Zeus approached Leda in the form of a swan, and on the same night she also lay with her husband Tyndareus. From this dual union came the Dioscuri, Helen, and Clytemnestra.
⚠ Sources disagree on which children are divine and which mortal. The most common tradition makes Helen and Polydeuces children of Zeus, while Castor and Clytemnestra are Tyndareus's. Other versions vary the combinations.
Tyndareus gave his daughter Clytemnestra to Agamemnon in marriage, forging the alliance between Sparta and Mycenae that would later underpin the Greek coalition against Troy.
Heracles killed Hippocoon and his sons to restore Tyndareus to the throne of Sparta, from which he had been expelled. Tyndareus rewarded Heracles with alliance and friendship.
Tyndareus chose Menelaus as Helen's husband from among her many suitors and made him heir to the Spartan throne, binding all rejected suitors by oath to defend the match.
Odysseus devised the Oath of Tyndareus, binding Helen's suitors to defend her chosen husband. In exchange, Tyndareus helped Odysseus win the hand of Penelope from her father Icarius.
The Oath of Tyndareus, which bound Helen's suitors to defend her chosen husband, became the mechanism that compelled all of Greece to join the Trojan War after Paris abducted Helen.
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