Priam’s son, whose name was Paris, but who is also called Alexander by Homer, sailed from Troy to mainland Greece on a diplomatic mission to visit Menelaus, the king of Mycenaean Sparta, for the Trojans and the Mycenaeans had been friendly trading partners for some time by that point. While there, he fell in love with Menelaus’s beautiful wife, Helen. When Paris returned home, Helen accompanied him—either voluntarily, according to the Trojans, or taken by force, according to the Greeks. Enraged, Menelaus persuaded his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the leader of the Greeks, to send an
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