House of Atreus

The House of Atreus has no single curse and no single beginning. The sources start it in different places, and this page follows them across five generations, from Tantalus to Orestes. Apollodorus's Epitome says Pelops was slaughtered and boiled at a banquet of the gods and came back to life fairer than ever. Pindar refuses the story. His first Olympian Ode says he will speak contrary to earlier tales. He cannot call one of the blessed gods a glutton. In his version Tantalus gave the banquet, Poseidon carried the boy off for love, and an envious neighbour invented the rumour. Where Pindar denies the crime, other writers open the family's history with it.

Pelops grew up to win a wife, and the winning is the second crime. Oenomaus, king of Pisa, had a daughter, Hippodamia. The Epitome says each suitor had to flee with her in his chariot. Oenomaus chased him in armour and killed him if he caught him. Pindar says thirteen suitors had died. Apollodorus says some count twelve.

Pelops prayed to Poseidon on the shore, and in Pindar the god gave him a golden chariot with untiring winged horses. Apollodorus adds a human helper. Hippodamia fell for Pelops and persuaded Myrtilus, the son of Hermes and Oenomaus's own charioteer, to help him. Myrtilus, who loved her, left the linchpins out of the wheels, and Oenomaus was dragged to death. Some say Pelops killed him. As he died, Oenomaus cursed Myrtilus.

The reward was worse than the bargain. On the way home Myrtilus tried to force himself on Hippodamia while Pelops fetched water. Pelops threw him into the sea, and as he fell Myrtilus cursed the house of Pelops. Pindar's account of the race names no Myrtilus. In Euripides's Orestes the chorus traces the family's ruin to the moment Pelops hurled the murdered charioteer into the sea near Geraestus.

Pelops fathered several sons, among them Atreus and Thyestes. Apollodorus says Atreus's wife Aerope loved Thyestes. Atreus had vowed to sacrifice the finest of his flock to Artemis. When a golden lamb appeared, he kept it hidden in a chest instead of sacrificing it, and Aerope gave it to Thyestes.

The people of Mycenae had an oracle telling them to choose a Pelopid as king. Thyestes told the crowd that the kingdom belonged to whoever owned the golden lamb, and Atreus agreed. Thyestes produced it and was made king. Zeus then sent Hermes to Atreus with a counter-offer. Atreus should be king if the sun went backward. Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east, and Atreus took the throne and banished his brother.

The sources tell the lamb differently. In Euripides's Electra the god Pan brings it to the Argive hills, and Thyestes persuades Atreus's wife to steal it. Even there the chorus says it has small belief in the sun turning back. In Euripides's Orestes the lamb comes from Hermes, the son of Maia, and Strife turns the sun. Pausanias saw the grave of Thyestes on the road from Mycenae to Argos. A stone ram marks it, because Thyestes won the golden lamb by seducing his brother's wife.

Atreus took his revenge as a host. He learned of the adultery, sent a herald to Thyestes offering peace, and lured him home. Apollodorus says he killed Thyestes's three sons, though they had taken refuge at the altar of Zeus. He then served them to their father at a banquet. Pausanias calls it the slaughter of the children and the banquet of which the poets tell. A host had betrayed the oldest rule of hospitality.

Aeschylus tells it through the survivor. In the Agamemnon, Aegisthus says Thyestes came back as a suppliant and was welcomed with a show of friendship. When Thyestes saw what he had eaten, he kicked over the table and cursed the whole line of Pelops. Earlier in the play Cassandra sees the murdered children as ghosts sitting before the palace, a vision the chorus cannot read.

Thyestes then sought vengeance through the oracle. Apollodorus says it told him to father a son by his own daughter. That son, Aegisthus, killed Atreus when he grew up and gave the kingdom back to Thyestes. Aeschylus's Aegisthus tells it differently. He calls himself Thyestes's third child, a baby in swaddling clothes when Atreus drove them out. He says justice brought him home as a grown man.

The curse reached the next generation in the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus. Agamemnon led the Greeks to Troy and came home with Cassandra to a wife and a cousin who were waiting. Their own stories are told on their pages. What matters here is who was blamed for the murder. In the Odyssey, Menelaus hears from Proteus that Aegisthus set a watchman, hid twenty men in the hall and invited Agamemnon to a feast. Agamemnon was killed there, as an ox is killed at the stall, along with his companions.

Aeschylus moves the blow to Clytemnestra. She says she cast a robe over him like a net, struck him three times and glories in the deed. Then she disowns her own hand. The killer, she tells the chorus, is the ancient bitter spirit of Atreus, the grim banqueter. It has paid for the slain children with a full-grown victim. Apollodorus's Epitome names both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra as the killers. Aegisthus then ruled Mycenae.

Justice arrived in the next generation. Apollodorus says Electra smuggled her young brother Orestes to Strophius in Phocis, who raised him with his own son Pylades. Grown, Orestes asked the god at Delphi whether to avenge his father, and the god allowed it. He came home in secret and killed both his mother and Aegisthus. The Odyssey, more briefly, has Menelaus told that Orestes may have slain Aegisthus and be holding his funeral feast.

Aeschylus shows what the killing costs. In the Libation Bearers, Orestes says Apollo threatened him with plagues and the Furies of his father if he left the murder unavenged. At the moment of decision he wavers, and Pylades reminds him of the oracles and the sworn pact. After the deed Orestes sees the Furies, wrapped in dark robes and hung with snakes, and runs from the house. He is now hunted for a mother's blood.

The cycle ends at Athens. Apollodorus says Orestes, maddened and pursued by the Furies, went to Athens and was tried on the Areopagus. Aeschylus stages the trial in the Eumenides. Athena will not decide a case of murder alone. She says either course, expelling the Furies or letting them stay, brings disaster on her city. So she selects jurors and founds a court for all time.

The jury splits. Athena says she will cast her vote for Orestes because no mother bore her, and that he wins on a tie. Apollo tells the jurors that a single ballot has set a house upright. Athena announces the result: the votes are equal and Orestes is acquitted. He swears that no Argive leader will ever march against Athens. The Furies are angry until Athena promises them a sanctuary and honour in her land. The chain of killing ends because a city put the question to a vote.