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 previously given artworks to the Cardiff Free Library, he left the residual 36 pieces valued at £10,000 to the same institution. Today they are all part of the Welsh National art collection, and mainly hang in the National Museum Cardiff, although his portrait by Parker Hagarty is on loan to Cardiff University's engineering department. Menelaus was buried on 4 April 1882 in the churchyard at Penderyn, Rhondda Cynon Taf, in the same brick grave that had already held his wife for thirty years. William Menelaus William Menelaus (10 March 1818 – 30 March 1882) was a Scottish-born mechanical engineer, who