Megapenthes of Sparta Megapenthes of Sparta In Greek mythology, Megapenthes (; Ancient Greek: Μεγαπένθης "Megapénthēs"), a Spartan prince and son of Menelaus, who ruled after his father's death and sent his mother (or step-mother) Helen into exile. In some legends, Helen was his mother; in most, however, he was Menelaus's son by a concubine, Pieris or Tereis, and was born during the Trojan War. His name means "great sorrow" and he is named that because he was conceived while Menelaus was grieving the loss of Helen. He marries the daughter of Alector in the beginning of Book IV of The Odyssey, whose name
1647 Menelaus its official discovery observation. In 1993, Andrea Milani suggested that "Menelaus" might be the parent body of an asteroid family based on a modified HCM-analysis. The finding was also mentioned by David Jewitt in 2004, who noted that the Menelaus family is the largest proposed dynamical family to exist among the Jupiter trojans, despite having only 8 members. In 2008, Fernando Roig and Ricardo Gil-Hutton described this particular aggregation of Jupiter trojans as the "Menelaus clan", which, similar to the Flora family in the inner asteroid belt, is composed of several families (or subfamilies). In this publication, the Menelaus clan