Menelaus Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Tyndareus’s niece Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed, and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband in any quarrel. Then it was decreed that straws were to be drawn for Helen’s hand. The suitor who won was Menelaus (Tyndareus, not to displease the powerful Agamemnon offered him another of his daughters, Clytaemnestra). The rest of the suitors swore their oaths, and Helen and Menelaus were married, Menelaus becoming a ruler of Sparta with Helen after
Pausanias of Sparta Pausanias of Sparta Pausanias (Greek: Παυσανίας) was the Agiad King of Sparta from 445 BC to 426 BC and then from 408 BC to 395 BC. He was the son of the Spartan Agiad king Pleistoanax. His first reign was as a minor after his father, Pleistoanax, was temporarily deposed and exiled after being charged by the Spartans with taking a bribe, probably from the Athenian leader, Pericles, to withdraw from the plain of Eleusis in Attica after leading the Peloponnesian forces there following the revolts of Euboea and Megara from the Athenian empire. In 426 BC, Pleistoanax was recalled