The House of Atreus By: Carson Foust, Olivia Lawson, & Nathan Watsek

1. The House of Atreus By: Carson Foust, Olivia Lawson, & Nathan Watsek

2. Tantalus • Honored by the Gods and mortals on Earth • Has his son, Pelops, killed and cooked in a cauldron to feed to the Gods planning to deceive them. But he was foolish to think the Olympians wouldn't find out. • They cursed him for his actions by leaving him to walk the earth without food or water. • Some say that what Tantalus did, started the path of misfortune for his desendants.

3. Pelops • After his father killed him, the gods restored his life with lose of his shoulder, which was replaced by ivory. • He lived a happy life after that. • He married the princess Hippodamia, because he beat her father in a horse race with help from Poseidon's horses. However another story states that Hippodamia bribed her father’s charioteer, Myrtilus, to loosen the bolts in her father’s chariot. Later Myrtilus was killed by Pelops, cursing him as he died • Although many scribe say Tantalus’s wickedness is what doomed his descendants.

4. Niobe • Niobe is daughter of Tantalus, sister of Pelops. • At first it seemed she lead a happy life. • Her husband was Amphion, who helped her rule over Thebes. • She had seven brave, beautiful sons and seven daughters fairest of the fair. • She told the people of Thebes to worship her instead of the great titan Leto, mother of Artemis and Apollo. • This angered Apollo and Artemis so they swooped down from the heavens and, being the great archers that they are, shot all of her fourteen children. • With the loss of her children she sank down motionless beside their bodies and wept. Then she was changed into a stone forever which, night and day, was wet with tears.

5. Atreus & Thyestes • Atreus and Thyestes are both the sons of Pelops • Thyestes fell in love with Atreus’s wife. • Atreus soon found out and vowed that he pay as no man ever had. • Atreus then killed Thyestes’s two sons, ripped them limb from limb, boiled them, and served them to him. • Atreus’s crime wasn’t avenged during his lifetime but his children and children’s children would suffer. • Thyestes had another son after his other sons were killed named Aegisthus, who will play a role in King Agamemnon’s death.

6. Menelaus • Menelaus is the son of Atreus • He is married to Helen (whom started the Trojan war). • He lost is wife during the war of Troy, then got her back after the war was over. • On the way home from Troy his ship was driven all the way back to Egypt by a storm Athena sent. • When he made it home he lived happily from then on. It was much different with his brother.

7. THE DEATH OF Agamemnon • Agamemnon was the son of Atreus. • Ten years before the end of the war, Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to calm the seas, for they wanted sooth sailing to Troy and Artemis was angry because the Greeks killed one of her favorite animals . • Ever since Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, came back from her daughter’s sacrifice she wanted to avenge Iphigenia’s death. She had been waiting in their palace until the return of Agamemnon. • Clytemnestra hadn't been faithful to her husband during this time and took a lover, Aegisthus. • When Agamemnon returned to his wife, she greeted him much love and gratitude, even though everyone except Agamemnon knew her plan of betrayal. • His gift he received from the war was Priam’s daughter, Cassandra, who can see future prophecies but no one believes her.

8. Cassandra yells to the crowd of celebrating citizens a prophecies that say, “This is the house that God hates, where men are killed and the floor is red with blood!” of course they didn’t believe her, but she continued. “I hear children crying…crying for wounds that bleed. A father feasted—and the flesh of his children.” • She retold stories of murder and said that two more murders would be committed that day. • After the prophecies the crowd heard a cry, then they saw the queen standing at the door with blood stains on her dress, she admitted it to all the people freely. • Her lover Aegisthus helped kill Agamemnon. He was the son of Thyestes, his brothers killed and eaten in that same house. • They took over as rulers after that.

9. Orestes • Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra • During the murder of his father, Aegisthus sent Orestes away too a trusted friend. • His sister Electra hoped he would come back and avenge his father’s death. • As he grew into a man, he knew that is was the son’s duty to kill his father’s murders, but it was repulsive to the gods to kill one’s mother. • Trying to find a solution to his problem he traveled to Delphi to see an Oracle, and Apollo told him to kill the two who killed. • Orestes then journeyed home with his cousin and friend Pylades. Electra was overjoyed with his return. • Finally the three of them made a plan to fulfill their Orestes’s task. Orestes and Pylades were to go to the palace, claiming to be the bearers of the message that Orestes had died. Once inside the palace they would rely on their own swords to finish the job. • His plan fell apart when a slave noticed him and yelled to Clytemnestra there was a traitor in the palace. Before she saw Orestes she told the slave to get her battle-axe so she could be ready to fight. Clytemnestra soon realized it was her son.

10. She noticed that he had killed Aegisthus and knew he was there to kill her and pleaded to him to spare his mother. • Pylades told him it was commanded by the gods to kill Clytemnestra. • He was confused on what to do . He didn’t feel guilty about killing her lover but it wasn’t the same situation with his mother. But in the end he killed his mother whether he himself knew it was right or not. • It seemed he was so guilty that he began to go crazy. He screamed and told everyone he saw dark women who had hair like snakes, and their eyes dripped blood. He then ran away alone, except with those invisible companions. • He finally came back to his country after wandering across many lands still haunted with the same hallucinations. • He realized that every man could repent no matter the sin. So he wanted to plea to the goddess Athena. Apollo came down beside him and explained that he was the one who told Orestes to kill his Mother and her lover. • He was the first of the House of Atreus to try to cleanse what he had done wrong, and forhtat Athena accepted his plea. • Athena not only forgave Orestes but promised him that none of his descendants would suffer from the evils from the past.

11. PHIGENIAamong thetaurians • She was sacrificed in the original story because the Greeks killed an animal that Artemis loved and so she released her anger out on them, only to be stopped with the sacrifice of a young girl. Although the Greeks thought Artemis would never be that harsh to ask for a human sacrifice. • When the Greeks where about to sacrifice Iphigenia at the altar they all felt guilty and bowed there heads and closed their eyes. When they opened their eyes the girl was gone. • The men deduced that is was of Atremis’s doing, for she wouldn’t have her altar stained with blood. • Artemis then sent her to the land of the Taurians. The Taurians had a savage custom of sacrificing any Greek found in their country. Artemis knew this and made her the priestess her temple, which kept her safe but made her conduct these terrible sacrifices.(not killing them but just delivering them to be killed) • After many years of servicing the goddess, a Greek ship came ashore even with the knowledge of what Taurians did to Greeks. • It turned out that the ship was controlled by her brother Orestes and his faithful friend, Pylades. Iphigenia didn’t know of their arrival. Many still perused Orestes for killing his mother even though he had received forgiveness from Athena.

12. Apollo’s oracle told him to go to Taurian country and bring away the sacred image of Atremis. When he set up the image in Athens, then will he be free from his pursuers and hauntings. • Iphigenia was doing her normal duties when a messanger said two Greeks were found and to be sacrificed. When brought out, Iphigenia asked the captives many questions. • She realized they came from Mycenae and began to ask of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. One of the men told her they were both dead. Then she asked if they ever spoke of their sacrificed daughter and he replied that she was dead as well • Then Iphigenia agreed to free them if they sent a letter to her friends in Mycenae. The first man said that he would be killed and the other would deliver it and return home. When Iphigenia said to give a message to her brother Orestes saying that she is alive, The man was overjoyed to know his sister was alive for he was Orestes. • She knew he was Orestes because he described the embroidery she made before leaving for Aulis. • She took the image of Artemis and the “captives” out to the seashore, telling those who asked, that they were unclean and need to be purified. • Her plan was working and when out of sight the jumped on to Orestes’s ship started sailing off. But a heavy wind pushed them back to the land. • the Taurian King ,Thoas, knew what was going on and went to put the captives and the traitorous priestess to death when Athena told him to stop and let the ship go. She promised that Poseidon would keep the sea at ease for their journy home.