King of Lacedaemon, was the son of Atreus, and brother of Agamemnon. He appeared among the numerous princely suitors for the hand of Helen, the beautiful daughter of Jupiter and Leda, and was successful. His wife, however, was afterwards carried off by Paris, the Trojan prince, and could not be reclaimed either by threats or by negotiations. All the Greek chiefs were accordingly summoned by Menelaus and Agamemnon to avenge this insult. A fleet of sixty ships was equipped, and a formidable expedition set sail against Troy. During the ten years' siege of that city Menelaus maintained the character of a sagacious counsellor and a lion-hearted warrior. On one occasion, according to Homer, he engaged with Paris in single combat before the two armies, dragged his adversary across the plain by the helmet, and would have avenged his own wrongs with his own hand, had not Venus interfered to save her favourite. He entered Troy in the wooden horse, and during the sack and massacre that ensued he recovered Helen, and carried her off. Returning homewards, Menelaus encountered a storm that wrecked one part of his fleet on the coast of Crete, and drove the other, which contained himself, to the coast of Egypt. He then wandered about uncertainly for eight years, driven by fortune to Phoenicia, Ethiopia, and Libya, and even to Japya in Italy, and Eryx in Sicily. At length he arrived in Mycenae at the very time when the Argives were threatening to stone Orestes and Electra for the murder of their mother Clytemnestra. On the apotheosis of Castor and Pollux, the kingdom of Laconia was surrendered to Menelaus by his reputed father-in-law Tyndareus. It is related by Homer, that when Telemachus, wandering about in search of his father, arrived at Sparta, he found Menelaus and Helen enthroned in great magnificence in a lofty palace that blazed in splendour like the sun or moon. They were celebrating, amid a crowd of princely guests, the marriage of their son Megapenthes to a daughter of Alector, and of their daughter Hermione to Neoptolemus. On account of his relationship to Jove, Menelaus, according to Homer, was fated to be transported, along with his wife, to the Elysian Fields without ever tasting death. Their tomb, however, was wont to be shown at Therapne, not far from Sparta. (Hom. Il. and Od.)