Chrysothemis- Greek FigureMortal"Princess of Mycenae"

The Cursed House

Chrysothemis was a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister to Electra, Iphigenia, and Orestes. Homer names her first among the three daughters Agamemnon offered as brides to Achilles during the embassy in the Iliad — alongside Laodice and Iphianassa — though no marriage came of the offer. She lived in the House of Atreus as it tore itself apart: her father sacrificed her sister Iphigenia at Aulis to win fair winds for Troy, and when he returned ten years later, Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered him. The household fell under their tyrannical rule, and the surviving children lived as subjects of their father's killers.

The Pragmatic Sister

Chrysothemis told her sister plainly: they were women under the power of those stronger than themselves. She shared Electra's grief for their father, but not her fury — to rage openly against Clytemnestra and Aegisthus was to invite their own destruction for nothing. Better to bend and survive than to break in defiance.

When Clytemnestra had a disturbing dream — an omen that the murdered king's spirit remained unquiet — she sent Chrysothemis to pour libations at Agamemnon's tomb. Electra intercepted her and persuaded her to replace their mother's offerings with their own: a lock of hair and a prayer for Orestes's return. Chrysothemis agreed and went to the tomb, where she discovered a lock of hair and fresh offerings already there — Orestes's own, though no one yet knew he had returned.

She rushed back with the hopeful news, but Electra, who had heard a false report of Orestes's death, dismissed the discovery. Instead she urged Chrysothemis to help kill Aegisthus themselves. Chrysothemis refused — not from cowardice but from the conviction that two women alone against the throne could only meet their own deaths. Orestes arrived in disguise shortly after and carried out the vengeance without her.