The wronged host
Menelaus received Paris as a guest in Sparta, and Paris repaid him by taking Helen and treasure. In the Iliad this violation of hospitality is the ground of the war, and Menelaus is the person with the clearest claim to redress. He is also the least theatrical of the Atreidae: where Agamemnon demands honour, Menelaus asks for what is his.
His duel with Paris in Book III is fought in full view of both armies. Menelaus wins on points and nearly kills Paris, but Aphrodite removes his opponent. The episode shows how the war’s causes are personal and how the gods can make a just settlement impossible.
The warrior and the survivor
Menelaus fights competently throughout the Iliad, often beside Ajax or Diomedes, and in Book XVII he is prominent in the struggle over Patroclus’s body. He is neither the strongest nor the most articulate, but he is steady. The poem treats him with respect and a little irony: his grievance is legitimate, and his inability to settle it by fair combat is part of the tragedy.
In the Odyssey he is back in Sparta with Helen, wealthy and hospitable, and he tells Telemachus about his own wanderings and about the fate of the Achaeans. He has survived the war and the return, and the poem allows him a domestic happiness that most of the other heroes do not receive.
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The following entries mention “Menelaus”.