Agamemnon

Agamemnon, son of Atreus, ruled Mycenae and commanded the combined Greek army that sailed against Troy with a hundred ships, more than any other contingent. In Euripides's Iphigenia at Aulis, he admits that Menelaus talked him into sacrificing his daughter, whom he lured with a sham wedding. In the tenth year of the siege, a plague sent by Apollo forces him to return the captive Chryseis to her father, and Agamemnon compensates himself by seizing Achilles's own prize, Briseis - a public insult that drives Achilles from the fighting and very nearly loses the Greeks the war. After a disastrous night battle, Agamemnon loses heart and proposes abandoning the siege altogether, only to be rebuked by Diomedes, who refuses to leave. Agamemnon survives the war and returns to Mycenae with the captive Cassandra, but is killed there by Aegisthus, his wife Clytemnestra's lover, who cuts him down at a feast with Clytemnestra's help; Homer has Agamemnon's own shade describe the murder, and Cassandra's death cry beside him, to Odysseus in the underworld.

Homer and Apollodorus differ slightly on the murder's mechanics. Homer's Odyssey has Agamemnon's own shade name Aegisthus as the one who struck the blow, with Clytemnestra's help, at a feast staged as a homecoming celebration. Apollodorus's Epitome, writing centuries later, credits the killing to Aegisthus and Clytemnestra jointly and adds a specific method: Clytemnestra gave her husband a robe sewn shut at the neck and sleeves, cutting him down as he struggled to put it on. The Epitome then follows the revenge: his daughter Electra smuggled her young brother Orestes away to Strophius in Phocis, and Orestes, once grown, went secretly to Mycenae with Pylades and killed both Aegisthus and his mother.

Agamemnon's grudges outlasted the men who earned them. After Ajax killed himself in shame over losing Achilles's armor, Agamemnon, still resentful, denied him the cremation given to every other Greek dead at Troy, so that Ajax alone was buried whole, in a coffin.