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Agamemnon Biography

Agamemnon Image

AGAMEMNON, Son of Atreus and brother of Menelaus. Agamemnon is a prominent figure in Greek heroic legend, though the details of his story differ. He ruled at Mycenæ and exercised lordship over much of the Peloponnesus. Therefore, when Paris carried off Helen (q.v.), the wife of Menelaus, Agamemnon was the natural leader of the expedition made against Troy to recover her. His quarrel with Achilles (q.v.) is the starting-point of the Iliad. Later writers told of the sacrifice of his daughter lphigenia (q.v.) at Aulis to secure favorable winds for the voyage to Troy. In his share of the booty of Troy he received the prophetess Cassandra (q.v.), daughter of Priam. On his return to Mycenæ he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra (q.v.) and her paramour, Ægisthus (q.v.). His son, Orestes (q.v.), aided by his daughter Electra, subsequently avenged his father. This tragedy of the house of Atreus was a favorite subject of the Greek dramatists. Consult especially the play of Æschylus (q.v.) called the Agamemnon, the first play of the trilogy commonly known as the Oresteia.

The New International Encyclopædia, Vol. I (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 224.