#Aegisthus

[katerinaaqu]

Okay an Agamemnon-friendly post so you are warned! The post is inspired by another made by @hermesmoly

As you know the sources that absolutely HATE Agamemnon speak among others on traditions rescued or invented by post-homeric sources that Agamemnon killed the husband and children of Clytemnestra to have her as a wife. Some of it I memorize it to my mini-analysis here:

And of course Tyndareus would have absolutely no clue who killed them lol 😂 like "oh what do you know! They are dead. Hey you! You are tall and handsome have my daughter for wife!" And then Menelaus with Tyndareus and the Spartan army helps Agamemnon to take Mycenae back from Aegisthus.

Wait, Aegisthus who? Yup we know Aegisthus who was their cousin and was the reason they got exiled in the first place. His coup was reversed and then Agamemnon established himself back to authority and dedicated himself to expanding Mycenaean influence and area till he made it the most powerful kingdom in Greece. But Aegisthus came back; years later he became Clytemnestra's lover and the two of them conspired the murder of Agamemnon and after they succeeded they ruled for years till Orestes took his revenge.

Aegisthus is my proof not to support the idea that Agamemnon slaughtered Clytemnestra's family to get to marry her. Even if one can say he was desperate to get back to power, even if someone says he lost it for some reason and wanted to get revenge quickly, even if we say that no one ever knew (and in Eurypedes it is not even the case! Apparently every interested party knew haha) I don't think it is plausible to say he conspired for the murder of the family of Clytemnestra. He did many things and as I mention to the analysis he doesn't seem meant to be a pleasant character but no I am not convinced it is plausible he conspired or executed the murder of Clytemnestra's family.

The dude didn't even plan the assassination of Aegisthus who was the reason to exile him!

Food for thought

[incorrecthomer]

Clytemnestra: Come on boys, focus! You have everything you need to defeat him! Aegisthus: The ability to believe in ourselves? Clytemnestra: No, axe! Kill him!

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

IT'S 11:30 PM BUT I AM HAVING THOUGHTS

THOUGHTS ABOUT APOLLO AND ORESTES

I HAVE NOT READ THE ORESTIEA BUT DW I HAVE IT AND I'M GONNA READ IT AFTER THE ILIAD

I MAY HAVE MORE THOUGHTS AFTER THAT WE SHALL SEE

I made my Apollo & Cassandra post a while back so now it's time for Orestes :)

just. ahhhh. how do i begin.

at the beginning i guess.

Orestes is a young child when he's smuggled out of Argos. By his sister to keep him safe when their father is murdered by their mother. He's a young boy exiled from his home because of the actions of a vengeful queen.

Years later, he receives a mission from Apollo - kill his mother to avenge his father. And he does just that.

Apollo was a young god, not even born yet, when he was exiled from the very earth by a vengeful queen. His mother fought and ran to find a place to deliver him and his own sister to safety. In his mother's honor, he goes out of his way to kill those who dare to harm her - Python and Tityus, to name a few.

The parallels get me okay? Even if it's not a deadringer, they are sill there.

Apollo defends his mother while Orestes kills his.

Orestes was ordered to kill his mother while Apollo murdered others for Leto on his own accord.

And what REALLY gets me is their different motivations in this situation - Orestes believes he's avenging his father, the man he never quite knew. Apollo meanwhile wouldn't loose sleep over Agamemnon's death.

Apollo wasn't aiming to avenge Agamemnon. He was avenging Cassandra.

But he couldn't tell Orestes that, now could he? After all, what was a mere slave girl from Troy to Orestes? Especially since he didn't know her at all.

Avenging Cassandra wouldn't be enough to convince Orestes to commit matricide. So Apollo uses Agamemnon's death as incentive for Orestes.

And it works. Apollo's goals are met - Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are killed, and Cassandra's soul can rest easy now in Elysium.

He could cut his losses and leave Orestes to the Furies. He no longer has anything to do with this.

But Apollo stays with Orestes. He helps him rest in Delphi before getting him a headstart to Athens. He defends him in court from the Furies, in front of the jury of Athenians and Athena herself. He puts himself firmly on Orestes's side and uses whatever means necessary to get him off the hook.

And if that means manipulating the city of Athens via their sexist ideologies? It's free real estate. When you're in court, you use whatever you can to help your client.

And Apollo wins. Orestes is free to go, and the curse of the House of Atreus is gone for good.

just. vibrating from this. the similarities between Apollo & Orestes in their youth that diverges in stark ways. How Apollo could have dropped Orestes the moment his own goal was finished, but chose not too - he chose to take it a step farther and get rid of that curse for good. So Orestes and his family could live in peace.

When I first heard about the Oresteia, and what Apollo says to free Orestes, I had a hard time reconciling it. Apollo just didn't give off those sexist vibes to me (as a matter of facts, very few gods do - after all, they appear how they want when they want. gender is meaningless to gods.).

But I did some digging. Some thinking. And really, Apollo is quite in-character during the trial - he's in Lawyer Mode. He manipulates the system to his advantage as well as the Athenian citizens with their misogynistic beliefs.

Because think about it. Apollo uses the argument, in brief terms, that a mother has no claim on the child because they are only for making babies. This gets half of the Athenian jury to immediately side with Orestes.

Is this a bullshit argument? Absolutely. But sometimes a bullshit argument gets your client out of trouble and that's the job of a lawyer - to help their client.

For a closing statement, I also want to say that I don't think Apollo himself believes that sexist opinion. After all, Leto was the one running around the world to find a safe place to deliver him and Artemis - Zeus did very little to help.

It was his mom who did all the work, and Apollo is very clearly a mama's boy.

Plus, 99.9% of the people Apollo hangs out with are women. Leto, Artemis, the Muses, Athena, Hecate, Aphrodite, ect ect

There's no way he actually buys that argument. He just used it to gaslight the very-sexist Athenians into voting in Orestes's favor because godsdammit that curse needs to go!

thank you for coming to my TEDTalk. I have feelings. goodnight now. happy new year. i shall post a snippet of a storyboard idea for my mythology series tomorrow that features apollo & orestes because I HAVE FEELINGS.

[strangeoffputtingrat]

I need a Kevin Day as Clytemnestra and Riko as Agamemnon style scene.

Kevin hatching a plot to murder Riko upon his return from a press trip. Fawning over him and stroking his inflated ego, only to lure him inside to brutally murder him.

And then of course a long and beautiful monologue about how deserving of this fate he was, and that Kevin doesn’t regret it in the slightest.

Jean is Aegisthus and gets to monologue to Riko’s dead body about how he wronged him.

I just know Kevin Day read the Orestia and Agamemnon and fantasized about it.

[tangoboheme]

Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

[ghostwithwings]

Zeus: "Aegisthus did not listened to my warnings when I sent Hermes to announce Agamemnon's son will return to kill him if he sticks to his wife's side AND kill him. Not even Hermes with his long tongue could change his mind!"

Athena:"Who cares about that mf,he deserved it! Let's talk about the divine 💫 Odysseus 💫 instead. Let's send Hermes to Calypso."

Hermes:"I didn't even sit down in fact, as every story starts with me sent Hades knows where!!"

Zeus:"What are you saying?"

Hermes:"To your orders, my Lord Zeus."

Hermes *kilometres of ocean later* "Dammit!"

[eelsinatrenchcoat]

i'm so deeply normal about the prophet cassandra i swear... cursed to know the truth but never be believed because she rejected a man? desperate to save her people-despite ridicule-and being held back and dismissed as a hysterical woman? killed by an envious wife for her transgression of being captured and enslaved as a prize of war? facing her ire but having done nothing wrong, women pitted against each other again and again? it's all so fucking tragic

she's so painfully symbolic of so many things i can't articulate rn but just wow. what a figure.

[measureformeasure]

Aigisthos in Mycenae, Casey J. King

[hermesmoly]

to be called a worse mate than agamemnon has got to be embarrassing

[ilions-end]

Called forth, it seems, by Clytaemnestra's evocation of the spirit, Aegisthus enters with his bodyguard, praising the gods because they bring him glory, gloating over Agamemnon's body as the product of the curse. We have never heard its history told so fully, not because Aeschylus has been saving it for last but because Cassandra, Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra have embodied it so uniquely. Aegisthus relies on the common version of its origins -- Thyestes' feast -- and it reflects his vulgarity. What a confusion it is. He tells it to indict the Atreidae and justify himself, but his antecedents blur, his ironies are so indiscriminate that one may wonder where his loyalties lie -- with Thyestes who suffered outrage, or with Atreus who performed it. Aegisthus relishes equally the virtuoso cookery and his father's vomiting and trampling on the children's flesh. He is trampling on his father, degrading the curse, the very human complexity of Thyestes who was both abusing and abused. History is cannibalism to Aegisthus, and he tramples on his victim too. He and Agamemnon are related in their excess, yet Aegisthus is mere front: he claims to have planned the murder, then he claims the throne, but he has done precisely nothing. He is a parody of the traditional Aegisthus, the hardy swordsman who shares the killing of the king with Clytaemnestra.

--W.B. Stanford, The Serpent and the Eagle: A reading of The Oresteia

[littlesparklight]

When I say that my timeline for my Greek myth ficverse includes a lot of things that will probably never come up, I mean it haha. It's not just a "such and so was born then and got these children then" list but me stitching together various accounts of myths for characters to build up my own version of things.

For example, the line of Tantalos!

Tantalos comes to rule Seha/Sipylos from his maternal grandfather, his daughter being Pluto. His oldest son Broteas dies in 1377 BC from self-immolation after being driven mad by Artemis, as he refused to honour her, though hunter as he is. In 1379 BC Tantalos is also brought up to Olympos for a banquet, which leads to an inflated sense of pride and entitlement, and as part of this, between 1379-1375 BC Tros and Tantalos war on and off over the lands/cities north/south of their own, but they come to a vague agreement after intervention from Hattusa. Still, early in 1374 BC Tros sends a young Ilus to sacrifice on Lesbos, which, being at least nominally under Seha's rule, Tantalos takes as a spy attempt, and a confrontation that resolves in a tense parting takes place. After Tantalos' disastrous banquet (in 1374 BC) and Pelops being taken by Poseidon, another local noble family takes the rulership. When Pelops is brought back in 1365 BC, Ilus supports the new ruler, partially because said ruler's son is to be married to Kleopatra, partly because they always clashed with Tantalos, and partially because he doesn't want a tainted line like Tantalos' back on the throne of a country so close to them. As most of the population is on the new king's side (the noble echelons split rather evenly between them), so he and Ilus wins. Pelops and Niobe are exiled, but Poseidon comes to his lover and tells him that he can gain a kingdom in the Achaean lands, telling him of Hippodamia. Pelops asks for aid for this venture, and Poseidon provides the winged chariot and horses.

This is what I built up from the mentions of conflict with Ilus I've touched on before, taken from Pausanias 2.22.3, Diodorus Siculus 4.74.4, Dictys Cretensis 1.6 ; the sacrifice on Lesbos inspired by the version in the Suda where (a) Tantalos kidnaps Ganymede after suspicion of espionage via a sacrifice.

The Atreidai Atreus - Cleolla (daughter of another son of Pelops) = Pleisthenes Pleisthenes - Aerope = Agamemnon & Menelaos Atreus - Aerope = Anaxibia

For those who've read Pleisthenides - Atreides, you already know I use the Pleisthenes variant for Agamemnon and Menelaos' father. The reason was partially because it was interesting, but it also worked out really well age-wise. Also let me play with giving Menelaos some health issues, inherited from Pleisthenes (whereas Agamemnon escapes that), since a couple sources refer to Pleisthenes in some ways as infirm and dying young. (The only reason Anaxibia is the daughter of Atreus and Aerope instead of of Aerope and Pleisthenes was because I felt like breaking it up, with Anaxibia being the last born(? since even if Agamemnon is implied to marry Pelopia, they don't seem to have gotten any children).

Menelaos' health issues hasn't been brought up much in fic yet, partially because I'm not sure how reasonable the heart issue is, even if I made it minor for him, but also because I've not had much chance yet!

Atreus and Cleolla get married in 1295 BC, five years after Atreus and Thyestes come to Mycenae and they've established himself. He'd had his eyes on her and an agreement with his brother Dias for eventual marriage before the murder of Chrysippus and Dias does not renege on this. Either way their marriage is plagued by fertility problems. Cleolla dies when Pleisthenes is his early teens; Atreus then makes his son marry around 16-17, to Aerope, thanks to him being sickly (he suffers from a rather severe case of bicuspid aortic valve and familial mediterranean fever). Is basically shut up in his room(s) and Atreus takes Agamemnon as his own child when he's born. Agamemnon is 6 when Menelaos is born, weak (he has a mild case of the heart problem and suffers FMF as well), in winter, and Atreus almost exposes him/threatens to do it, but doesn't, especially when Pleisthenes dies during the winter sickness going around. Atreus then marries Aerope. The contention for Mycenae's/the whole area's throne starts ~two(?) years later, Anaxibia a couple months old. Aerope gives the lamb to Thyestes not because she is sleeping with him or has been seduced, but because she hates Atreus - he simply thinks she's been cheating on him when he finds out what she did, because that's what makes most sense to him. Pelopia and Pleisthenes are basically the same generation, the sons Atreus kills and serves Thyestes are much, much younger and the same gen as Menelaos and Agamemnon (but his children all have the same nymph mother. Said nymph leaves Aegisthus during the lamb business, believing herself cheated on; she takes only Pelopia with her, leaving him their sons, and goes back to Sikyon where she has her origin. Thyestes, after the murder of his sons, goes to seek an oracle about vengeance, gets told he should father a son with his own daughter; he goes to Sikyon where she is, and rapes her, she is 19; Atreus, wishing to get rid of Thyestes properly and having found out he went in the direction of Sikyon, comes there to ask if the king has seen his brother. He sees Pelopia, and assuming she's the king's daughter and now without a wife, asks for her. They marry, and later, then, Atreus makes a new attempt at properly getting rid of Thyestes, sending off his sons (17 and 22) to capture him. They all meet at Delphi on chance and the boys take Thyestes captive and bring him back, which leads to Aegisthus finding things out when he is sent by Atreus to kill Thyestes; Pelopia kills herself in the reveal, but Aegisthus still hews to his father and his desires (Fabula 88, 87). Aegisthus is thus ~3 years younger than Menelaos, he murders Atreus (in his sleep/from the back during a sacrifice) when he's 14, Menelaos is 17 and Agamemnon is 22 (1244 BC). They get exiled, Thyestes keeps Anaxibia in Mycenae (both because she's "not a threat" and as a way for the boys to behave). They stay first in Sikyon and then in Calydon and lastly in Sparta (they come here in 1241 BC) for a couple years, Tyndaeros helping them take Mycenae connected to marrying Klytaimnestra to Agamemnon (when she's 15), which is why Menelaos isn't initially in Sparta, helping to order things back in Mycenae.

[incorrecthomer]

Aegisthus: Are you mad? Clytemnestra: No. Aegisthus: So sharpening knives at 2am is just a hobby?

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Auguste-Hyacinthe Debay - Aegisthus believing he discovered the body of the dead Orestes, discovers that of Clytemnestra, 1823.

[pantheonsofgaynessanddespair]

fourth gen house of atreus (i'm calling them that now) being stupid. yes including aegisthus i kNOW but they had a happy childhood together so leave me alone.

sorta inspired by this fic (the idea of these four being goofy together)

[luminouslumity]

Watch "Why Are So Many People Cooking Their Kids? The FULL Curse On The House of Atreus In Greek Mythology" on YouTube

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would love an entire series on the whole House of Atreus! This family is so messed up, but it's so fascinating too!

[my-burnt-city]

i still have not figured out how i feel about this

but i guess it doesn't matter too much, when i know exactly how completely delighted i am by this