Four Last Songs (Vaughan Williams) song of the cycle "Menelaus." The character Menelaus appears both in Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey". Menelaus is the King of Sparta whose wife, Helen, was taken from him by Paris to Troy. Together with his brother Agamemnon, fellow ruler Odysseus, and other warriors, Menelaus launched the Trojan War to regain his wife and return her to Sparta. In "The Odyssey", Odysseus' son Telemachus visits Menelaus in attempts to obtain news of his father who has not yet returned from the war. The Vaughan Williams' drew inspiration from Menelaus' description to Telemachus of the things Odysseus must do to
Chilonis (wife of Cleombrotus II) Chilonis (wife of Cleombrotus II) Chilonis () was a Spartan princess and queen: daughter, wife, sister and grandmother of four different Spartan kings: Leonidas II, Cleombrotus II, Cleomenes III and Agesipolis III respectively. Chilonis, daughter of the king Leonidas II and his wife Cratesiclea, a woman of Persian origin, became Queen of Sparta in 272 BC, when the father was deposed from the throne by the ephor Lysander and substituted by her husband Cleombrotus II. In that circumstance, Chilonis preferred to follow her father in his exile, instead of remaining in Sparta with her husband, the new king. The next