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
William Menelaus William Menelaus William Menelaus (10 March 1818 – 30 March 1882) was a Scottish-born mechanical engineer, who made his name and fortune as the works manager at the Dowlais Ironworks in South Wales. Born in East Lothian on 10 March 1818, his father was a writer to the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet in Edinburgh. Educated locally, he was an apprenticed millwright to a group of engineers at Haddington. In 1844 Rowland Fothergill of Hensol Castle engaged Menelaus to remodel a corn mill. Persuading him to stay, Menelaus rose to manage Fothergill's Aberdare Ironworks at Llwydcoed. After the