Agamemnon ("very resolute") / (ancient Greek: ) is the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Queen Aerope; the brother of Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra; different mythological versions
make him the king either of Mycenae or of Argos.
Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was abducted by
Paris of Troy, Agamemnon
was the commander of the Achaeans in the
ensuing Trojan War.
return from Troy he was murdered (according to the fullest version
of the oldest surviving account,Odyssey
11, l.409f.) by Aegisthus, the lover of his wife Clytemnestra, who
herself slew Cassandra
unfortunate concubine, as she clung to him. In old versions of the
story: "The scene of the murder, when it is specified, is usually
the house of Aegisthus, who has not taken up residence in
Agamemnon's palace, and it involves an ambush and the deaths of
Agamemnon's followers too". In some later versions Clytemnestra
herself does the killing, or they do it together, in his own
sources mention , ruler of (land of
Achaeans) in the fourteenth century BC. This is a possible
prototype of the Agamemnon of mythology.
Atreus was murdered by Aegisthus
, who took
possession of the throne of Mycenae and ruled jointly with his own
, Atreus´twin brother.
this period Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus, took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta.
There they respectively married Tyndareus's daughters Clytemnestra
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had four children: one son, Orestes
, and three daughters, Iphigenia
. Menelaus succeeded
Tyndareus in Sparta, while Agamemnon, with his brother's
assistance, drove out Aegisthus and Thyestes to recover his
father's kingdom. He extended his dominion by conquest and became
the most powerful prince in Greece.
Agamemnon's family history had been marred by rape
, and treachery
result of the curse placed upon Pelops
Myrtilus, whom he had murdered. Thus misfortune hounded the entire
House of Atreus
The Trojan War
Agamemnon gathered the reluctant Greek forces to sail for Troy.
Preparing to depart from Aulis
, which was a
port in Boeotia
, Agamemnon's army incurred
the wrath of the goddess Artemis
. There are
several reasons throughout myth for such wrath: in Aeschylus
' play Agamemnon
, Artemis is angry for the young
men who will die at Troy, whereas in Sophocles
, Agamemnon has slain an animal
sacred to Artemis, and subsequently boasted that he was Artemis's
equal in hunting. Misfortunes, including a plague and a lack of
wind, prevented the army from sailing. Finally, the prophet
announced that the wrath of the
goddess could only be propitiated by the sacrifice of Agamemnon's
dramatisations differ on how willing either father or daughter were
to this fate, some include such trickery as claiming she was to be
married to Achilles
, but Agamemnon did
eventually sacrifice Iphigenia. Her death appeased Artemis, and the
Greek army set out for Troy. Several alternatives to the human
sacrifice have been presented in Greek mythology. Other sources, such as
Iphigenia at Aulis, claim that Agamemnon was prepared to kill his
daughter, but that Artemis accepted a deer in her place, and
whisked her to Taurus in Crimea.
said she became the goddess Hecate
Agamemnon was the commander-in-chief of the Greeks during the
Trojan War. During the fighting, Agamemnon killed Antiphus
. Agamemnon's teamster,
Halaesus, later fought with Aeneas in Italy.
tells the story of the quarrel
between Agamemnon and Achilles in the final year of the war.
Agamemnon took an attractive slave and spoil of war Briseis
from Achilles. Achilles, the greatest
warrior of the age, withdrew from battle in revenge and nearly cost
the Greek armies the war.
Although not the equal of Achilles in bravery, Agamemnon was a
dignified representative of kingly authority. As
commander-in-chief, he summoned the princes to the council and led
the army in battle. He took the field himself, and performed many
heroic deeds until he was wounded and forced to withdraw to his
tent. His chief fault was his overwhelming haughtiness. An
over-exalted opinion of his position led him to insult Chryses
and Achilles, thereby bringing great
disaster upon the Greeks.
After the capture of Troy, Cassandra
doomed prophetess and daughter of Priam
to Agamemnon's lot in the distribution of the prizes of war.
Return to Greece
stormy voyage, Agamemnon and Cassandra landed in Argolis or were
blown off course and landed in Aegisthus' country. Clytemnestra
, Agamemnon's wife, had taken a
, and they invited
Agamemnon to a banquet at which he was treacherously slain.
According to the account given by Pindar
the tragedians, Agamemnon was slain by his wife alone in a bath, a
blanket of cloth or a net having first been thrown over him to
prevent resistance. Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra. Her wrath
at the sacrifice of Iphigenia, her jealousy of Cassandra, and the
possibility of going to war for Helen's affection are said to have
been the motives for her crime. Aegisthus then ruled Agamemnon's
kingdom for a time, but the murder of Agamemnon was eventually
avenged by his son Orestes
the help of his daughter Electra
murdering their own mother.
Genealogy of Agamemnon
tells a story of how Agamemnon
mourned the loss of his eromenos
a beautiful Boeotian
boy, when he drowned in
river. He buried him, honored
with a tomb and a shrine to Aphrodite
Argynnis. (The Deipnosophists of Athenaeus of Naucratis, Book XIII
Concerning Women, p. 3) This episode is also found in Clement of Alexandria
II.38.2), in Stephen of
, III with minor
The fortunes of Agamemnon have formed the subject of numerous
, ancient and modern, the most
famous being the Oresteia
. In the legends of the Peloponnesus, Agamemnon was regarded as the highest type of a
powerful monarch, and in Sparta he was
worshipped under the title of Zeus
Agamemnon. His tomb was pointed out among the ruins of
Mycenae and at Amyclae.
Another account makes him the son of Pleisthenes
(the son or father of Atreus
), who is said to have been Aerope's first
In works of art there is considerable resemblance between the
representations of Zeus
, king of the gods, and
Agamemnon, king of men. He is generally characterized by the
the usual attributes of kings.
Recent interpretations depict Agamemnon in a completely different
In the 2003 TV miniseries Helen of Troy
played by actor Rufus Sewell
and violates Helen
before being stabbed by Clytemnestra
in his bath.
In Wolfgang Peterson
(2004), Agamemnon is the
primary villain of the movie, a cruel and power-hungry warlord who
seeks to control the Aegean, for which he has to conquer Troy. He
cares nothing for Menelaus' marriage and sees it as a mere excuse
to go to war with Troy. In the end, during the Sack of Troy
, he attacks Briseis, whose romance
with Achilles nearly cost him the Trojan War, and tells her she
will be his personal slave. In response, she stabs and kills him.
He was portrayed by Scottish actor Brian
Agamemnon's mare was named Aetha: that was also one of the pair
driven by Menelaus at the funeral games of Patroclus.
- Aeschylus choephori, intro by A.F. Garvie, Oxford UP, 1986, p
- Gerd Steiner. The Case of Wiluša and Ahhiyawa. Bibliotheca
Orientalis LXIV No. 5-6, September-December 2007
- The elegies of Propertius By Harold Edgeworth Butler, Eric
Arthur Barbe; p277
- Pausanias Description of Greece 5.8.3
- Plutarch, Amores, 21
- Homer, Iliad;
- Euripides, Electra;
- Sophocles, Electra;
- Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers;
- Homer, Odyssey I, 28-31; XI, 385-464;
- Aeschylus, Agamemnon
- Apollodorus, Epitome, II, 15-III, 22; VI, 23.