Thyestes’s Family Tree

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Family

• Hippodamia(parent),Pelops(parent),Atreus(sibling),Pittheus(sibling)— Marriage

  Pelops won Hippodamia by defeating her father Oenomaus in a chariot race. Their sons Atreus, Thyestes, and Pittheus founded rival dynasties whose feuds cursed the house for generations.

• Pelopia(spouse),Aegisthus(child)— Consort

  Thyestes fathered Aegisthus upon his own daughter Pelopia, as directed by an oracle, to create an avenger against the house of Atreus.

• Pelopia(child)

  Pelopia was the daughter of Thyestes. Her father later violated her unknowingly at a shrine, fulfilling an oracle's terrible command.

Enemy of

• Atreus

  Atreus and Thyestes waged a bitter feud over the throne of Mycenae, culminating in Atreus murdering Thyestes' sons and serving them to him at a banquet.

Associated with

• Atreus,Myrtilus

  Myrtilus's dying curse on Pelops and his descendants fell most heavily on the brothers Atreus and Thyestes, whose mutual betrayals, cannibalism, and bloodshed fulfilled the charioteer's vengeance across generations.

• Aerope

  Aerope conducted an adulterous affair with Thyestes, secretly giving him Atreus's golden lamb and enabling his temporary seizure of the Mycenaean throne.

• Chrysippus

  Thyestes and his brother Atreus were implicated in the murder of their half-brother Chrysippus. The crime added to the cycle of violence that would later pit Atreus and Thyestes against each other.