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Menelaos
Menelaus, son of Atreus and Aerope, was born into a family of bad blood and feuding. His early life, along with his brother Agamemnon, was overshadowed by struggles between his father Atreus and his uncle Thyestes. When he was still young, he and Agamemnon were sent by their father to arrest Thyestes. The two brothers captured him in Pytho, the seat of the famous oracle of Apollo, and brought him in chains to Mycenae where Atreus was king. Atreus heaped up false accusations on Thyestes and tried to kill him. However, Thyestes' son Aegisthus murdered Atreus before he was able to carry this out, and Thyestes was made the king of Mycenae.
Menelaus and his brother fled a certain death in Mycenae and went into exile. First they took refuge with King Polyphides of Sicyon and then with King Oeneus of Calydon. Finally they came to the court of King Tyndareus of Sparta, where they found a welcome home. In the end, being unable to bear a life of exile anymore, Menelaus and Agamemnon decided to retake power in Mycenae. King Tyndareus, who was very fond of the two brothers, provided them with an army of Laconian warriors, and they returned to Mycenae in arms. After a brief battle, Thyestes and Aegisthus fled to the island of Cythera, and Menelaus and his brother took power in Mycenae once more.
Having established himself in Mycenae, Menelaus decided to marry. At the time Tyndareus' daughters Helen and Clytaemnestra were coming of age. Helen was the most beautiful girl that Menelaus had ever seen; indeed, she was probably the most beautiful girl that ever lived and ever will live. Not surprisingly Menelaus asked Tyndareus for her hand in marriage, but almost every other prince in Achaea came to do the same. This was potentially a very volatile situation - Tyndareus was afraid that the suitors who were passed over would return with armies to try to win Helen by force. Fortunately Odysseus of Ithaca, himself one of the suitors of Helen, suggested a cunning plan. The suitors were all to swear a holy oath that they would protect the marriage of whomever was successful; if the marriage was ever threatened, the unsuccessful suitors bound themselves to come to its defence. So they swore, and Helen chose Menelaus to be her husband, placing a wreath upon his head.
When Tyndareus died, his kingdom of Sparta should have gone to one of his two sons, the Dioscuri. However, when these were spirited away to heaven, becoming stars in the night sky (this is another story entirely), Sparta passed on to Menelaus as Tyndareus' son-in-law. And so the Peloponnese came to be dominated by Agamemnon ruling in Mycenae and Menelaus ruling in Sparta. It is at this point in Menelaus' life that the action of Aristeia begins.
(Menelaos in full battle dress)
After Menelaus' marriage to Helen, they had a daughter, Hermione, and two sons, Nicostratus and Plisthenes. After a few years the Trojan prince Paris came to visit Sparta on an embassy from Troy. However, the goddess Aphrodite was plotting to give Helen over to Paris, and made her fall in love with him when she saw him. He managed to kidnap her and steal her away to be his bride in Troy. When Menelaus learnt of this adulterous kidnapping, he went to his brother in Mycenae and together they threatened war against Troy. The Oath of Tyndareus was invoked, and all the great Achaean leaders rallied to the cause of Menelaus' marriage. When Paris refused to give up Helen, the Achaean army sailed from Aulis in Boeotia to attack Troy.
When the Achaean army arrived before the walls of Troy, Menelaus and Odysseus were sent in to demand that Helen be restored to her home in Sparta. Nonetheless, the Trojans refused and even threatened to kill the two heroes. Fortunately for them, the Trojan Antenor (a man who wanted peace) intervened, and later when the Achaeans sacked Troy Menelaus had his house spared. And so the siege began.
In the tenth year of the war the prince Paris finally agreed to face Menelaus in single combat. Menelaus was the stronger warrior, and knocked Paris to the ground. Then he started to drag him by his helmet crest in triumph, but Aphrodite came and snapped the helmet strap; Menelaus was left clutching his enemy's helmet, while Paris escaped, hidden in a mist created by the goddess. There was at the time a truce between the Trojan and Achaean armies. After this duel, however, the Trojan Pandarus fired an arrow that hit Menelaus in the leg, and the war was renewed. Menelaus' wound was healed by the Thessalian prince Machaon, son of the healing god Asclepius.
Eventually it became clear that Troy could not be captured by ordinary assault, and the Achaeans built the famous wooden horse. Menelaus was one of the heroes who hid within it. The Achaean army withdrew out of sight from Troy (anchoring off the island of Tenedos), leaving the large wooden horse statue outside the city with the heroes concealed within it. The Trojans had a great debate as to whether or not to bring it into the city; in the end they did so, and that night, while the Trojans were revelling in their supposed victory, the Achaean heroes slipped out of the belly of the horse. Meanwhile the Achaean army had returned from Tenedos and was marching towards the gates of the city. Paris had died some time before this attack, and Helen had come to live at the house of the Trojan hero Deiphobus. Once the Achaean heroes had opened the Trojan gates to their army, Menelaus led his Spartan warriors straight to the house of Deiphobus. He seized Deiphobus and tortured him cruelly, cutting off his nose, then his ears, then all his fingers and limbs, one by one, until finally he finished the unlucky Trojan off.
Yet, in the bloodlust that was unleashed after their victory, the Achaeans committed many outrages and offences against the gods. As a result, the gods punished them by sending a great storm to scatter their fleet as it tried to return home. It would take Menelaus eight years to return home with Helen. His ship was driven by contrary winds first to Sunium in Attica, then to Crete, Phoenicia, Egypt and Libya. Along the way he sacked various cities and won great spoils of war. When in Egypt, at the mouth of the Nile, he lost his ship's pilot Canobus, after whom the 'Canopic' branch of the Nile was named. Menelaus met the Egyptian prophet Proteus, and decided (on the advice of Proteus' daughter Eidothea) to capture him and force him to reveal when he would be allowed to return home. Proteus told him of the gods' anger at the Achaean outrages at Troy, and revealed that Menelaus would have to make a sacrificial offering to them. He did so, and he and Helen were finally allowed to return to Sparta.
They sailed back to Achaea and arrived first in the city of Argos, where they met Orestes. Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra. Menelaus found that the old family feud of the Atreids had continued in his absence. During the Trojan War Clytaemnestra had begun an affair with Thyestes' son Aegisthus, and when Agamemnon returned from Troy they murdered him. Orestes had, in turn, murdered Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus. Orestes was being pursued both by mortal men for the crime of matricide and also by the divine avenging Furies. He asked Menelaus for help, but Menelaus, worried about the strong opinions of the people of Sparta (who wanted Orestes to be punished), refused to aid his nephew. As a result, Orestes, his sister Electra and his friend Pylades began to plot to murder Helen in revenge, though this deed never took place. In the end, the gods preferred that Orestes should marry Menelaus' daughter Hermione, after the goddess Athena had pardoned him for his matricide and appeased the Furies.
Finally Menelaus and Helen were able to live out the rest of their lives in peace at Sparta. It is said that, after their deaths, the goddess Hera spirited them away to live in bliss in the Elysian Fields.
(in-game shot of Menelaos)
(various in-game shots)
Biography - Zenith
Unit - Zhuge