Menelaus Paris the most beautiful woman in all the world. After concluding a diplomatic mission to Sparta during the latter part of which Menelaus was absent to attend the funeral of his maternal grandfather Catreus in Crete, Paris ran off to Troy with Helen despite his brother Hector's prohibition. Invoking the oath of Tyndareus, Menelaus and Agamemnon raised a fleet of a thousand ships and went to Troy to secure Helen's return; the Trojans refused, providing a "casus belli" for the Trojan War. Homer's "Iliad" is the most expansive source for Menelaus’s exploits during the Trojan War. In Book 3, Menelaus
Menelaus (son of Lagus) Menelaus (son of Lagus) Menelaus (; , "Menelaos"), son of Lagus and brother of Ptolemy I Soter (ruler of Egypt), served as priest of the eponymous state cult of Alexander, and was for a time king in Cyprus, under his brother. His name does not occur among the officers or generals of Alexander the Great (336–323 BC) during the lifetime of that monarch, though it is incidentally mentioned by Phylarchus in terms that would seem to imply that he then already occupied a distinguished position. The first occasion on which he appears in history is 315 BC, when he was