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
Menelaus of Alexandria great circle arcs, which he named "trilaterals") and proves Menelaus' theorem on collinearity of points on the edges of a triangle (which may have been previously known) and its analog for spherical triangles. It was later translated by the sixteenth century astronomer and mathematician Francesco Maurolico. The lunar crater Menelaus is named after him. The titles of a few books by Menelaus have been preserved: Menelaus of Alexandria Menelaus of Alexandria (; , "Menelaos ho Alexandreus"; c. 70 – 140 CE) was a Greek mathematician and astronomer, the first to recognize geodesics on a curved surface as natural analogs of