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Liber X · Greek Mythology

Liber X · Greek Mythology · Chapter VIII: The Trojan War & the Odyssey

The House of Atreus: Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Orestes

The house of Atreus in Greek myth: Tantalus and Pelops, the feast of Thyestes, Iphigenia, Agamemnon's murder, Orestes' revenge and the trial in Aeschylus.

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The house of Atreus is the royal family of Mycenae and Argos whose crimes, repeated over generations, form the most famous family curse in Greek myth. It runs from Tantalus, who served his son to the gods, through the feud of the brothers Atreus and Thyestes, to Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia and was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra on his return from Troy, and to their son Orestes, who avenged his father by killing his mother. Aeschylus' trilogy the Oresteia (458 BCE) ends the cycle with Orestes' trial and acquittal at Athens.

Tantalus and Pelops: The Origins of the Curse§

The line begins with Tantalus, a son of Zeus who ruled near Mount Sipylus in Lydia and was admitted to the feasts of the gods. In the best-known version he killed his son Pelops and served him to the gods to test whether they could tell. Only Demeter, distracted by grief for her daughter, ate a piece of the shoulder; the gods restored the boy, giving him a shoulder of ivory. Tantalus was punished in the Underworld, standing in water that receded when he stooped to drink beneath fruit that the wind blew out of reach, the origin of the word "tantalise" (see Hades and the Greek Underworld). Pindar, in his first Olympian Ode, rejected the cannibal story as unworthy of the gods and offered another.

Pelops came to Greece to win Hippodamia, daughter of King Oenomaus of Pisa in Elis, who challenged each suitor to a chariot race and killed the losers. Pelops bribed the king's charioteer Myrtilus to sabotage his master's chariot, replacing the linchpins with wax in one version; Oenomaus was killed. When Myrtilus claimed his reward, Pelops threw him into the sea, and the dying charioteer cursed the house. The great sanctuary of Olympia honoured Pelops as hero, and the preparations for the race are carved on the east pediment of the temple of Zeus there. The Peloponnese, "island of Pelops", bears his name.

Atreus, Thyestes and the Golden Lamb§

Pelops' sons Atreus and Thyestes came to rule at Mycenae and quarrelled over the throne. Atreus had vowed the finest of his flock to Artemis, but when a lamb with a golden fleece appeared he hid it. His wife Aerope, Thyestes' lover, secretly gave the lamb to Thyestes, who then proposed that whoever owned the golden lamb should be king. In a famous detail used by Euripides, Zeus reversed the course of the sun as a sign that the throne belonged to Atreus.

Atreus' revenge became proverbial. Pretending reconciliation, he invited Thyestes to a feast and served him the flesh of his own sons, then showed him their heads and hands. Thyestes fled, cursing the line. Told by an oracle that a son born of his own daughter Pelopia would avenge him, he fathered Aegisthus by her; Aegisthus later killed Atreus. Seneca's Thyestes is the most complete surviving treatment of the banquet, and its horrors deeply influenced Renaissance revenge tragedy.

Agamemnon, Iphigenia and the Sacrifice at Aulis§

Atreus' sons, the Atreidae, were Agamemnon and Menelaus. With the help of Tyndareus of Sparta they regained Mycenae, and they married two of Tyndareus' daughters: Agamemnon took Clytemnestra, Menelaus Helen. When Paris carried Helen to Troy, Agamemnon led the Greek host (see The Trojan War).

At Aulis the fleet was held by contrary winds sent by Artemis. The reason differs: in the Cypria Agamemnon had killed a deer and boasted that he hunted better than the goddess; in Aeschylus the anger is linked to an omen of two eagles tearing a pregnant hare. The seer Calchas declared that only the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia would release the ships. She was brought from Mycenae on the pretext of a marriage to Achilles. In Aeschylus she is gagged and killed at the altar; in the Cypria and in Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians Artemis substitutes a deer and carries her off to serve as priestess among the Taurians of the Crimea. Homer does not mention the sacrifice at all, and in the Iliad Agamemnon offers Achilles one of three living daughters. The Roman poet Lucretius chose the scene as his example of the evils of superstition: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, "so great the evils religion could prompt".

The Murder of Agamemnon§

In the Odyssey, Agamemnon's fate is told repeatedly as a contrast to Odysseus' homecoming: Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra during the war, invited the returning king to a feast and killed him as a man slaughters an ox at its manger, while Clytemnestra killed the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had brought home as his concubine. In the Underworld Agamemnon's shade warns Odysseus never to trust a wife, then praises Penelope's loyalty.

Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the first play of the trilogy discussed in Greek Tragedy, moves Clytemnestra to the centre. A watchman sees the beacon-fire chain that brings news of Troy's fall; the chorus remembers Iphigenia; Agamemnon arrives and, at his wife's urging, walks into the palace on precious crimson tapestries, an act of pride. Cassandra, gifted with prophecy but never believed, foresees the slaughter and enters to her death. Clytemnestra then appears over the bodies: she entangled her husband in a robe like a net while he bathed and struck him three times, and she justifies the act by the killing of her daughter. The surviving tragedies differ on the weapon, and scholars still debate whether Aeschylus imagined a sword or an axe.

Orestes, Electra and the Matricide§

Orestes, still a boy, had been sent away or rescued to Phocis, where he grew up with his friend Pylades, son of King Strophius. Homer says simply that he returned in the eighth year and killed Aegisthus, holding a funeral feast for him and his "hateful mother", without dwelling on how she died. The lyric poet Stesichorus, in a lost Oresteia of the sixth century BCE, already introduced Clytemnestra's dream of a serpent and Apollo's gift of a bow to Orestes.

In Aeschylus' Libation Bearers Orestes, commanded by Apollo's oracle at Delphi, returns in secret, is recognised by his sister Electra at their father's tomb by a lock of hair and footprints, kills Aegisthus and then, after hesitating when his mother bares her breast, kills Clytemnestra. Sophocles' Electra makes Electra's grief and endurance the heart of the play and ends without any sign of remorse. Euripides' Electra gives her a humble marriage to a farmer, openly mocks Aeschylus' recognition tokens and presents the matricide as a squalid act that horrifies its doers. His Orestes (408 BCE) shows the young man mad and on trial at Argos.

The Furies and the Trial on the Areopagus§

As Orestes leaves his mother's body, the Erinyes, the Furies who avenge blood shed within a family, come for him. In the Eumenides, the last play of the Oresteia, he is purified by Apollo at Delphi and flees to Athens. Athena convenes a court of Athenian citizens on the Areopagus, the hill where the city's ancient homicide court still sat in Aeschylus' day. Apollo defends Orestes, the Furies prosecute, the votes are equal, and Athena's deciding vote acquits him. The Furies, enraged, are persuaded to accept a home and honours in Athens as kindly powers, the Eumenides or Semnai ("revered ones").

Since the nineteenth century the trilogy has been read as a myth of the passage from blood vengeance to public justice, and also, more critically, as a drama in which a male order triumphs over female claims. Euripides offers alternative endings: in Iphigenia among the Taurians Orestes must fetch an image of Artemis from the Crimea, where he finds his lost sister alive and escapes with her. The curse finally ends with Orestes, who rules Mycenae and Sparta, marries Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, and dies in old age. Comparison with the Theban saga is instructive: in both the house of Thebes and the house of Atreus, crimes recur within the family, yet the Theban line ends in mutual destruction and the line of Atreus in a verdict.

Mycenae and the Afterlife of the Myth§

Mycenae, in the Argolid, was a major centre of Late Bronze Age Greece, with the Lion Gate and the great tholos tomb popularly called the "Treasury of Atreus", both usually dated to around 1250 BCE. In 1876 Heinrich Schliemann excavated the shaft graves of Grave Circle A and found rich burials with gold masks; one became known as the "Mask of Agamemnon", although the graves date to the sixteenth century BCE, centuries before any possible Trojan War. The story that Schliemann telegraphed that he had gazed on the face of Agamemnon is not supported by his surviving reports. These names reflect the excavators' hopes, not evidence connecting the remains to the mythical family.

The house of Atreus has been retold in every age: Seneca's Agamemnon and Thyestes, Racine's Iphigénie (1674), Gluck's two Iphigenia operas, Richard Strauss's Elektra (1909), Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies (1943). Carl Jung's term "Electra complex", coined as a counterpart to Freud's Oedipus complex, borrowed the name of Agamemnon's daughter.

Frequently asked questions§

What is the curse of the house of Atreus?§

It is the chain of crimes within one family: Tantalus serving his son to the gods, Pelops' betrayal of Myrtilus, Atreus' feast of Thyestes' children, Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon and Orestes' killing of his mother. Ancient poets presented each crime as both a free act and the working of an inherited curse.

Why did Clytemnestra kill Agamemnon?§

In Aeschylus she acts above all to avenge their daughter Iphigenia, sacrificed at Aulis, though her love for Aegisthus and her anger at Cassandra also play a part. In Homer the plot is mainly Aegisthus', with Clytemnestra as his accomplice.

Was Orestes punished for killing his mother?§

He was pursued by the Furies and driven mad, but in Aeschylus' Eumenides he is tried at Athens and acquitted when Athena casts the deciding vote. The Furies are then given a new, honoured place in the city.

Sources and further reading§