Tyndareus

For he said that in Sparta there was Tyndareus, a wise man and a great king, and that he had of Leda two daughters, by the same names that we use, Clytemnestra and Helen, and two male children, twins, fair and great and far the best of the Greeks.

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.

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.

Now Tyndareus gave me to your father not so that I or any children I might bear should die.

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.

See, Tyndareus approaches us, the man of all others I most shrink from facing, because of the deed I have done.

And here is Tyndareus, the Spartan, struggling with aged step, clad in black robes, with his hair cut short in mourning for his daughter.

If a man’s wedded wife should kill him, and his son in turn will kill his mother in revenge;

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.

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.

My own fatherland, Sparta, is not without fame, and my father is Tyndareus;

The one whom Tyndareus, my father, gave to you.

Are the sons of Tyndareus still alive or not?

from him I was born, his child Iphigenia, by the daughter of Tyndareus.

But did Tyndareus’ daughter, the Spartan, give birth to you?

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;

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.