Agamemnon

Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Queen Aerope, and the grandson of Pelops, the legendary figure from whom the Peloponnese takes its name. His brother was Menelaus, king of Sparta and husband of Helen, whose abduction by Paris of Troy precipitated the Trojan War. Through his father Atreus, Agamemnon inherited both the throne of Mycenae and a terrible ancestral curse that would shadow his entire life and bring about his violent death.

The Curse of the House of Atreus descended through several generations, beginning with Tantalus, son of Zeus, who killed his own son Pelops and served him as a meal to the gods. Though the gods restored Pelops to life, the crime set in motion a cycle of vengeance. Pelops won his bride Hippodamia through treachery. His sons Atreus and Thyestes became bitter rivals. Thyestes seduced Aerope, wife of Atreus, and in retaliation Atreus murdered the children of Thyestes and served their flesh to him at a banquet. Upon discovering what he had eaten, Thyestes cursed the house of Atreus. Following an oracle's advice, Thyestes fathered a son upon his own daughter Pelopia. That son was Aegisthus, who murdered Atreus and eventually helped slay Agamemnon.

Agamemnon married Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus of Sparta, and by her fathered four children: Iphigenia, Electra, Chrysothemis, and Orestes. As king of Mycenae, he commanded the largest and wealthiest kingdom in Bronze Age Greece, whose archaeological remains testify to the grandeur the later Greeks remembered as the age of heroes.

The Sacrifice at Aulis

The Trojan War began when Paris, prince of Troy, abducted Helen from Menelaus's palace in Sparta. Agamemnon assembled a vast coalition of Greek chieftains from across the Achaean world to retrieve her. The fleet gathered at Aulis on the eastern coast of Boeotia, but contrary winds pinned the ships in harbour. The seer Calchas revealed that Artemis was angry with Agamemnon and that the fleet would not sail until he sacrificed his eldest daughter Iphigenia to appease her.

Euripides dramatises this in Iphigenia at Aulis. Torn between paternal love and obligation as commander, Agamemnon ultimately agreed to the sacrifice. Some traditions report that Artemis substituted a deer and carried Iphigenia away to serve as her priestess among the Taurians; in Euripides's version she goes willingly to her death. Whatever the outcome, the act irrevocably damaged Agamemnon's relationship with Clytemnestra, who never forgave him. The sacrifice at Aulis planted the seeds of the murder that awaited his return.

Agamemnon in the Iliad

In Homer's Iliad, Agamemnon is the supreme commander of the Achaean forces, a position based on the strength of his kingdom and personal authority rather than martial prowess alone. In Book 2, the Catalogue of Ships enumerates his forces: one hundred ships from Mycenae and Corinth, the largest contingent in the expedition. Nestor of Pylos respects his authority, Odysseus of Ithaca generally acknowledges his leadership, and the great warriors Diomedes of Argos and Ajax son of Telamon likewise follow his banner. Yet Agamemnon's leadership is repeatedly challenged by Achilles, the greatest warrior among the Achaeans.

The central conflict of the Iliad arises from their quarrel over war prizes. Agamemnon is compelled to return his captive Chryseis to her father, a priest of Apollo, because the god has sent a plague upon the Greek camp. In compensation, Agamemnon seizes Briseis, the captive awarded to Achilles. This act wounds Achilles's honour (time) and leads him to withdraw from battle, withdrawing his Myrmidons as well. The subsequent Greek losses, including the near-destruction of their fleet, demonstrate Achilles's indispensable value.

This quarrel illuminates a fundamental tension in Homer's conception of leadership. Agamemnon possesses the position of commander and collective authority, but Achilles commands greater individual kleos, the glory won through heroic achievement. When the two clash, the result is disaster for the Greeks. Agamemnon is not portrayed as a villain, Homer calls him "lord of men" and "shepherd of the people," but he is a flawed leader whose pride nearly costs the Achaeans the war. His reconciliation with Achilles, after Patroclus's death, is conducted with dignity.

The Trojan War lasted ten years. Though the Iliad covers only a few weeks in its final year, Agamemnon's strategic leadership contributed to the Greek victory. The stratagem of the Wooden Horse brought the war to its end, and Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with Cassandra, the Trojan princess and prophetess whom he had taken as a war prize.

The Murder and Its Aftermath

Aeschylus's Agamemnon, the first play of the Oresteia, depicts his homecoming with almost unbearable dramatic irony. Clytemnestra greets him with elaborate protestations of fidelity, laying out crimson tapestries for him to walk upon, an act of hubris that he initially resists but ultimately accepts. Once inside the palace, Clytemnestra together with her lover Aegisthus, who as son of Thyestes carries the vendetta of the house of Atreus, murders Agamemnon in his bath. Cassandra, who foresees her own death, is also slain.

Clytemnestra's motives are multiple: the sacrifice of Iphigenia remains her primary grievance, but she also resents Agamemnon's infidelities during the war and has conducted an affair with Aegisthus throughout his ten-year absence. Aegisthus acts to avenge the murder of his brothers by Atreus and the curse that has poisoned the house of Pelops.

The Oresteia trilogy traces the consequences. In the Libation Bearers, Orestes returns from exile and, urged by Electra and the oracle of Apollo, avenges his father's death by killing Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. In the Eumenides, Orestes is pursued by the Furies for matricide and brought to trial on the Areopagus in Athens. Athena's intervention establishes the court, marking a transition from cycles of blood vengeance to civic justice, though only after the gods debate the claims of mother and father, Apollo and the Furies.

Agamemnon in the Underworld

In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus travels to the underworld and encounters the shade of Agamemnon. The murdered king tells him the story of his return and death, warning him to be cautious upon his own homecoming. He describes how Clytemnestra and Aegisthus conspired against him and slaughtered his companions, and counsels Odysseus to approach Ithaca in secret and test his household before revealing himself. The encounter is bleak: the greatest warlord of the age, reduced to a wandering shade, betrayed by the wife who should have welcomed him. He asks after Orestes and speaks with bitter admiration of Penelope's fidelity, contrasting her with Clytemnestra.