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) appointed by his brother to the chief command of the forces dispatched to Cyprus, where they were destined to co-operate with the fleet of Seleucus, and with Nicocreon, king of Salamis. By their combined efforts, they soon reduced all the cities of Cyprus to subjection, with the exception of Citium; and that also, it would appear, must have ultimately submitted. Menelaus now remained in the island, which he governed with almost absolute authority, the petty princes of the several cities being deposed, imprisoned, or assassinated on the slightest symptom of disaffection. He still held the chief command in 306 BC,