Menelaus. A son of Plisthenes or Atreus, and younger brother of Agamemnon, was King of Lacedaemon, and married to the beautiful Helen, by whom he became the father of Hermione. His early life, the rape of his wife by Paris, and the expedition of the Greeks to Asia to punish the Trojans, are related under Agamemnon. In the Trojan War Menelaus killed many Trojans, and would have slain Paris also in single combat had not the latter been carried off by Aphrodite (Venus) in a cloud.
