Lana Lore { english }

Agamemnon from greek mythology

Agamemnon was the legendary king of Mycenae and leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War of Homer's Illiad. Agamemnon is a great warrior but also a selfish ruler who famously upset his invincible champion Achilles, a feud that prolonged the war and suffering of his men.

Agamemnon is a hero from Greek mythology but there are no historical records of a Mycenaean king of that name. The Greek city was a prosperous one in the Bronze Age, and there perhaps was a real, albeit much shorter, Greek-led attack on Troy. Both these propositions are supported by archaeological evidence. Unfortunately, though, the famous gold mask found in a shaft grave at Mycenae and widely known as the 'Mask of Agamemnon' is dated up to 400 years before any possible Agamemnon candidate that fits a chronology of the Trojan War.

Agamemnon was the son of Atreus, or perhaps grandson, in which case his father was Pleisthenes. His mother was Aerope, from Crete which provided a handy link between the Mycenaean civilization of the Greek Peloponnese and the earlier Minoan civilization of Bronze Age Crete. He was married to Clytemnestra with whom he had three daughters. In one version these are Chrysothemis, Laodice and Iphianassa while in other, later versions they are Chrysothemis, Electra and Iphigeneia. Agamemnon was the brother of Menelaos, king of Sparta.

According to Homer, Agamemnon was given his king's sceptre and right to rule Mycenae and all the Achaean Greeks by Zeus himself. Agamemnon is described as a great warrior and so is a worthy leader of men. According to Plato, his name derives from menein meaning 'to endure'. Mycenae, located 15 km from the sea in the northern Peloponnese, then prospered and Homer describes the city as a 'well-founded citadel', as 'wide-wayed' and as 'golden Mycenae'. This mythological prosperity is supported by the excavation of over 15 kilograms of gold objects recovered from the shaft graves in the fortified acropolis which still dominates the plain today. Further excavations have also revealed that the city once covered 30,000 square metres and was first inhabited in Neolithic times.

Our main source of information on the Trojan War is Homer's epic mythological account in the Iliad, written in the 8th century BCE but almost certainly based on a much older oral tradition. The ancient Greeks themselves considered the conflict to have been a real one and taken place in the 13th century BCE. The story came to represent the struggle of Greeks against foreign powers, and it told tales of a time when men were better, more able, and more honourable. After Homer, the Trojan War became a staple theme in Classical Greek and Roman literature and was revisited many times by writers in works such as Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Euripides' Trojan Women, and Virgil's Aeneid. Later authors, especially Aeschylus, altered parts of the story, probably for dramatic effect on an audience all too familiar with it. Scenes from the conflict were also a favourite with visual artists for the next millennium.

The war began when Paris, a Trojan prince, abducted Helen, wife of Menelaus, from Sparta. Paris regarded her as his rightful reward for choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess in a competition with Athena and Hera at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. A furious Menelaus then appealed to his brother Agamemnon to create a coalition force of Greek warriors and rescue Helen from Troy. This Agamemnon did, and the force from such cities as Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Rhodes and just about everywhere else across Greece sailed in a huge fleet across the 'wine-dark sea' to Anatolia.

Well, they would have done if Agamemnon had not upset the goddess Artemis when he killed one of her sacred stags and then boasted he was a better hunter than the goddess, herself famous for her hunting skills. As punishment, Artemis becalmed the Greek fleet and only the sacrifice of Iphigeneia would appease the goddess into granting a fair wind to Troy. Agamemnon duly offered his daughter in sacrifice, but in pity and at the last moment, the goddess substituted a deer for the girl and made Iphigeneia a priestess at her sanctuary at Tauris. In Aeschylus' version, Agamemnon ruthlessly sacrifices his daughter, then still a child, and so guarantees his wife's eternal hatred and his own murder later on in the story.