MENELAUS  , in

Greek legend, son of Atreus (or Pleisthenes), king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon and husband of Helen . He was one of the Greeks who entered Troy concealed in the wooden horse (Virgil, Aeneid, ii . 264) and recovered his wife at the sack of the city . On the voyage homewards his fleet was scattered off Cape Malea by a storm, which drove him to Egypt . After eight years' wandering in the east, he landed on. the island of Pharos, where Proteus revealed to him the means of appeasing the gods and securing his return . He reached Sparta on the day on which Orestes was holding the funeral feast over Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra . After a long and happy life in Lacedaemon, Menelaus, as the son-in-law of Zeus, did not die but was translated to Elysium (Homer, Odyssey, iii. iv.) . His grave and that of Helen were shown at Therapnae, where he was worshipped as a god (Pausanias iii . 19, g) . He was represented in works of art as carrying off the body of the dead Patroclus or lifting up his hand to slay Helen .