Agamemnon

Role: son of Plisthenes · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 3.2

🌐 Also appears in: The Iliad (as Agamemnon) · The Odyssey (as Agamemnon) · The Metamorphoses of Ovid (as Agamemnon) · Greek Tragedy — The Same Myth, Three Voices (as Agamemnon)

Agamemnon was born to Plisthenes and Aerope alongside his brother Menelaus; he is also identified in a Mycenaean list as the son of Atreus and Aerope. After their nurse took them to Polyphides, lord of Sicyon, Polyphides sent them to Oeneus, the Aetolian. Agamemnon later became Tyndareus’s son-in-law by marrying Clytaemnestra, after killing her husband Tantalus, son of Thyestes, and their newborn child. With Clytaemnestra, he had Orestes, Chrysothemis, Electra, and Iphigenia.

At Mycenae, Menelaus persuaded Agamemnon to muster the Greek army against Troy. He commanded the whole army while Achilles served as admiral, ordered Odysseus to abandon Philoctetes on Lemnos, and joined Odysseus in the deception that led to Palamedes being stoned as a traitor. After the war, Agamemnon received Cassandra as a special award and forbade Ajax son of Telamon’s body to be burned; he and Menelaus later quarrelled.

When Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with Cassandra, Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra murdered him, and Aegisthus seized the throne. Cassandra was killed as well.