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
Hippocoon (king of Sparta) Cepheus' sons did survive). Hippocoon (king of Sparta) In Greek mythology, Hippocoön (; Ancient Greek: Ἱπποκόων) was a Spartan king. Hippocoon was the son of the Spartan King Oebalus and Bateia. His brothers (or half-brothers) were Tyndareus and Icarius. Names of Hippocoön's sons include Lycon, Alcinous, Dorycleus, Scaeus, Enarophorus, Eurytus, Bucolus, Euteiches, Lycaethus, Hippothous, Tebrus, Hippocorystes, Alcimus, Dorceus, Sebrus, Eumedes, Enaesimus, Alcon and Leucippus (the last three were among the Calydonian hunters). Diodorus Siculus states that there were twenty of them, but gives no individual names. When their father died, Tyndareus became king. Hippocoön, with the help of his sons,