Tyndareus
mythological figure · 12 works · 16 mentions · 26 anchored passages
old Tyndareus · sons of Tyndareus · the Dioscuri · the brothers, sons of Tyndareus
in the texts
Orations
King of Sparta, father of Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Polydeuces, whose political calculation drives the marriage alliance in the priest's account.
Concerning these things, then, Tyndareus took counsel with his sons.
For Tyndareus said it was enough for him to be allied by marriage with him;
and Priam and Hector and all the rest rejoiced at the marriage, and received Helen with sacrifices and prayers.
Electra
Father of Clytemnestra and Helen, invoked repeatedly as a genealogical epithet for Clytemnestra.
I am Agamemnon’s child, and Clytemnestra, hated daughter of Tyndareus, bore me;
but Aegisthus rules the land, possessing Agamemnon’s wife, the daughter of Tyndareus.
May I too share your conversation, sons of Tyndareus?
Iphigenia in Aulis
Father of Helen and Clytemnestra (and putatively Phoebe), king of Sparta, who devised the oath binding Helen's suitors to defend her marriage.
whoever wins the child of Tyndareus for wife, they will assist that man, in case a rival takes her from his house and goes his way, robbing her husband of his rights;
Now when they had once pledged their word and old Tyndareus with no small cleverness had beguiled them by his shrewd device, he allowed his daughter to choose from among her suitors the one towards whom the sweet breezes of Aphrodite might carry her.
Hellene no less than barbarian.
Orestes
Father of Clytemnestra and Helen, Orestes' grandfather, who denounces Orestes as a matricide and demands his execution.
Tyndareus:
Tyndareus:
Tyndareus:
On Fate
Mythological king, father of Clytaemnestra, cited as a mere antecedent, not efficient cause, in the discussion of causation.
nor was the fact that I went down to the Campus the cause of my playing at ball, nor was Hecuba the cause of the Trojans’ destruction because she bore Alexander, nor Tyndareus the cause to Agamemnon because he begot Clytaemnestra.
Tusculan Disputations
Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Tyndareus (or Zeus), deified helpers of Rome in battle.
from this Liber, son of Semele, was born, and with the same celebrity of report the brothers, sons of Tyndareus, who are reported to have been not only helpers of the Roman people's victory in battles, but even messengers of it.
Helen
King of Sparta, mortal father (or father-in-law by marriage) of Helen and father of the Dioskouroi.
Helen:
Are the sons of Tyndareus still alive or not?
The one whom Tyndareus, my father, gave to you.
Iphigenia in Tauris
Spartan king, father of Clytemnestra and Helen.
But did Tyndareus’ daughter, the Spartan, give birth to you?
from him I was born, his child Iphigenia, by the daughter of Tyndareus.
Archidamus
A legendary Spartan ruler whose restoration by Heracles is used to justify Heraclid title to Lacedaemon.
next, that Lacedaemon was theirs by right of gift, for when Tyndareus, having been driven from his throne, was restored to it by Heracles, after Castor and Polydeuces had vanished from among men, he gave the land to Heracles because of this act of kindness and also because of the kinship of Heracles and his own sons;
Helen
Spartan king, guardian of the young Helen at the time of Theseus's abduction of her.
And when he was unable to obtain her from her guardians—for they were awaiting her maturity and the fulfilment of the oracle which the Pythian priestess had given—scorning the royal power of Tyndareus, disdaining the might of Castor and Pollux, and belittling all the hazards in Lacedaemon, he seized her by force and established her at Aphidna in Attica.
Isthmean
Spartan king, father (or foster-father) of Castor.
Often crowning their hair with wreaths from these contests they appeared beside the streams of Dirce or near the Eurotas, the son of Iphicles, who was of the same city as the race of the Sown Men, and the son of Tyndareus, dwelling among the Achaeans in his highland home of Therapne.
Nemean
Mortal husband of Leda, identified by Zeus as Castor's mortal father.
But Castor was begotten after your conception by the hero, your mother’s husband, who came to her and sowed his mortal seed.
Swiftly Polydeuces the son of Tyndareus went back to his mighty brother, and found him not yet dead, but shuddering with gasps of breath.