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
Pausanias of Sparta the Spartans and replaced as king by his young son Agesipolis I. However, Pausanias was able to escape execution and fled Sparta to live in exile in Tegea. While living there he wrote a pamphlet. No fragments of the pamphlet have survived and its contents or purposes are not clear. However, it seems that he wrote the pamphlet to criticise his opponents in Sparta accusing them of violating traditional Spartan laws and advocating the abolition of the ephors. The year of Pausanias's death is unknown. He was also the father of Cleombrotus I. Pausanias of Sparta Pausanias (Greek: Παυσανίας) was