Agamemnon- Greek HeroHero"King of Mycenae"

The King of Kings

Agamemnon ruled wealthy Mycenae with its lion gates and cyclopean walls, and when a thousand ships sailed for Troy, he commanded them all. Odysseus of Ithaca and Ajax of Salamis were sovereigns in their own right, but Agamemnon held the scepter forged by Hephaestus and passed through his line from Pelops to Atreus, the token of supreme command. They called him anax andron, king of men.

But the throne he sat on was cursed. The bloodstain on the House of Atreus went back generations.

The Curse of the House of Atreus

The curse began with Tantalus, Agamemnon's ancestor, who killed his own son Pelops and served him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. The gods restored Pelops to life, but the taint of filicide marked his line forever. Pelops's sons, Atreus and Thyestes, continued the pattern of betrayal and murder. When Thyestes seduced Atreus's wife Aerope, Atreus took terrible revenge: he killed Thyestes's sons, butchered them, and served their flesh to their father at a banquet of reconciliation. Only when Thyestes had eaten did Atreus show him what remained: the children's heads and hands.

From this act of cannibalistic vengeance, no descendant of Atreus could escape. Agamemnon inherited a throne built on bones, and his own actions would add to the horror. He won Clytemnestra as his wife by killing her first husband, Tantalus (a different man from his ancestor), and their infant son. The marriage began in blood, and blood would end it.

The Sacrifice at Aulis

When Helen was stolen by Paris, the Greeks gathered at the port of Aulis. Agamemnon, as brother of the wronged Menelaus and holder of the scepter, was chosen to command. A thousand ships and a hundred thousand men stood ready to sail, but the winds would not blow. The fleet sat becalmed, supplies dwindling, the men growing restless.

The seer Calchas revealed the cause: Agamemnon had killed a deer in Artemis's sacred grove and boasted he surpassed the goddess at the hunt. Artemis demanded payment. Agamemnon's eldest daughter, Iphigenia, must be sacrificed on her altar.

Agamemnon faced an impossible choice: abandon the war and his honor, or murder his child. He chose the war. He sent word to Clytemnestra that Iphigenia was to marry Achilles. The girl came to Aulis expecting a glorious wedding. She found not a bridegroom but a knife. Agamemnon cut his daughter's throat on Artemis's altar, and the winds rose at last. In Euripides's telling, Artemis substituted a deer at the last moment and spirited Iphigenia away to serve as her priestess among the Taurians. But in the older tradition Aeschylus follows, the sacrifice was real and final.

The fleet sailed for Troy. But Clytemnestra never forgot. For ten years, as Agamemnon fought abroad, she nursed her hatred, waiting for his return.

The Wrath of Achilles

At Troy, Agamemnon's arrogance nearly destroyed the Greek expedition from within. In the war's tenth year, a plague sent by Apollo devastated the camp. The seer Calchas identified the cause: Agamemnon had taken Chryseis, daughter of Apollo's priest, as his prize, and the god demanded her return.

Agamemnon was forced to give up Chryseis, but his pride could not bear the loss without compensation. He demanded Briseis, the prize of Achilles, the greatest warrior among the Greeks. It was outright insult, a public declaration that even the best of the Greeks held their honors only at Agamemnon's pleasure.

Achilles withdrew from battle, taking his Myrmidons with him. Without their champion, the Greeks suffered catastrophic losses. Hector and the Trojans pushed them back to their ships, nearly burning the fleet. Thousands of Greeks died because Agamemnon could not swallow his pride.

Commander at Troy

Agamemnon was no coward. He rampaged across the battlefield in the Iliad's eleventh book, cutting down Bienor and Iphidamas before a spear wound to his arm forced him from the field. When Zeus sent him a deceptive dream promising victory, he tested his army's resolve by suggesting they abandon the war; the men rushed for the ships, and only Odysseus's intervention restored order.

He recognized his error over Briseis and offered Achilles enormous restitution: Briseis returned untouched, a fortune in gold and bronze and horses, and one of his own daughters in marriage. Achilles, still burning, refused it all. Only Patroclus's death would bring the great warrior back to the fight.

The Homecoming

Troy fell in the war's tenth year, and Agamemnon sailed home laden with treasure and slaves, including the prophetic princess Cassandra, who became his concubine. He returned expecting a hero's welcome, his glory at its height.

Clytemnestra greeted him with apparent joy, spreading purple tapestries for him to walk upon, a display reserved for gods. Agamemnon hesitated, fearing hubris, but Clytemnestra persuaded him to tread the sacred cloth.

She had prepared for this day for ten years. Her lover Aegisthus waited within: Thyestes's surviving son, raised to avenge his slaughtered brothers. As Agamemnon relaxed in his bath, weary from his long journey, Clytemnestra tangled him in a robe or net. He could not lift his arms. She struck him with an axe. In the Odyssey's telling, Aegisthus dealt the killing blow. The king of kings, conqueror of Troy, died tangled in cloth like a beast in a snare.

Cassandra foresaw the murder from outside the palace doors. Apollo's curse held: she spoke true, and no one believed her. She walked inside to her death.

The Oresteia

Agamemnon's death was not the curse's end but its continuation. His son Orestes, raised in exile at the court of Strophius in Phocis, returned years later to avenge his father. His daughter Electra, who had remained in Mycenae enduring humiliation under Aegisthus's rule, recognized her brother and urged him to act. Guided by Apollo's command and accompanied by his loyal companion Pylades, Orestes killed Aegisthus and, more terribly, his own mother Clytemnestra.

For this matricide, the Erinyes hounded him to madness across the Greek world, until Athena established the Areopagus court in Athens to try the case. Apollo spoke for the defense, the Furies for the prosecution, and the jury of Athenian citizens split evenly. Athena cast the deciding vote for acquittal. The blood-debt of the House of Atreus was paid.