Orestes

Orestes was the son of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and a member of the doomed house of Atreus. Orestes was absent from Mycenae when Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War with his Trojan concubine Cassandra, and so was not present for Agamemnon's murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. However, he was conveyed out of the country by his nurse (or by his sister Electra) to protect him from Clytemnestra's threats, and he was brought up by King Strophius of Phocis. As a grown man, he returned to Mycenae, with his friend Pylades, to avenge his father's murder, killing both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He went mad after the deed and was pursued by the Erinyes, whose duty it was to punish any violation of the ties of family piety, until he was acquitted of his crimes by Athena and a jury of Athenians. According to some versions, he and Pylades then fled to Tauris, where he discovered and rescued his long-lost sister, Iphigenia. He added most of the rest of the Peloponnese to his father's kingdom of Mycenae, and is said to have died of a snakebite in Arcadia.