 GEOG: When Paris and Helen have arrived in Troy, Helen tells Paris  that Sparta was never her home, that she had been sent to Sparta to  marry Menelaus. According to Homer, Menelaus was actually from  Mycenae (as was his brother, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae). Helen  was the daughter of the previous king of Sparta. The Spartan royal  house worked by matrilineal succession and so by marrying Helen,  Menelaus became the king of Sparta.