Agamemnon
What was Agamemnon famous for?
What is the curse of Agamemnon?
What role did Agamemnon play in the Trojan War?
Agamemnon, in Greek legend, king of Mycenae or Argos. He was the son (or grandson) of Atreus, king of Mycenae, and his wife Aërope, and was the brother of Menelaus. Agamemnon was the commander of the Greek army that fought the Trojan War for the recovery of Menelaus’s wife, Helen, who had eloped with (or was abducted by) the Trojan prince, Paris.
The family curse
Agamemnon and Menelaus belonged to a lineage that had been cursed with perpetuating a cycle of generational violence. Their great-grandfather, Tantalus, had been punished by the gods for attempting to feed them his son, Pelops, at a divine feast. Pelops, who was revived by the gods, continued the legacy of bloodshed by killing rather than rewarding an accomplice who had helped him illegally win his bride, Hippodamia. Atreus and his brother Thyestes, two among Pelops’s many offspring, were exiled to Mycenae for the murder of another brother, Chrysippus. They came into conflict over the throne of Mycenae, and Atreus was betrayed by Aërope, who became Thyestes’s lover.
After Atreus was murdered by Thyestes’s son Aegisthus, Agamemnon and Menelaus took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters, Clytemnestra and Helen, they respectively married. By Clytemnestra Agamemnon had a son, Orestes, and three daughters, Iphigeneia (Iphianassa), Electra (Laodice), and Chrysothemis. Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus, and Agamemnon recovered his father’s kingdom.
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Role in the Trojan War
When Helen departed with Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, Menelaus invoked the oath of Tyndareus, according to which the suitors of Helen were sworn to defend her marriage to the successful. The many Greek kings thus called upon supplied an allied force, which was placed under the command of Agamemnon, who furnished 100 ships.
Agamemnon’s authority was tested even before the Greek army sailed for Troy. The fleet assembled at the port of Aulis in Boeotia but was prevented from sailing by calm or contrary winds that were sent by the goddess Artemis because Agamemnon had offended her in some way. To appease the wrath of Artemis, Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia. In some accounts he tricked Iphigeneia into traveling to Aulis by claiming that she was to marry Achilles, who became enraged on discovering the deception. Agamemnon and Achilles clashed again during the course of the war, when Achilles insisted that Agamemnon return Chryseis, his prize of war, to her father, a priest of Apollo, who had sent a plague to the Greek camp. Agamemnon retaliated by seizing Achilles’ concubine, Briseis, prompting him to withdraw from fighting. The Greeks consequently suffered on the battlefield, and Agamemnon attempted to reconcile with Achilles, sending him gifts via ambassadors (among them Odysseus).
Agamemnon’s murder
In Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon (458 bce), a pathway of scarlet robes is laid out for Agamemnon to walk on when he returns to Greece from Troy. Agamemnon is loath to walk on the robes for fear of upsetting the gods, as the color red was used to dignify divinity. Historians think it likely that Aeschylus’s “red carpet” was inspired by an eastern custom, though some have suggested that the material used may have been purple, the color of royalty, rather than red.
After the capture of Troy, Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, fell to Agamemnon’s lot in the distribution of the prizes of war. Agamemnon returned to Greece with Cassandra, ignoring her warnings of the tragic fate awaiting them both. They landed in Argolis, where Aegisthus had, in the interval, seduced Clytemnestra. The pair treacherously carried out the murders of Agamemnon, his comrades, and Cassandra. In Agamemnon (458 bce), by the Greek poet and dramatist Aeschylus, however, Agamemnon was killed by Clytemnestra, as revenge for the death of Iphigeneia. The murder was avenged by Orestes, who returned to slay both his mother and her paramour.
Role in the Odyssey
In Homer’s Odyssey the spirit of Agamemnon was among those Odysseus met when he descended to the underworld to consult the seer Tiresias. Agamemnon related how he was murdered by Clytemnestra and cautioned Odysseus against trusting women, even his wife Penelope.
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Agamemnon’s ghost appeared again toward the end of the poem, when he greeted the spirits of Penelope’s suitors, whom Odysseus had massacred on his return to Ithaca.
Agamemnon on screen
Sean Connery played Agamemnon in the 1981 fantasy film Time Bandits. The role was taken by Rufus Sewell in the miniseries Helen of Troy (2003) and by Brian Cox in the Hollywood film Troy (2004), starring Brad Pitt as Achilles. Benny Safdie plays Agamemnon in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026), featuring Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, and Charlize Theron as Circe.