Agamemnon
and
Menelaos,
the sons of
Atreus,
came into the story in the previous part. This is the story of Agamemnon
and
Klytaimnestra,
the daughter of the king of Sparta.
Agamemnon met
Klytaimnestra for the first time in a royal reception. Klytaimnestra was seating next to her husband with their baby
in her arms and they all looked very happy. But Agamemnon was quite a
greedy spirit and he decided he wanted her - now. So he took his sword,
kicked the baby off her arms, cut it into pieces,
beheaded her husband and, not satisfied yet, raped
Klytaimnestra in front of all the crowd and took her as his wife. No need to say that their love was
never reciprocal... And about her father, the king
Tyndareus, he was
given a generous amount by Agamemnon to
forget the abominable events and keep out of the story.
Klytaimnestra gave birth to
Iphigenia,
Electra and Orestes.
One day, at the beginning of the Trojan,
Agamemnon shot a divine hind. The Gods punished him and all the Greek
fleet by stopping the wind. When they asked the prophet
Kalchas, he advised them to sacrifice
Iphigenia. Her father would not think twice and laid her on the altar. But
just on time the Goddess Artemis felt pity for her and
set her free, an
unusual kind of intervention from a God. After this, the wind started again
and the fleet could arrive to Troy.
In
Agamemnon's's
absence came back
Aigisthos, the son of
Thyestes, who had been killed by Agamemnon. Aigisthos wanted revenge and, as it is easy to imagine, it was not really
difficult to persuade Klytaimnestra to kill her husband at his return. After days of
waiting impatiently, the day came when the ships of the fleet appeared in
the horizon and Agamemnon arrived full of pride because of his victory in
Troy. After the celebrations Klytaimnestra invited him for a bath
and, as he laid down, they threw a net over him and his wife killed him
with an axe.
But their daughter Electra saw
the crime and left to find her brother Orestes, who was living with
their grandparents. She told him what she had seen, and Orestes decided he
would go to see the Oracle of Delphi.
The answer of the Oracle was that he should continue the
blood revenge. Immediately he dressed up as a stranger and went to Mycenae. There he met
his mother and Aigisthos, who was there by chance to sacrifice an animal.
He identified himself, took Aigisthos' sword out of his hands, and
cut his head off. After this his mother started to plead and to scream,
but Orestes had already raised the sword and decapitated her as well.
This could be the end of the blood revenge, but it
doesn't look like this...
Gods / Heroes / The Danaids / Europa / The Atriden / Trojan War / The Oracle
