Lacedaemon (Σπάρτη) — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Lacedaemon — Lacedaemon of the rifted hills — the wronged king's realm, for whose stolen queen all Achaea sailed.

The Eurotas-valley kingdom of red-haired Menelaos, brother of Agamemnon and husband of the stolen Helen — the injury that launched the war. Sixty ships, a duel with Paris, and the strangest of all returns: home at last with Helen, and destined never to die but to pass living to the Elysian plain.

Leader at Troy: Menelaos.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Menelaos.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean, and the very cause of the war: the theft of Menelaos's wife Helen by Paris drew the whole host to Troy. He led sixty ships from Lacedaemon, fought Alexandros in single combat for Helen, and rode home inside the wooden horse.

The homecoming: Home at last with Helen — and fated to pass living to the Elysian plain.

Lacedaemon lies "low amid the rifted hills," a realm of caverned valleys walled by Taygetos, its towns strung down the Eurotas and along the deep gulf: Sparta and Pharis and Messe the haunt of doves, Bryseiai and lovely Augeiai, Amyklai and the sea-fortress of Helos, Laas and Oitylos, with old Therapne above the river. It was the seat of Menelaos son of Atreus, red-haired lord of the loud war-cry — and it was for this house, and for the wife stolen out of it, that all Achaea sailed. Menelaos was the wronged man of the whole war. When Alexandros [Paris] carried golden Helen from his halls, it was Menelaos's quarrel that the assembled kings took up as their own; his brother Agamemnon of [[MYC]] Mycenae, the king of men, marshalled the host, and Menelaos "himself marched among them confident in his zeal... his heart most of all set to take vengeance for his strivings and groans for Helen's sake." He led sixty ships from Lacedaemon, arrayed apart from his brother's hundred — the two sons of Atreus the twin engines of the war against [[TRO]] Troy. On the plain his aristeia came in single combat. In the tenth year the armies stood aside and Menelaos fought Alexandros man to man for Helen and all her wealth; he shattered his sword on the prince's helm, then seized him by the crest and would have dragged him dead to the Achaeans had not laughter-loving Aphrodite snapped the chin-strap and snatched her favourite away in mist. Zeus himself owned that "the victory is to Menelaos." The truce that followed was broken by an arrow: Pandaros of [[ZEL]] Zeleia, the Lycian bowman, shot Menelaos through belt and corslet by treachery, and the war blazed up again. Later, over the fallen body of Patroklos, Menelaos stood guard and ran through Euphorbos son of Panthoos, the Trojan who had first speared Patroklos — a stubborn, protecting valour that marks him through the Iliad. And when the city fell, he was among the picked men shut in the wooden horse. But the nostos of Menelaos is the strangest and gentlest of all the returns. Driven off course, he wandered Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt for long years, marooned at last on the isle of Pharos until he wrestled the shape-shifting sea-god Proteus, the ancient one of Egypt, and forced from him the road home — and the news that Odysseus of the [[CEP]] Cephallenians yet lived, held on Ogygia by the nymph. Nestor of [[PYL]] Pylos, who had parted from Menelaos on the voyage, tells the tale of the scattered homecomings. At the dramatic present — year ten of the returns — Menelaos is the achaean lord come safe home, feasting in his vaulted hall with Helen restored at his side, marrying off his children: his daughter Hermione, fair as golden Aphrodite, he sends to Neoptolemos son of Achilles among the Myrmidons of [[MYR]], the match he had pledged at Troy, and brings home a bride for Megapenthes. Into this bright, melancholy house comes young Telemachos, seeking word of his father. And upon Menelaos alone of all the Achaean kings Proteus laid a fate beyond death: because he holds Helen and is counted son-in-law of Zeus, he shall not die in Argos but be carried living to the Elysian plain at the world's end, where life is easiest for men.

“The deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world's end, where is Rhadamanthus of the fair hair, where life is easiest for men.” — Odyssey 4.563-565