Menelaus
Menelaus | |
---|---|
King of Sparta | |
Member of the Achaeans | |
Personal information | |
Parents | Atreus and Aerope |
Siblings | Agamemnon |
Consort | Helen |
Offspring | Hermione, Nicostratus, Megapenthes, Pleisthenes |
In
Description
In the account of Dares the Phrygian, Menelaus was described as ". . .of moderate stature, auburn-haired, and handsome. He had a pleasing personality."[2]
Family
Menelaus was a descendant of
According to the Odyssey, Menelaus had only one child by Helen, a daughter
Mythology
Ascension and reign
Although early authors, such as Aeschylus refer in passing to Menelaus' early life, detailed sources are quite late, post-dating 5th-century BC Greek tragedy.[13] According to these sources, Menelaus' 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
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.[15] Other archaeologists consider that Pellana is too far away from other Mycenaean centres to have been the "capital of Menelaus".[16]
According to tradition Menelaus founded the port-city Menelai Portus on the coast of Marmarica in Northern Africa.[17]
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.[18] Menelaus is wounded in the abdomen, and the fighting resumes. Later, in Book 17, Homer gives Menelaus an extended aristeia as the hero retrieves the corpse of Patroclus from the battlefield.
According to
There are four versions of Menelaus' 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' 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.[19]
- 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' return from Troy and his homelife in Sparta. When visited by Odysseus' son Telemachus, Menelaus recounts his voyage home. As happened to many Greeks, Menelaus' 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 Isle of the Blessed.[20]
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.[21]
In Greek tragedy
Menelaus appears as a character in a number of 5th-century Greek tragedies:
See also
- 1647 Menelaus, Jovian asteroid
- USS Menelaus (ARL-13)
- Menelaus (lunar crater)
Notes
- ^ Grimal, s.v. Menelaus.
- ^ Dares Phrygius, History of the Fall of Troy 13
- ^ For a discussion of the house of Tantalus see Gantz, pp. 531–556. For Menelaus' genealogy see, Grimal, p. 526, Table 2, and p. 534, Table 13.
- 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 [= fr. 195 MW], and Sophocles, Ajax 1295–1297(Aerope as mother, no mention of father).
- 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 Orestes4).
- Fabulae 117.
- ^ 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.
- ap. schol. (D) Iliad 3.175], 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).
- ^ 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").
- .
- ^ Pausanias, 2.18.6, 3.19.9. Fowler, p. 529, notes that the name 'Tereis' is unique and possibly "corrupt".
- ^ Frazer's note 1 to Apollodorus 3.11.1, see also Grimal, s.v. Menelaus; Gantz, p. 573.
- Hyginus' Fabulae and the Epitome of the Bibliotheca.
- ^ "Τρωικοσ Πολεμοσ - Ελληνικη Μυθολογια Και Πολιτισμοσ". Archived from the original on 2011-10-01. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- ^ admin. "Διαβλητικός".
- ^ Mee & Spawforth (2001), p. 229
- ^ Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Menelai Portus
- ISBN 9780226470498.
- ^ Andromache, 629–31.
- ^ Line 1675.
- ^ Woodford 1993.
References
- 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, .
- Collard, Christopher and Martin Cropp (2008b), Euripides Fragments: Oedipus-Chrysippus: Other Fragments, .
- 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, 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.
- 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. ISBN 978-0198147411.
- ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3(Vol. 2).
- Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1.
- Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 9780415186360. Google Books.
- 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.
- 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.
- Fabulae, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText.
- .
- Parada, Carlos, Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology, Jonsered, Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993. ISBN 978-91-7081-062-6.
- 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.
- ISBN 978-0-674-96785-4
- 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.
- .
- .
External links
- Media related to Menelaus at Wikimedia Commons