As far as Menelaus’s early life is concerned, few tales exist. However, Apollodorus says that during a civil war between Agamemnon’s father, Atreus, and his uncle Thyestes, Atreus was murdered by Aegisthus, after which Menelaus and Agamemnon fled into exile. On their return,
Menelaus married Helen, whose mother, Leda, was the wife of Tyndareos, king of Sparta, and whose father was Zeus (see box, page 175).
Menelaus became king of Sparta when Tyndareos died.
All sources agree that Menelaus and Helen had a daughter named Hermione.
Apollodorus wrote that after the war Helen also bore Menelaus a son,
Nicostratus. Besides his child—or children—by Helen, Menelaus had another son, Megapenthes, by a slave, as well as a son called Xenodamus, whose mother was a nymph.
When Hermione was nine years old,
Paris, a prince of Troy, visited Sparta and eloped with Helen. Menelaus turned to his brother, Agamemnon, for assistance in retrieving his wife. Agamemnon, who by this time was king of Mycenae, called together an alliance of the Greek city-states and launched a campaign against Troy.
The Greeks were initially prevented from setting sail for Troy by an ill wind that held them in the harbor at Aulis. The seer Calchas revealed that
The wind could only be made favorable if Agamemnon sacrificed his eldest daughter to the goddess Artemis. In the play Iphigeneia at Aulis by Euripides, a Greek dramatist of the fifth century BCE, Agamemnon hesitated to pay such a terrible price. Nevertheless, Menelaus, who was afraid of losing the respect of the army if they did not sail, pressed Agamemnon to sacrifice the girl and in the end he did so.
During the war, Menelaus figured rarely except for one significant episode. Agamemnon sanctioned a duel to be
Above: Found among the ruins of Pompeii, this fresco depicts the Trojan king Priam (center), Menelaus (left of Priam), and Helen (far right). Menelaus is about to kill Helen’s most recent lover, Deiphobus, after the fall of Troy. The Romans were fascinated with the Trojan War and believed that they themselves were descended from Aeneas, a Trojan prince.
Fought between Menelaus and Paris. The outcome of the duel was to determine the fate of Helen and the result of the war. If Paris won, then Agamemnon agreed to have the Greeks leave, and Helen would remain in Troy. If Menelaus won, then Helen would be returned to her husband and the Greeks would depart only after the Trojans paid them compensation for the cost of waging the campaign. The duel took place as arranged, but when Menelaus was on the verge of victory, Aphrodite shrouded Paris in a heavy fog and spirited him away from the battlefield.
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