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
Chilonis (wife of Cleombrotus II) Chilonis (wife of Cleombrotus II) Chilonis () was a Spartan princess and queen: daughter, wife, sister and grandmother of four different Spartan kings: Leonidas II, Cleombrotus II, Cleomenes III and Agesipolis III respectively. Chilonis, daughter of the king Leonidas II and his wife Cratesiclea, a woman of Persian origin, became Queen of Sparta in 272 BC, when the father was deposed from the throne by the ephor Lysander and substituted by her husband Cleombrotus II. In that circumstance, Chilonis preferred to follow her father in his exile, instead of remaining in Sparta with her husband, the new king. The next