Tyndareus

King of Sparta, husband of Leda, father of the mortal Dioscuric line. In his youth he was driven from the throne by his half-brother Hippocoön and took refuge with Thestius in Aetolia, where he married Leda; Heracles later killed Hippocoön in Laconia and restored him (Apollodorus 2.7.3, 3.10.5). When Helen came of age and every prince in Greece came courting, Tyndareus — fearing the quarrel among the rejected suitors — accepted Odysseus's counsel: he made every suitor swear the Oath of Tyndareus, to defend whoever won her against any future wrong. That oath is what binds the Greek kings to the Trojan War a generation later (Apollodorus 3.10.9; *Catalogue of Women* fragments).

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