Mĕnĕlāus

, a king of Sparta, brother to Agamemnon. His father’s name was Atreus, according to Homer, or, according to the more probable opinion of Hesiod, Apollo dor us, . , he was the son of Plisthenes and Ærope. See: Plisthenes . He was educated with his brother Agamemnon in the house of Atreus, but soon after the death of this monarch, Thyestes his brother usurped the kingdom, and banished the two children of Plisthenes. Menelaus and Agamemnon came to the court of Œneus king of Calydonia, who treated them with tenderne and paternal care. From Calydonia they went to Sparta, where, like the rest of the Grecian princes, they solicited the marriage of Helen the daughter of king Tyndarus. By the artifice and advice of Uly es, Helen was permitted to choose a husband, and she fixed her eyes upon Menelaus, and married him, after her numerous suitors had solemnly bound themselves by an oath to defend her, and protect her person against the violence or a ault of every intruder. See: Helena . As soon as the nuptials were celebrated, ♦ Tyndarus resigned the crown to his son-in-law, and their happine was complete. This was, however, of short duration; Helen was the fairest woman of the age, and Venus had promised Paris the son of Priam to reward him with such a beauty. See: Paris . The arrival of Paris in Sparta was the cause of great revolutions. The absence of Menelaus in Crete gave opportunities to the Trojan prince to corrupt the fidelity of Helen, and to carry away home what the godde of beauty had promised to him as his due. This action was highly resented by Menelaus; he reminded the Greek princes of their oath and solemn engagements when they courted the daughter of Tyndarus, and immediately all Greece took up arms to defend his cause. The combined forces a embled at Aulis in Bœotia, where they chose Agamemnon for their general, and Calchas for their high priest; and after their applications to the court of Priam for the recovery of Helen had proved fruitle , they marched to meet their enemies in the field. During the Trojan war Menelaus behaved with great spirit and courage, and Paris must have fallen by his hand, had not Venus interposed and redeemed him from certain death. He also expre ed his wish to engage Hector, but Agamemnon hindered him from fighting so powerful an adversary. In the tenth year of the Trojan war, Helen, as it is reported, obtained the forgivene and the good graces of Menelaus by introducing him with Uly es, the night that Troy was reduced to ashes, into the chamber of Deiphobus, whom she had married after the death of Paris. This perfidious conduct totally reconciled her to her first husband; and she returned with him to Sparta, during a voyage of eight years. He died some time after his return. He had a daughter called Hermione, and Nicostratus, according to some, by Helen, and a son called Megapenthes by a concubine. Some say that Menelaus went to Egypt on his return from the Trojan war to obtain Helen, who had been detained there by the king of the country. See: Helena . The palace which Menelaus once inhabited was still entire in the days of Pausanias, as well as the temple which had been raised to his memory by the people of Sparta. Homer , Ody ey , bk. 4 , . ; Iliad , bk. 1 , . — Apollo dor us , bk. 3 , ch. 10 .— Pausanias , bk. 3 , chs. 14 & 19.— Dictys Cretensis , bk. 2 , . — Virgil , Æneid , bk. 2 , . — Quintus Smyrnæus bk. 14 .— Ovid , Heroides , poems 5 & 13.— Hyginus fable 79.— Euripi des , I phi gene i a .— Pro pert i us , bk. 2 .— Sophocles. ――A lieutenant of Ptolemy, set over Salamis. Polyænus. — Pausanias. ――A city of Egypt. Strabo , bk. 14 .――A mathematician in the age of the emperor Trajan. ♦ ‘Tyndaros’ replaced with ‘Tyndarus’