When Menelaos, brother of
Agamemnon and uncle of Orest, left to Troy, he told Orest he could marry
his daughter Hermione in the future. But later he forgot his promise and
he made the same proposal to Neoptolemos (Pyrrhos), the brave son of
Achilles. At his return, he kept the second promise and sent his daughter
to Pythia to marry Neoptolemos.
However, the broom had already a
child from the widow Andromache, who was sent to the castle as a war
prisoner by Achilles and won there Neoptolemos' heart. The name of their
son was Molossos.
Of course, Hermione hated Andromache and her son, and was waiting
just for the right moment to get her out of the way. She then she called
her father Menelaos and told him her husband was cheating on her. One day,
when Neoptolemos was on his way to Delphi, father and daughter appeared
and wanted to kill him, but his grandfather Peleus arrived just on time to
save him.
When
Menelaos returned to Sparta, he found his daughter rightly afraid of her
husband's revenge. Then Orest arrived, as he had heard about the story and
wanted to offer his help because he was still in love with Hermione.
Before visiting them, however, he had already passed by Delphi before
Neoptolemos would do it and had spread the rumor
that he wanted to rob the burial chamber. As he arrived to the temple, he
found an angry crowd ready to kill him. So they did, and the new couple
could came back from their hide-out to Mycenae.
Peleus buried his grandson and
let the nymph Thetis, with whom he fathered Achilles, take him deep in the
sea somewhere where he could find happiness to live without age. After the
death of her lover, Andromache married Helenos, the son of
Priamos, and
went with him to Epiros, which was still a part of Neoptolemos'
properties. There would reign one day Molossos, the only son of the Aiakiden
generation..
Gods / Heroes / The Danaids / Europa / The Atriden / Trojan War / The Oracle
