Menelaus
Did Helen and Menelaus have a child?
Did Menelaus survive the Trojan War?
Why is Menelaus important in the Odyssey?
Menelaus, in Greek mythology, king of Sparta and younger son of Atreus, king of Mycenae; the abduction or elopement of his wife, Helen, led to the Trojan War. During the war Menelaus served under his elder brother Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the Greek forces. Menelaus was one of the prominent characters in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
The curse of the house of Atreus
Menelaus and Agamemnon were the sons of Atreus, whose lineage was associated with a cycle of generational violence. Atreus’s grandfather, Tantalus, had attempted to feed the gods his son, Pelops, at a banquet. Pelops continued his family’s calamitous legacy by killing rather than rewarding an accomplice who had helped him illegally win his bride, Hippodamia. Pelops’s sons Atreus and Thyestes were exiled to Mycenae for killing another brother, Chrysippus. Atreus was later betrayed by his wife, Aërope, who had become Thyestes’ lover. In the many retaliations between the brothers, Atreus killed Thyestes’s sons and fed them to him. Menelaus and Agamemnon were given refuge by Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, after Atreus was killed by Thyestes’ son, Aegisthus.
Marriage to Helen
Helen, the most beautiful woman in Greece, had been raised as one of Tyndareus’s daughters but was traditionally regarded as the child of Zeus and Tyndareus’s wife, Leda. Helen’s sister was Clytemnestra, and her brothers were the Dioscuri, or Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux. Helen was courted by numerous suitors, and Tyndareus feared that granting Helen’s hand to one suitor would cause a riot by the others. The matter was resolved by Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca, on whose advice Tyndareus made all the suitors swear an oath to defend Helen’s marriage regardless of who among them won her as his bride. Menelaus was the successful suitor, and Agamemnon married Clytemnestra. For his clever thinking, Odysseus received as his reward the hand of Helen’s cousin, Penelope.
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Helen’s elopement
Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus as king of Sparta, while Agamemnon recovered the throne of Mycenae. Helen and Menelaus had a daughter, Hermione, who married Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, and later, Agamemnon’s son, Orestes. In some accounts Helen and Menelaus also had two sons, Nicostratus and Pleisthenes. Their married life reached a crisis with the arrival of the Trojan prince Paris to Sparta. Paris had been promised Helen as his bride by Aphrodite in exchange for supremacy in a divine beauty contest. He contrived to elope with Helen (some accounts treat it as an abduction) while Menelaus was absent. Menelaus invoked the oath of Tyndareus, and Helen’s former suitors, including Odysseus, assembled a fleet of ships to sail to Troy.
Role in the Trojan War and Odyssey
In Troy King Priam refused to return Helen to Menelaus, and the Greeks and the Trojans went to war. Menelaus’s exploits on the battlefield include his and Paris’s duel, the victor of which would win Helen. Menelaus proved the better fighter and began dragging Paris by his hair back to the Greek contingent. However, Aphrodite intervened by spiriting Paris away before Menelaus could kill him, preventing a decisive outcome.
Menelaus was among the team of Greek fighters concealed within the Trojan horse, a large wooden device by which the Greeks gained entry into Troy in the tenth year of the war. After the fall of Troy, Menelaus intended to kill Helen for her betrayal of him but was overcome by her beauty and entreaties. They were reconciled and resumed their married life in Sparta. In some versions their journey home was delayed by the death of Menelaus’ helmsman, Phrontis. Menelaus postponed his voyage until the man had been buried, thus giving evidence of his strength of character. In accounts of the Trojan War by the poet Stesichorus and the dramatist Euripides, Zeus caused a phantom to be taken to Troy, while the real Helen remained in Egypt under the protection of King Proteus. She was later rescued by Menelaus on his way home to Sparta.
Menelaus and Helen appeared in the Odyssey, in which they recounted stories of the war to Odysseus’s son Telemachus, who visited them in Sparta seeking news of his absent father. Menelaus also revealed his encounter with Proteus, the old man of the sea, during his voyage from Troy. He had learned that Odysseus was being held captive by the nymph Calypso on her island. Proteus had also given Menelaus advice on how to safely journey home and prophesied that as a son-in-law of Zeus, Menelaus would have a place in Elysium after his death.
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