Menelaus | |
---|---|
King of Sparta | |
Member of the Achaeans | |
![]() Marble bust of Menelaus, Vatican Museums | |
Personal information | |
Parents | Atreus and Aerope |
Siblings | Agamemnon |
Consort | Helen |
Offspring | Hermione, Nicostratus, Megapenthes, Pleisthenes |
In Greek mythology, Menelaus ( /ˌmɛnəˈleɪ.əs/ ; Greek : ΜενέλαοςMenelaos, 'wrath of the people', [1] from Ancient Greek μένος (menos) 'vigor, rage, power',andλαός (laos) 'people') was a king of Mycenaean (pre-Dorian) Sparta. According to the Iliad , 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.
In the account of Dares the Phrygian, Menelaus was described as ". . .of moderate stature, auburn-haired, and handsome. He had a pleasing personality." [2]
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 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]
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 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. [17] 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:
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. [19]
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. [20]
Menelaus appears as a character in a number of 5th-century Greek tragedies: Sophocles' Ajax , and Euripides' Andromache , Helen , Orestes , Iphigenia at Aulis , and The Trojan Women .
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was the son, or grandson, of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra and the father of Iphigenia, Electra, Laodike (Λαοδίκη), Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. Agamemnon was killed upon his return from Troy, either by his wife's lover Aegisthus or by his wife herself.
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.
In Greek mythology, Phoenix was the son of king Amyntor. Because of a dispute with his father, Phoenix fled to Phthia, where he became king of the Dolopians, and tutor of the young Achilles, whom he accompanied to the Trojan War. After Achilles had in anger withdrawn from the war, Phoenix tried to persuade Achilles to return.
Helen of Troy, Helen, Helena, also known as beautiful Helen, Helen of Argos, or Helen of Sparta, was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and was the sister of Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux, Philonoe, Phoebe and Timandra. She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione, and, according to others, of Nicostratus also."
In Greek mythology, Telephus was the son of Heracles and Auge, who was the daughter of king Aleus of Tegea. He was adopted by Teuthras, the king of Mysia, in Asia Minor, whom he succeeded as king. Telephus was wounded by Achilles when the Achaeans came to his kingdom on their way to sack Troy and bring Helen back to Sparta, and later healed by Achilles. He was the father of Eurypylus, who fought alongside the Trojans against the Greeks in the Trojan War. Telephus' story was popular in ancient Greek and Roman iconography and tragedy. Telephus' name and mythology were possibly derived from the Hittite god Telepinu.
In Greek mythology, Catreus or Katreus was the eldest son of Minos and Pasiphaë, and Minos' successor as king of Crete. Catreus had one son, Althaemenes, and three daughters, Apemosyne, Aerope and Clymene. Catreus was mistakenly killed by his son Althaemenes thereby fulfilling an oracle's prophecy.
In Greek mythology, Atreus was a king of Mycenae in the Peloponnese, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae.
In Greek mythology, Aerope was a Cretan princess as the daughter of Catreus, king of Crete. She was the sister to Clymene, Apemosyne and Althaemenes. Aerope's father Catreus gave her to Nauplius, to be drowned, or sold abroad, but Nauplius spared her, and she became the wife of Atreus, or Pleisthenes, and by most accounts the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus. While the wife of Atreus, she became the lover of his brother Thyestes, and gave Thyestes the golden lamb, by which he became the king of Mycenae.
In Greek mythology, Tyndareus was a Spartan king.
In Greek mythology, Pleisthenes or Plisthenes, is the name of several members of the house of Tantalus, the most important being a son of Atreus, said to be the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Although these two brothers are usually considered to be the sons of Atreus himself, according to some accounts, Pleisthenes was their father, but he died, and Agamemnon and Menelaus were adopted by their grandfather Atreus.
In Greek mythology, Helenus was a gentle and clever seer. He was also a Trojan prince as the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy, and the twin brother of the prophetess Cassandra. He was also called Scamandrios, and was a lover of Apollo.
In Greek mythology, Hellen is the eponymous progenitor of the Hellenes. He is the child of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the father of three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, by whom he is the ancestor of the Greek peoples.
The name Astyoche or Astyocheia was attributed to the following individuals in Greek mythology:
In Greek antiquity, Hermione was the daughter of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and his wife, Helen of Troy. Prior to the Trojan War, Hermione had been betrothed by Tyndareus, her grandfather, to her cousin Orestes, son of her uncle, Agamemnon. She was just nine years old when Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, arrived to abduct her mother, Helen.
In Greek mythology, Nauplius is the name of one mariner heroes. Whether these should be considered to be the same person, or two or possibly three distinct persons, is not entirely clear. The most famous Nauplius, was the father of Palamedes, called Nauplius the Wrecker, because he caused the Greek fleet, sailing home from the Trojan War, to shipwreck, in revenge for the unjust killing of Palamedes. This Nauplius was also involved in the stories of Aerope, the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus, and Auge, the mother of Telephus. The mythographer Apollodorus says he was the same as the Nauplius who was the son of Poseidon and Amymone. Nauplius was also the name of one of the Argonauts, and although Apollonius of Rhodes made the Argonaut a direct descendant of the son of Poseidon, the Roman mythographer Hyginus makes them the same person. However, no surviving ancient source identifies the Argonaut with the father of Palamedes.
In Greek mythology, the name Clymene or Klymene may refer to:
In Greek mythology, Nicostratus is a son of Menelaus, king of Mycenaean Sparta. He was known to Hesiod and epic poet Cinaethon. His name means 'Victorious Army' and suggests that his birth came after the Trojan War.
In Greek mythology, the Achaean Leaders were those who led the expedition to Troy to retrieve the abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. Most of the leaders were bound by the Oath of Tyndareus who made the Suitors of Helen swear that they would defend and protect the chosen husband of Helen against any wrong done against him in regard to his marriage.
In Greek mythology, Dias is a name shared by two individuals:
In Greek mythology, Cleolla or Cleola was the daughter of Dias, the son of Pelops, and by some accounts the mother, or grandmother, of Agamemnon and Menelaus.