In Greek mythology, Menelaus (; )[Grimal, s.v. Menelaus.] was a Greeks king of Mycenaean Greece (pre-Dorians) 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 Troy, detail of fresco in
Pompeii]]In the account of
Dares Phrygius, Menelaus was described as "of moderate stature, auburn-haired, and handsome. He had a pleasing personality."
[Dares Phrygius, 13]
Family
Menelaus was a descendant of
Pelops son of
Tantalus.
[For a discussion of the house of Tantalus see Gantz, pp. 531–556. For Menelaus's genealogy see, Grimal, p. 526, Table 2, and p. 534, Table 13.] 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.
[Grimal, s.v. Menelaus; Hard, pp. 355, 507, 508; Collard and Cropp 2008a, p. 517; Gantz, p. 552; Parada, s.v. Menelaus; Euripides, Helen 390–392, Orestes 16; Hyginus, Fabulae 97; Apollodorus, E.3.12; Scholia on Iliad 1.7 (citing "Homer" = Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137a Most) and Scholia on Tzetzes' Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (citing "Homer" = Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137c Most). They are also the sons of Atreus, in the Iliad and Odyssey, see for example Iliad 11.131, Odyssey 4.462, although Aerope is not mentioned (see Gantz, p. 522). See also Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 4–5, (Atreus as father, no mention of mother); Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 138 Most =, and Sophocles, Ajax 1295–1297 (Aerope as mother, no mention of father).] However, according to another tradition, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Atreus's 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.
[Hard, pp. 355, 508; Collard and Cropp 2008a, p. 517; Collard and Cropp 2008b, p. 79; Gantz, pp. 552–553; Parada, s.v. Menelaus. For Aerope as mother see: Apollodorus, 3.2.2; Dictys Cretensis, 1.1; Scholia on Iliad 1.7 (citing "Hesiod" = Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137a Most) and Scholia on Tzetzes' Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (citing "Hesiod" = Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137c Most). For Cleolla, see Tzetzes, Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (citing "Hesiod, Aeschylus, and some others" = Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137b Most). For Eriphyle see Gantz, p. 553 (citing Scholia on Euripides Orestes 4).] Agamemnon and Menelaus had a sister
Anaxibia (or
Astyoche) who married
Strophius, the son of
Crisus.
[Hard, p. 566; Gantz, p. 223; Parada, s.vv. Anaxibia 4, Astyoche 6. For Anaxibia as the sister's name see Pausanias, 2.29.4; Dictys Cretensis, 1.1; Tzetzes, Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (= Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137b Most); Scholia on Tzetzes' Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (= Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 137c Most). For Astyoche, as the sister's name, see Hyginus, Fabulae 117.]
According to the Odyssey, Menelaus had only one child by Helen, a daughter named Hermione; and an illegitimate son, Megapenthes, by a slave.[Hard, p. 441; Fowler, p. 529; Frazer's note 1 to Apollodorus 3.11.1; Homer, Odyssey 4.11–14. See also Homer, Iliad 3.175; Sophocles, Electra 539. For a genealogical table containing children of Menelaus, see Grimal, p. 534, Table 13.] Other sources mention other sons of Menelaus by either Helen, or slaves. A scholiast on Sophocles's Electra quotes Hesiod as saying that after Hermione, Helen also bore Menelaus a son Nicostratus,[Frazer's note 1 to Apollodorus 3.11.1; Gantz, p. 322; Scholia on Sophocles's Electra 539a = = 175 MW; *9 H]. See also Apollodorus, 3.11.1. Compare Cinaethon, fr. 3 =, 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).] while according to a Cypria fragment, Menelaus and Helen had a son Pleisthenes.[Collar and Cropp 2008b, p. 79 n. 1; Gantz, pp. 322 (which says that "the implication of our scholiast source is that this child was in lieu of Nikostratos"), 573 (which says this Pleisthenes "seems nowhere else mentioned").] The mythographer Apollodorus, tells us that Megapenthes's 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,[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.] while according to the geographer Pausanias, Megapenthes and Nicostratus were sons of Menelaus by a slave.[Pausanias, 2.18.6, 3.19.9. Fowler, p. 529, notes that the name 'Tereis' is unique and possibly "corrupt".] 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.[Frazer's note 1 to Apollodorus 3.11.1, see also Grimal, s.v. Menelaus; Gantz, p. 573.]
Mythology
Accession and reign
Although early authors, such as
Aeschylus, refer in passing to Menelaus's early life, detailed sources are quite late, post-dating 5th-century BC Greek
tragedy.
[The chief sources for Menelaus's life before the Trojan War are Hyginus's Fabulae and the Epitome of the Bibliotheca.] According to these sources, Menelaus's 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).
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.[Mee & Spawforth (2001), p. 229]
According to tradition Menelaus founded the port-city Menelai Portus on the coast of Marmarica in Northern Africa.[ Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Menelai Portus]
Trojan War
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.
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's 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's 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.
[ Andromache, 629–31.]
-
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's return from Troy and his homelife in Sparta. When visited by Odysseus's son
Telemachus, Menelaus recounts his voyage home. As happened to many Greeks, Menelaus's 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
Fortunate Isles.
[Line 1675.]
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.
[Woodford 1993.]
In Greek tragedy
Menelaus appears as a character in a number of 5th-century Greek tragedies:
Sophocles's
Ajax, and
Euripides's
Andromache,
Helen,
Orestes,
Iphigenia at Aulis, and
The Trojan Women.
See also
-
1647 Menelaus, Jovian asteroid
-
USS Menelaus (ARL-13)
-
Menelaus (lunar crater)
Notes
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Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
-
Collard, Christopher and Martin Cropp (2008a), Euripides Fragments: Aegeus–Meleanger, Loeb Classical Library No. 504, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2008. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
-
Collard, Christopher and Martin Cropp (2008b), Euripides Fragments: Oedipus-Chrysippus: Other Fragments, Loeb Classical Library No. 506, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2008. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
-
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.
-
Euripides, Andromache in Euripides: Children of Heracles. Hippolytus. Andromache. Hecuba, edited and translated by David Kovacs, Loeb Classical Library No. 484. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1995. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
-
Euripides, Helen, translated by E. P. Coleridge in The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Volume 2. New York. Random House. 1938. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
-
Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, translated by Robert Potter in The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Volume 2. New York. Random House. 1938. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
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Euripides, Orestes, translated by E. P. Coleridge in The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Volume 1. New York. Random House. 1938. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
-
Fowler, R. L., Early Greek Mythography: Volume 2: Commentary, Oxford University Press, 2013. .
-
Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
-
Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. .
-
Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, . Google Books.
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Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
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Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
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Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText.
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Most, G.W., Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments, Loeb Classical Library, No. 503, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2007, 2018. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
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Parada, Carlos, Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology, Jonsered, Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993. .
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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.
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John Tzetzes, Allegories of the Iliad translated by Goldwyn, Adam J. and Kokkini, Dimitra. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, Harvard University Press, 2015.
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Sophocles, The Ajax of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb, Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1893 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
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Sophocles, Electra in Sophocles. Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus, Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Classical Library No. 20, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1994. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
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West, M. L., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, edited and translated by Martin L. West, Loeb Classical Library No. 497, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2003. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
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