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
Chilon of Sparta king Anaxandridas II of Sparta and bore his son, king Cleomenes I. Chilon of Sparta said also the famous Ancient Greek proverb: "Το λακωνίζειν εστί φιλοσοφείν " in English " less is more" or " brevity is the soul of wit" or " brevity is a way of philosophy" which means that the best way of being philosopher is through brevity and describes the way of Spartans' way of thinking and attitude. Diogenes Laertius describes him as a writer of elegiac poems, and attributes many sayings to him: According to an inscription at the Bath of the Seven Sages in