Aegisthus- Greek FigureMortal

Cursed Origins

His father Thyestes had been tricked by his brother Atreus into eating his own sons — their flesh carved and cooked and served at a feast of supposed reconciliation. When Atreus revealed what Thyestes had eaten, placing the children's heads and hands on the table, Thyestes cursed the entire line and fled. An oracle told him how to get his revenge: he must father a child on his own daughter.

Thyestes found his daughter Pelopia at a nighttime sacrifice and assaulted her in the darkness. She did not know who her attacker was, but she seized his sword as he fled. She later married Atreus himself — unknowing, as was he — and when her son Aegisthus was born, Atreus raised the boy as his own. The child was a weapon planted in the enemy's household.

When Aegisthus reached manhood, Atreus sent him to kill the captured Thyestes. But Thyestes recognized the sword Aegisthus carried — it was the one Pelopia had taken from him that night. The truth came out. Pelopia, learning she had borne a child by her own father, seized the sword and killed herself with it. Aegisthus turned the same blade on Atreus and killed the king who had raised him.

The Conspiracy

Thyestes briefly took the throne of Mycenae, but Agamemnon — Atreus's son — drove him out and claimed it for himself. While Agamemnon was away fighting at Troy for ten years, Aegisthus saw his chance. He seduced Clytemnestra, who harbored her own fury against Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia. The two became lovers and co-conspirators, ruling Mycenae together during the king's long absence.

When Agamemnon returned victorious from Troy, he walked into a trap. In Homer's telling, Aegisthus ambushed the king at a welcome-home feast, cutting him down like an ox at the manger. In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, Clytemnestra wields the axe herself while Aegisthus arrives afterward to claim credit. Either way, the king of Mycenae died at the hands of those closest to him.

Downfall

Aegisthus ruled Mycenae with Clytemnestra for seven years, but he lived in the shadow of a threat he could not extinguish. Agamemnon's son Orestes had been smuggled out of Mycenae as a child. Aegisthus forced Electra, Agamemnon's daughter, into marriage with a peasant to ensure any children she bore would pose no political threat. He posted watchmen and offered rewards for word of Orestes's whereabouts.

None of it helped. Orestes returned as a grown man, sent by Apollo's oracle to avenge his father. In Euripides's version, Orestes found Aegisthus in the countryside performing a sacrifice to the Nymphs. Aegisthus invited the stranger to join the feast. As the usurper bent over the sacrificial animal to examine its entrails, Orestes split his spine with a cleaver. The man born as an instrument of revenge died at the hands of another son carrying out the same grim duty.