Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra, in Greek legend the unfaithful wife of Agamemnon, whom she and her lover, Aegisthus, murdered. Clytemnestra was then killed by her son, Orestes, with the help of his sister Electra, in revenge for his father’s murder. In Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon, part of his Oresteia trilogy, Clytemnestra is driven to murder Agamemnon partly to avenge the death of her daughter Iphigeneia, whom Agamemnon had sacrificed for the sake of success in the war, partly because of her adulterous love for Aegisthus, and partly as an agent for the curse on Agamemnon’s family, the House of Atreus. Clytemnestra’s story is also told in plays by Sophocles and Euripides.

Family

Clytemnestra was one of the four children hatched from eggs laid by Leda, wife of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta. The other three were Clytemnestra’s sister, Helen, and her brothers, Castor and Pollux (known as the Dioscuri). Helen and Pollux are regarded as the children born of Leda’s union with Zeus, while Tyndareus is generally considered the father of Clytemnestra and Castor. Clytemnestra married Agamemnon when he and his brother Menelaus visited Sparta after being exiled from Mycenae for the murder of another brother. Their crime was one in a cycle of generational violence, which had begun with Tantalus feeding the gods his son Pelops at a feast. Pelops, revived by the gods, killed an accomplice who had helped him to illegally gain his bride, Hippodamia. The dying accomplice cursed Pelops, adding to the dynasty’s legacy of blood. Pelops’s sons, Atreus and Thyestes, continued the calamitous legacy by committing various atrocities against each other.

In some versions of Clytemnestra’s story, she was already married and had a son before the arrival of Agamemnon, who killed her husband and child in order to marry her.

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From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology

The sacrifice of Iphigeneia

A fateful moment in Clytemnestra’s married life with Agamemnon occurred during the events leading up to the Trojan War. When Helen eloped with (or was abducted by) the Trojan prince Paris, Agamemnon was placed in command of an allied Greek force that had been assembled for her recovery. During the voyage to Troy, the fleet was stranded at the port of Aulis because of calm or contrary winds sent by Artemis, whom Agamemnon had offended in some manner. On the advice of the seer Calchas, Agamemnon summoned Iphigeneia to Aulis on the pretense of having arranged her marriage to Achilles and sacrificed her to appease Artemis.

The murder of Agamemnon

The Greeks then sailed to Troy, which they finally sacked after 10 years of war. In the distribution of the spoils after the capture of Troy, the Trojan prophetess Cassandra fell to Agamemnon and returned with him to Greece. In the interval Clytemnestra had become Aegisthus’s lover, and the pair conspired to murder Agamemnon on his return. They laid out a path of red (or purple) material for Agamemnon to walk on when he landed in Argolis—this early reference to a special walkway has led to popular conjecture that it may be the origin of the modern red carpet. In the commonly held myth Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ambushed Agamemnon in his bath, tying him up and killing him with an ax. In some versions he was stabbed.

Cassandra, whose warnings of the plot had been ignored, was also killed. In Homer’s Odyssey the spirit of Agamemnon relates the story of his death when Odysseus visits the underworld and advises Odysseus against trusting any woman, even his own wife. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ascended the throne and ruled Mycenae for seven years, until Agamemnon’s murder was avenged by Orestes and Electra. As she lay dying Clytemnestra invoked the Furies to pursue Orestes for his crime of matricide.