Menelaus

American  

[men-l-ey-uhs] / ˌmɛn lˈeɪ əs /

noun

1. Classical Mythology. a king of Sparta, the husband of Helen and brother of Agamemnon, to whom he appealed for an army against Troy in order to recover Helen from her abductor, Paris.

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Menelaus British  

/ ˌmɛnɪˈleɪəs /

noun

1. Greek myth a king of Sparta and the brother of Agamemnon. He was the husband of Helen, whose abduction led to the Trojan War

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Menelaus

“You hear the story of the horse,” Menelaus says, “but did you hear it from the inside?”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026

When the woman is a powerful man’s wife — Helen was married to King Menelaus of Sparta — the effort to retrieve her can hardly help escalating to armed conflict.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 28, 2021

As Whishaw spins out modern-ancient parallels, including a comparison of Arthur Miller to Menelaus, he strips down and changes into drag, eventually assuming Monroe’s look in “The Seven Year Itch.”

From The New Yorker ● May 20, 2019

When Telemachus visits Menelaus, a slave girl brings him bread “and many canapés.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2017

Part of the interest of the Odyssey, as distinguished from the Iliad, lies in the details, such as are given in the story of Nausicaä and the visit of Telemachus to Menelaus.

From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton