Menelaus was the King of Sparta. He began his life as a mortal. The eldest son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, he was the brother of Agamemnon, a great warrior. Menelaus became a key figure in the Trojan War due to the abduction of his wife Helen, the beautiful daughter of Zeus and stepdaughter of King Tyndareus through his marriage to her mother, Leda. She is known as Helen of Troy. The interference of the goddess Aphrodite caused Helen to betray her marriage to Menelaus with Prince Paris of Troy, leading to the siege of the city.
Origin
In ancient Greece, before the 5th century, Menelaus’ father and uncle were in a long battle for the throne of Mycenae. His uncle, Thyestes, became king after his cousin Aegisthus murdered Atreus. Menelaus and his older brother Agamemnon were banished from the city and went into exile.
Eventually, the brothers gained the support of King Tyndareus of Sparta and returned to dethrone Thyestes. Agamemnon, as the elder of the two brothers, took the throne. Meanwhile, in Sparta, it was time for King Tyndareus’ stepdaughter to marry. Helen had many suitors and asked Odysseus and his men to swear an oath to protect her future husband.
Finally, she chose Menelaus from among her many admirers, including Agamemnon. King Tyndareus offered his other daughter Clytemnestra to Agamemnon to appease him. All the other suitors took their oath as promised, and Helen and Menelaus were married. Menelaus became king of Sparta and ruled with Helen once King Tyndareus and his queen Leda abdicated their thrones. Menelaus and Helen had a daughter together and named her Hermione.
Judgment of Paris
All the gods and goddesses were invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, except for the Goddess of Discord, Eris, who was neither invited nor welcome. Thetis was a coveted goddess of bachelorette parties, and the wedding was considered an important event. Everyone who mattered was present. Eris was bitter about being excluded from the guest list, so she showed up uninvited with a plan to cause trouble.
The goddess of discord threw a beautiful golden apple, which turned out to be the Apple of Discord, among the goddesses who were invited to the wedding. The apple was labeled “to the fairest.” That cunning move was the equivalent of throwing raw meat into a lion’s den. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena immediately claimed the apple. The ancient Greek goddesses are much better known for their vanity than for their modesty.
Zeus was called upon to mediate in the decision regarding the most beautiful goddess. Being too wise to make this particular decision himself, Zeus asked the god Hermes to escort the three goddesses to Troy to meet Paris, the mortal prince of the city. Prince Paris would be responsible for deciding the matter.
Paris was overwhelmed by the beauty of all the goddesses and very confused when it came to making a decision. Each of the goddesses offered him a gift, hoping to influence his choice. Hera offered him power. Athena offered wisdom. Both gifts sounded quite tempting, especially to a mortal with minimal status compared to a god, and possibly limited intelligence.
But Aphrodite offered him the choice of a beautiful wife named Helen—and Helen was, in fact, the most beautiful woman on earth. Being a lustful man, Paris chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful and took the apple. The problem was that Helen, also known as Helen of Troy, was already married to Menelaus.
Paris went to visit Menelaus’ palace anyway, with his mind set on collecting Aphrodite’s promise. As it happened, a few days after Paris arrived at the palace in Sparta, Menelaus had to leave the city to attend his grandfather’s funeral. During his absence, Paris and Helen became lovers and sailed together to Troy. Hermione, who was nine years old at the time, was left behind to await her father’s return.
The Siege of Troy
Menelaus returned to the palace after the funeral and learned what had happened. He called his brother and Odysseus and asked them to raise an army to recover his wife. All of Helen’s suitors from the past 10 years were reminded of their oath to defend Helen’s husband. The men gathered at a port ready to sail to Troy, but they were unable to leave due to strong winds.
Among the army was a prophet named Calchas. He told the restless Achaean troops that if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis, the army would be able to sail. Despite the outrageous request, Menelaus was so eager for revenge that he persuaded his brother to kill his own daughter, and the army set sail.
The Achaeans besieged Troy for 10 years. Many heroes died on both sides. According to Homer’s Iliad, in the tenth year of the war, a truce was called for the time of a single combat between Menelaus and Paris in the hope of resolving the conflict.
The fight began, and Menelaus was about to kill Paris. He grabbed Paris by the crest of his helmet and began to drag him away, when the goddess Aphrodite, who favored Paris for having chosen her as the most beautiful, intervened by breaking the helmet strap and freeing Paris, leaving Menelaus with only a helmet in his hands.
Menelaus quickly recovered and continued the attack, but Aphrodite clouded Paris in a mist, hiding him from further blows and quickly took him from the fight to another part of the city.
Paris was later seriously wounded in battle and Helen took him to Mount Ida to beg her first wife, the nymph Oenone, to help save him. But Oenone, still angry at being abandoned by Helen, refused. A few days later, Oenone changed her mind, but it was too late, as Paris had died from his war wounds. When she found him dead, she hanged herself.
The truce ended when an arrow was shot at Menelaus, who suffered a minor wound. Troy was taken when Odysseus came up with the idea of the wooden horse. Some warriors hid inside the hollow horse, which allowed them to enter the city and open the gates for the rest of the army.
After Paris’ death, Helen married his brother Deiphobus. During the sacking of Troy, Menelaus’ forces gathered at the couple’s house and arrested Deiphobus. Menelaus killed him by slowly cutting him into pieces, limb by limb. He then took Helen to his ship.
After the defeat of Troy, the Greeks began their journey home. However, they were detained and delayed for years because they did not offer sacrifices to the Trojan gods. The story of their journey home is told in Homer’s epic Odyssey . Many of them never made it home. Menelaus and Helen wandered around the Mediterranean for eight years before they were able to return to Sparta.
Once they finally returned home, they regained their kingdom and lived happily in the palace. When Menelaus died, Zeus’ wife Hera granted him immortality. Together with Helen, he lives in peace in the Elysian Fields for all eternity.
Linguistic influence of Menelaus
Menelaus’ name means “to resist people.” Many terms originated in the stories of Menelaus and still exist today. A difficult decision, for example, is called the Judgment of Paris. The phrase refers to the impossible situation of Paris, who was tasked by Zeus with choosing the most beautiful goddess. A Trojan horse is a seemingly harmless person or thing that joins or deceives a group in order to attack or destroy it.
A malicious computer virus that hacks computers by deceiving users is also known as a Trojan. The “original face that launched a thousand ships” was the beautiful Helen of Troy, wife of Menelaus. Her abduction was the catalyst for the Trojan War. Today we use this term to refer to a person who causes a disaster, especially a war. The iridescent tropical butterfly Menelaus Blue Morpho was named by Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish zoologist and father of modern taxonomy, in honor of Menelaus, King of Sparta.
