Pandarus, in Greek legend, son of Lycaon, a Lycian. In Homer’s Iliad, Book IV, Pandarus breaks the truce between the Trojans and the Greeks by treacherously wounding Menelaus, the king of Sparta; he is ultimately slain by the warrior Diomedes. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Pandarus acts as the lovers’ go-between; hence the word “pander.”