17]
According to legend, in return for awarding her a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest,"
Aphrodite promised
Paris 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 grandfather
Catreus in
Crete, Paris ran off to Troy with Helen despite his brother
Hector's prohibition. Invoking the oath of
Tyndareus, Menelaus and
Agamemnon raised a fleet of a thousand ships and went to Troy to secure Helen's return; the Trojans refused, providing a casus belli for the
Trojan War.
Homer's Iliad 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 Trojan
Pandarus 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 extended aristeia as the hero retrieves the corpse of Patroclus from the battlefield.
According to
Hyginus, Menelaus killed eight men in the war, and was one of the Greeks hidden inside the
Trojan Horse. During the sack of Troy, Menelaus killed
Deiphobus, who had married Helen after the death of Paris.
There are four versions of Menelaus' 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' 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 the Bibliotheca, Menelaus raised his sword in front of the
temple 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 by
Stesichorus 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.
After the war
Book 4 of the Odyssey provides an account of Menelaus' return from Troy and his homelife in Sparta. When visited by Odysseus' son
Telemachus, Menelaus recounts his voyage home. As happened to many Greeks, Menelaus' homebound fleet was blown by storms to Crete and Egypt where they were becalmed, unable to sail away. They trapped
Proteus 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 of
Megapenthes and
Nicostratus, his sons by slave women. According to Euripides' Helen, Menelaus is reunited with Helen after death, on the
Isle of the Blessed.[20]
In vase painting
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's
note 1 to Apollodorus 3.11.1; Gantz, p. 322; Scholia on
Sophocles' Electra 539a [=
Hesiodfr. 248 Most = 175 MW; *9 H]. See also
Apollodorus,
3.11.1. Compare
Cinaethon,
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 on Iliad 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 "our scholiast source implies 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 in
Cnossos on
Crete. 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