THE ROYAL HOUSE OF ATREUS
Welcome to this topic entitled “The Royal House of Atreus”. We are going to learn the famous families in mythology. We are going to witness the Genealogy of all who are involve in the Royal House of Atreus. There is also a part in troy where Helen is married with Menelaus the brother of Agamemnon. We all know that it is from the movie of Troy but still we all need to know deeper and learn better about this topic Atreus and his twin brother Thyestes were exiled by their father for murdering their half-brother Chrysippus in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge in Mycenae, where they ascended to the throne in the absence of King Eurystheus, who was fighting the Heracleidae. Eurystheus had meant for their stewardship to be temporary, but it became permanent after his death in battle.. We shall take into account various sources and myths to fully understand The Royal House of Atreus further more.
INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOME (ILO)
At the completion of this topic students should able to:
| 1.)Define myths, mythology and other related terms;
2.)Recognize the prevalence of myths on the things we see around us; 3.)Recognize the importance of myths; |
The Royal House of Atreus
I.Tantalus and Niobe:
The House of Atreus begins with Tantalus. Tantalus was a son of Zeus who enjoyed cordial relations with the gods until he decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. Most of the gods, as they sat down to dinner with Tantalus, immediately understood what had happened, and, because they knew the nature of the meat they were served, were appalled and did not partake. But Demeter, who was distracted due to the abduction by Hades of her daughter Persephone, obliviously ate Pelops’ shoulder. The gods threw Tantalus into the underworld, where he spends eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reaches for the fruit, the branches raise his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bends down to get a drink, the water recedes before he can drink. Thus is derived the word “tantalising”. The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory, thus marking the family forever afterwards.
The gods also bring Pelops back to life. He has a daughter, Niobe. Like Tantalus, Niobe believes herself to be better than the gods. As a queen with seven strong sons and seven beautiful daughters, Niobe feels superior to the goddess Leto, and she tells her subjects to worship her instead of Leto. But Artemis and Apollo shoot deadly arrows into Niobe’s fourteen children. Niobe cries until she turns into a stone that is always covered with tears, night and day.
II.Agamemnon and his Children:
Agamemnon, the Leader of the proud Greek army, came home from the long Trojan War. In his absence Clytemnestra has been having an affair with his cousin Aeigthus. Agamemnon arrives home with Cassandra, daughter of Priam. She predicts the near future which is bound with blood. Clytemnestra invites them into the palace. She murders Agamemnon with no regret, believing it is avenging her daughter Iphigenia.
Agamemnon belongs to this family and like those who came before him, he is cursed. The story of this family starts when Tantalus, a cruel king loved by the gods, decided to try and trick the gods. Tantalus did the unthinkable and killed his only son (Pelops) then had him cooked. Tantalus put the meat of his son into a banquet which he then tried to feed to the gods. Unfortunately for Tantalus, the gods knew what the horrific meal was made out of and decided to punish him. The gods also brought Pelops back to life and the formerly dead primce led a happy life but the rest of his family did not.
III.Iphigenia among the Taurians:
Iphigenia among the Taurians is a tragedy, although sometimes described as a romance or melodrama, by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides, written sometime between 414 BCE and 412 BCE. It describes the chance meeting of Iphigenia (daughter of Agamemnon and now the priestess of Artemis on the wild shores of Tauris) and her long lost brother, Orestes, and the siblings’ escape from of the local custom of ritual sacrifice.
Causes of The Royal House of Atreus
Pelops and Hippodamia had many sons; two of them were Atreus and Thyestes. Depending on myth versions, they murdered Chrysippus, who was their half-brother. Because of the murder, Hippodamia, Atreus, and Thyestes were banished to Mycenae, where Hippodamia is said to have hanged herself.
Atreus vowed to sacrifice his best lamb to Artemis. Upon searching his flock, however, Atreus discovered a golden lamb which he gave to his wife, Aerope, to hide from the goddess. She gave it to Thyestes, her lover and Atreus’ brother, who then convinced Atreus to agree that whoever had the lamb should be king. Thyestes produced the lamb and claimed the throne.
Atreus retook the throne using advice he received from Hermes. Thyestes agreed to give the kingdom back when the sun moved backwards in the sky, a feat that Zeus accomplished. Atreus retook the throne and banished Thyestes.
Atreus then learned of Thyestes’ and Aerope’s adultery and plotted revenge. He killed Thyestes’ sons and cooked them, save their hands and feet. He tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and then taunted him with their hands and feet. Thyestes was forced into exile for eating the flesh of a human. Thyestes responded by asking an oracle what to do, who advised him to have a son by his daughter, Pelopia, who would then kill Atreus. However, when Aegisthus was first born, he was abandoned by his mother who was ashamed of the incestuous act. A shepherd found the infant Aegisthus and gave him to Atreus, who raised him as his own son. Only as he entered adulthood did Thyestes reveal the truth to Aegisthus, that he was both father and grandfather to the boy. Aegisthus then killed Atreus, although not before Atreus and Aerope had had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and a daughter Anaxibia.
I. Tantalus and Niobe
Tantalus killed his only son Pelops, boiled him in a big cauldron and fed him to the gods.
It was said that he wanted to bring upon the horror of cannibalism or he just wanted to prove how easy it was to fool the gods.
II. Agamemnon and his children
Agamemnon married Clytemnestra, and Menelaus married Helen, her sister (known later as Helen of Troy). Helen was taken away from Menelaus by Paris of Troy during a visit. Menelaus then called on the chieftains to help him take back Helen.
treus and Thyestes were the children of Pelops and they were cursed. Thyestes fell in love with the wife of Atreus and the two had an affair. It didn’t take long for Atreus to find out and when he dead, the man decided to punish his traitorous brother. Atreus killed Thyestes’s two little kids then had them cooked and put into a dish. Thyestes ate the horrific meal before learning the truth about what it actually was.
Agamemnon’s Betrayal
Orestes’ choice
Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, is given the choice to avenge his father but to do that, he has to kill his mother. Orestes decides to seek advice from Apollo and is told that he should kill his mother.
Clytemenstra:
III. Iphigenia among the Taurians:
It has been told in the story of King Agamemnon that the Goddess Artemis, being wroth with him because he had slain a hart which she loved, suffered not the ships of the Greeks to sail till he had offered his daughter Iphigenia for a sacrifice. But when the King consented, and all things had been made ready for slaying the maiden, the goddess would not that her blood should be shed, but put a fair hind in her place, and carried away the maiden to the land of the Taurians, where she had a temple and an altar. Now on this altar the King of the land was wont to sacrifice any stranger, being Greek by nation, who was driven by stress of weather to the place, for none went thither willingly. And the name of the King was Thoas, which signifieth in the Greek tongue, “swift of foot.”
Now when the maiden had been there many years she dreamed a dream. And in the dream she seemed to have departed from the land of the Taurians and to dwell in the city of Argos, wherein she had been born. And as she slept in the women’s chamber there befell a great earthquake, and cast to the ground the palace of her fathers, so that there was left one pillar only which stood upright. And as she looked on this pillar, yellow hair seemed to grow upon it as the hair of a man, and it spake with a man’s voice. And she did to it as she was wont to do to the strangers that were sacrificed upon the altar, purifying it with water, and weeping the while. And the interpretation of the dream she judged to be that her brother Orestes was dead, for that male children are the pillars of a house, and that he only was left to the house of her father.
The course and outcome of The Royal House of Atreus
| Atreus soon discovered his wife’s infidelity and planned revenge upon Thyestes. He offered to bury the hatchet and invited him back to Mycenae. When Thyestes returned and was being entertained (i.e. distracted), Atreus killed his three young boys, Atreus’ own nephews, cut off their extremities, cooked their torsos, and served them to Thyestes. Atreus asked Thyestes if he knew what he had eaten, and then produced their heads and limbs. Thyestes fled, cursing Atreus’ house. He asked the Delphic oracle how to get revenge, and was told that he must have a child by Pelopia, his own daughter. |
| Leaving Delphi at night, Thyestes saw by the light of a sacrificial fire a girl going into a stream near Sicyon. He raped her, but left his sword behind. He did not know that she was in fact Pelopia, and she did not know who he was. Atreus soon found her while searching for Thyestes, and took her as his new wife, replacing the unfaithful Aerope. She bore Thyestes’ son, but Atreus thought that the boy was his. Atreus named the boy Aegisthus. |
| After many years of searching for Thyestes, Atreus finally sent his two grown sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, to Delphi to find out where Thyestes was. Thyestes happened to be there, seeking new advice on taking revenge on Atreus, since he couldn’t find his daughter (more precisely, he didn’t know he’d found his daughter.) Agamemnon and Menelaus hauled Thyestes back to Mycenae. |
| Atreus had his other son, Aegisthus, behead Thyestes, but when Aegisthus pulled his sword, Thyestes recognized it as his own sword. They had Pelopia summoned secretly, and as she explained what her unknown attacker had done to her, she realized that she had had intercourse with her own father, and killed herself with the sword. Aegisthus, now realizing that Thyestes was his true father, took the bloodied sword to Atreus as evidence that he had beheaded Thyestes. Atreus rejoiced, made sacrifices, and went to the river to wash his hands, where Aegisthus stabbed him in the back. Thyestes took the throne, and Agamemnon and Menelaus took refuge in Sparta with Tyndareus, the king. They raised an army and returned to drive Thyestes from Mycenae. |
Prior to sailing off to war against Troy, Agamemnon had angered the goddess Artemis because he had killed a sacred deer in a sacred grove, and had then boasted that he was a better hunter than she was. When the time came, Artemis stilled the winds so that Agamemnon’s fleet could not sail. A prophet named Calchas told him that in order to appease Artemis, Agamemnon would have to sacrifice the most precious thing that had come to his possession in the year he killed the sacred deer. This was his first-born daughter, Iphigenia. He sent word home for her to come (in some versions of the story on the pretense that she was to be married to Achilles). Iphigenia accepted her father’s choice and was honored to be a part of the war. Clytemnestra tried to stop Iphigenia but was sent away. After doing the deed, Agamemnon’s fleet was able to get under way. Artemis, however, had instantly switched Iphigenia, as she lay upon the altar, with a deer without anyone noticing, and had taken her to distant Colchis, there to be her priestess.
While he was fighting the Trojans, his wife Clytemnestra, enraged by the murder of her daughter, began an affair with Aegisthus. When Agamemnon returned home he brought with him a new concubine, the doomed prophetess, Cassandra. Upon his arrival that evening, before the great banquet she had prepared, Clytemnestra drew a bath for him and when he came out of the bath, she put the royal purple robe on him which had no opening for his head. He was confused and tangled up and Clytemnestra then stabbed him to death.
Agamemnon’s only son, Orestes, was quite young when his mother killed his father. He was sent into exile. In some versions he was sent away by Clytemnestra to avoid having him present during the murder of Agamemnon; in others Electra herself rescued the infant Orestes and sent him away to protect him from their mother. In both versions he was the legitimate heir apparent and as such a potential danger to his usurper uncle.
Goaded by his sister Electra, Orestes swore revenge. He knew it was his duty to avenge his father’s death, but saw also that in doing so he would have to kill his mother. He was torn between avenging his father and sparing his mother. ‘It was a son’s duty to kill his father’s murderers, a duty that came before all others. But a son who killed his mother was abhorrent to gods and to men.’
When he prayed to Apollo, the god advised him to kill his mother. Orestes realized that he must work out the curse on his house, exact vengeance and pay with his own ruin. After Orestes murdered Clytemnestra, he wandered the land with guilt in his heart. After many years, with Apollo by his side, he pleaded to Athena. No descendant of Atreus had ever done so noble an act and ‘neither he nor any descendant of his would ever again be driven into evil by the irresistible power of the past.’ Thus Orestes ended the curse of the House of Atreus.
Works Cited
- http://www.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/tragedy/index.php?page=atreus
- https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/House_Atreus.pdf
- https://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/the-royal-house-of-the-atreids-in-mycenae/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atreus
- http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/curse-house-atreus-002048
- https://www.slideshare.net/guestd95242/the-house-of-atreus-3239357
- https://www.thoughtco.com/the-house-of-atreus-119123