Atreus,
king of
Mycenae, was the son of
Pelops and the father of
Agamemnon and
Menelaus. He was the grandson of
Tantalus, whose family was
blighted by
curses from the gods for five
generations. The
misfortunes of the house of Atreus were
favorite subjects for
Greek tragic dramatists.
Atreus vowed to
sacrifice the finest animal in his flock to
Artemis; however, when he
discovered a
golden lamb in the flock, he
reneged on the
promise and hid the lamb away. At the same time his wife,
Aerope, was having an
affair with his
brother,
Thyestes. Aerope secretly gave the lamb to Thyestes, and Thyestes then got Atreus to agree that the
possessor of the golden lamb should be king. Thyestes produced the lamb and seized the
throne.
Atreus was
determined to be king again. On the advice of
Hermes, he got Thyestes to agree to yield the throne when the sun ran
backwards in its course.
Zeus then made the sun set in the east, and Atreus became king once more,
banishing Thyestes for good measure.
Later, Atreus learned of his wife's
adultery and decided to seek
revenge for it. He invited Thyestes to return and be
reconciled with him. He
killed Thyestes' sons, cut them up, and
cooked
everything except their hands and feet. Then he served this meat at a
banquet in Thyestes'
honor. After Thyestes had finished eating, Atreus produced the hands and feet,
taunted his brother with them, and banished him once more.
At this point, Thyestes was the one intent on
revenge. An oracle advised him that his revenge would be
successful if he
fathered a son by his own
daughter. He did so, and named the son
Aegisthus. When Aegisthus grew to
manhood, he killed Atreus and restored his father to the throne.
The
curse continued long after Atreus' death. Thyestes was banished for a third and final time when Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, returned and
seized the throne. Later on, Aegisthus
seduced Agamemnon's wife,
Clytemnestra, and the two of them
murdered Agamemnon when he returned from the
Trojan War. Agamemnon's children,
Orestes and
Electra, then plotted and carried out the murder of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, thus continuing the curse into yet another
generation.
From
Encyclopedia Mythica
See also:
The Oresteia