Agamemnon

Greek King of Argos and Mycenae, regions in the northern Peloponnesus; son of Atreus and Aerope. He was the grandson of Pelops and the last member of a family doomed to one tragedy after another. He was the brother of Menelaus and Anaxibia; and the husband of Clytemnestra, with whom he fathered Chrysothemis, Electra, Iphigenia, and Orestes. King Agamemnon was the leader of the Achaean (Greek) forces in the Trojan War. He was eventually killed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Driven from Mycenae after the murder of their father, Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus fled to Sparta. There Agamemnon wed Clytemnestra, and Menelaus wed Helen. Agamemnon was chosen to lead the Greeks in the expedition to rescue his sisterin- law, Helen, after Paris abducted her. The expedition was stalled when Agamemnon offended the goddess Artemis. A soothsayer, Calchas, said that only the sacrifice of Iphigenia would appease Artemis and Aeolus, the wind god. Agamemnon tricked his wife into sending their daughter to her death. In another act of treachery, Agamemnon stole Briseis, the beloved of the hero Achilles, who then laid down his arms and withdrew from the Trojan War (though he later rejoined it). When Agamemnon returned in triumph from the war, 10 years later, accompanied by the princess Cassandra as booty, both he and she were murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. Agamemnon was trapped in a net and drowned in a bathtub, an ignoble end for a hero. Agamemnon was one of the principal characters in Homer's Iliad. He was a brave and successful warrior but a selfish and treacherous man. Historians believe that there was a real King Agamemnon in Argos or Mycenae, since Agamemnon appears often in Greek mythology and there were many cults of Agamemnon in various places in ancient Greece.