In the story of these brothers,
the curse uttered on the generation of Pelops continued giving misfortunes
to the Tantals. Chrysippos was the
child of Pelops and a Nymph, but he was still his
favorite son. Naturally, his real wife Hippodameia hated this child and
convinced her two sons Atreus and Thyestes
to kill their brother. To
escape from the revenge of their father after the murder, they both left to Mycenae, where the
king Stehenelos was living married to their sister
Nikippe.
One day the only son of the king fell in a battle
against the Athenians and the Heraklids, leaving the reign without a heir
to the throne. Atreus got then the power of all Mycenae. But Thyestes was
envious of his brother and wanted the power as much as him, so he decided
to take it away from Atreus.
But it was said that Gods would show
with signs who was supposed to get the power. One day Atreus found a
golden lamb and he understood it as a divine sign. Thyestes, who was
having an affair with the wife of Atreus, Aerope, asked her to steal the
golden lamb of her husband. This way Thyestes managed to get the power
on Mycenae.
After that,
Zeus spoke personally
with Atreus and told him that, next day, he should make a bet with his
brother and say that the sun would go back the same way it came out. So he
did. Thyestes thought that his brother had gone completely crazy, but he
still accepted the bet. And, although it was strange, because it was the
wish of the Gods the God Helios accepted to change the curse of the sun
just for this one time in all the story of the mythology.
So
Atreus recovered the power and Thyestes ran away. But the story cannot
finish here: Thyestes took Pleisthenes, a son of Atreus who he had
brought up as his own child, and sent him to kill his father. However, the king
defeated his son quite fast and, as he realized the dead man was his own
son, he prepared a really horrible revenge for his brother. In fact, the
stories about Atreus and Thyestes are of unique cruelty in the Greek
Mythology.
This is what he did. First, he pretended
to want to reconcile with Thyestes and to bury all the old fights, so he
asked his brother to come back to Mycenae. Thyestes believed him. When he
arrived, Atreus took him to his house and offered him a generous meal. But
the food he served him was Thyestes' own children. Of course, when he
realized what he had eaten he fell in a deep mourning and swore revenge
on his brother. Near by, Atreus' wife, who was still Thyestes's lover, was
thrown into the sea with tied hands and feet by her husband, who finished
with this his own revenge. Then
Thyestes left to Epirus to meet the king Thesprotos.
After
some time, a plague and famine broke out in Mycenae and the surrounding
lands, and Atreus got foretold that this situation would just finish if
Thyestes was back home. So he started to search him, but he could not find
him. However, he did find his son Aigisthos, who he grew up also as his own
child. Finally, the sons of Atreus Agamemnon and Menelaos managed to find their
uncle and took him to Mycenae. There, Atreus locked him up and after he
sent Aigisthos to kill him. But father and son recognized each other and
they planed a revenge.
So Aigisthos told Atreus he had murdered Thyestes,
and then he waited for a good moment and he killed him. Together with his
father, they took the place of Agamemnon and Menelaos and recovered the
power of Mycenae.
Agamemnon
and Menelaos found protection in Sparta with the king
Tyndareos. There
they married the daughters
of the king, Klytaemnestra and Helena, and Menelaos got the throne of
Sparta after the king's death. Agamemnon returned to Mycenae, killed
Thyestes and got back the power of his father's land.
But this is not at all the end of the tragic stories
that happened because of the curse...
Gods / Heroes / The Danaids / Europa / The Atriden / Trojan War / The Oracle
