Saturday, September 14, 2013

Agamemnon's Family

Atreus, as Mr. Kirkpatrick told us, was Agamemnon and Menelaus's  father. After he found out that his brother, Thyestes, stole the throne of Mycenae by seducing Atreus's wife, he decided to get revenge. He did this by cutting up Thyestes's children into small pieces, cooking them, and feeding them too their own father and then banishing him for eating human flesh. Interestingly enough, Thyestes and Atreus were the sons of Tantalus, who cut up his own children and tried to feed them to the gods to test their omnipotence. Tantalus was punished by being forced to spend an eternity in a pool of water that recedes whenever he tries to drink under a tree whose branches raise whenever he tries to pluck a fruit. So yeah, it was a pretty messed up family.

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