Agamemnon

• Agamemnon

• Iphigeneia in Aulis

• Murder of Agamemnon

Agamemnon

According to Homer, Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνων) and his brother Menelaüs (Menalaus) were the sons of Atreus and Aerope, the daughter of Catreus of Crete. The two sons of Atreus were known as the Atreides.

However, in the Catalogues of Women and Aeschylus' Oresteia, Atreus was the father of Pleisthenes. Pleisthenes married Cleolla, the daughter of Dias, and he became the father of Agamemnon, Menelaüs and Anaxibia. Therefore Atreus was the grandfather of Agamemnon and Menelaüs. (Anaxibia married Strophius and became the mother of Pylades.) The parentage of Agamemnon and his brother caused confusion among the later writers.

Though, Apollodorus in his Library sometimes listed Agamemnon and Menelaüs as the sons of Atreus and Aerope, but he also listed them as the sons of Pleisthenes and Aerope. In this last case, Pleisthenes was listed as the son of Pelops, not of Atreus.

---

Agamemnon became king of Mycenae, the most powerful kingdom during the war against Troy, while his brother Menelaüs, who married Helen, became king of Sparta.

Agamemnon married Clytemnestra (Κλυταιμνἠστρα), Helen's half-sister, only after he killed her first husband, Tantalus or Broteas, the son of Thyestes, and their baby. Agamemnon seized her baby from Clytemnestra and dashed the infant's brains out. (This is definitely not the way to start a relationship with your wife.) This would have further tragic consequences.

Clytemnestra bore him Iphigeneia, Electra, Chrysothemis and Orestes. Some say that Iphigeneia was actually the daughter of Helen and Theseus, and that Clytemnestra raised the girl as her own, since Helen was too young. (Homer only knew Iphigeneia and Electra by other names, as Iphianassa and Laodice.)

Iphigeneia in Aulis

With the outbreak of the Trojan War, Agamemnon became commander-in-chief of the Greek army and led a hundred ships from Mycenae and Corinth to Troy, while his brother led eighty ships from Sparta.

All the Greek forces with their fleet were gathered at Aulis, a coastal town in Boeotia, but the fleet could not leave for Troy because the goddess Artemis kept the fleet stranded with strong, unfavourable winds for months.

There was all sorts of reasons why Artemis was punishing the Greek forces, and they are usually linked with Agamemnon, who had offended the goddess in some way.

According to the Cypria and Apollodorus' Library, Agamemnon had killed a stag in Artemis' sacred grove, and then he boasted that not even the goddess was a better hunter than him. Another version says that he failed to sacrifice to her when he sacrificed to the other gods and goddesses. Or it was that Atreus, Agamemnon's father, had failed to sacrifice his finest lamb to the goddess as Atreus had promised to do.

Whatever the reason, the Greek fleet could not leave the harbour. The Greek prophet Calchas revealed that the only way for Agamemnon to atone for his sin and appease the goddess would be to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigeneia.

With his reputation as commander-in-chief at stake, he tricked his wife into bringing her daughter to Aulis, to marry Achilles. Achilles was offended that he was being used as bait; the hero would have defended Iphigeneia against the other Greeks, despite being greatly outnumbered. The girl however, admiring the young reckless hero, agreed to allow herself to be sacrificed.

Before she was to be killed, Artemis spirited Iphigeneia away (possibly to Tauris, according to Euripides, who wrote a play on Iphigeneia among the Taurians), and replaced the maiden with a deer. Favourable wind allowed the fleet to set sail. But according to the original story, Artemis did not rescue Iphigeneia; Iphigeneia died under the sacrificial knife.

In the war against the Trojans, Agamemnon was a skilled warrior, but he was outclassed by many other Greek leaders. Agamemnon was also easily discouraged when the tides of battle went against him.

In the last year of the war, he had a terrible quarrel with Achilles over the concubines, which resulted in Achilles' withdrawal from the war. That caused many deaths of both Greeks and Trojans, especially Hector. (See the Iliad or the Trojan War.)

Murder of Agamemnon

During Agamemnon's absence in the war, Clytemnestra was determined to get rid of her husband. When Agamemnon became responsible for the death of her second child, his wife secretly took Aegisthus (Aigisthos, ´Αιγςθου), Agamemnon's cousin, as her lover. Together they plotted to murder her husband upon his return from Troy.

Unlike most of the Greek leaders in the war, Agamemnon's ships returned quickly and safely to Greece. Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with the Trojan prophetess Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, as his concubine and mistress.

In Aeschylus' play, Agamemnon, when Agamemnon entered the palace with Clytemnestra, to sacrifice to the gods for his safe return, Cassandra realised that Agamemnon, as well as herself, would be murdered that night. Yet, rather than flee, she resigned herself to her death and walked into the palace.

Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon while Clytemnestra killed Cassandra. According to Pausanias, Aegisthus had also slaughtered the twin sons of Cassandra – Teledamus and Pelops. However, Pausanias was the only author to say that Agamemnon and Cassandra had children together.

Aegisthus would have murdered Orestes, Agamemnon's son by Clytemnestra, had Electra not secretly sent her brother to their uncle in Phocis.