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
William Menelaus William Menelaus William Menelaus (10 March 1818 – 30 March 1882) was a Scottish-born mechanical engineer, who made his name and fortune as the works manager at the Dowlais Ironworks in South Wales. Born in East Lothian on 10 March 1818, his father was a writer to the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet in Edinburgh. Educated locally, he was an apprenticed millwright to a group of engineers at Haddington. In 1844 Rowland Fothergill of Hensol Castle engaged Menelaus to remodel a corn mill. Persuading him to stay, Menelaus rose to manage Fothergill's Aberdare Ironworks at Llwydcoed. After the