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Aegisthus (; ; also Transliteration as Aigisthos, ) was a figure in Greek mythology. Aegisthus is known from two primary sources: the first is Homer's Odyssey, believed to have been first written down by Homer at the end of the 8th century BC, and the second from Aeschylus's Oresteia, written in the 5th century BC. Aegisthus also features heavily in the action of Euripides's Electra ( 420 BC), although his character remains offstage.
While Agamemnon Trojan War, his estranged queen Clytemnestra took Aegisthus as a lover. The couple killed Agamemnon upon the king's return, making Aegisthus king of Mycenae once more. Aegisthus ruled for seven more years before his death at the hands of Agamemnon's son Orestes.
Thyestes raped Pelopia after she performed a sacrifice, hiding his identity from her. When Aegisthus was born, his mother abandoned him, ashamed of his origin, and he was raised by shepherds and suckled by a goat, hence his name Aegisthus (from αἴξ, male goat).Hyginus, Fabulae 87, 88;Aelian, Varia Historia xii. 42 Atreus, not knowing the baby's origin, took Aegisthus in and raised him as his own son.
After the death of Tyndareus, Meneleaus became king of Sparta. He used the Spartan army to drive out Aegisthus and Thyestes from Mycenae and place Agamemnon on the throne. Agamemnon extended his dominion by conquest and became the most powerful ruler in Greece. After Helen's abduction to Troy, Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the gods before setting off for Ilium. While Agamemnon was away fighting in the Trojan War, Clytemnestra turned against her husband and took Aegisthus as a lover. Upon Agamemnon's return to Mycenae, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra worked together to kill Agamemnon with certain accounts recording Aegisthus committing the murder while others record Clytemnestra herself exacting revenge on Agamemnon for his murder of Iphigenia.
Following Agamemnon's death, Aegisthus reigned over Mycenae for seven years. He and Clytemnestra had a son, Aletes, and a daughter, Erigone (sometimes known as HelenPhotius, Bibliotheca 190.30). In the eighth year of his reign Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, returned to Mycenae and avenged the death of his father by killing Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.Homer, Odyssey i. 28, &c. The impiety of matricide was such that Orestes was forced to flee from Mycenae, pursued by the Furies. Aletes became king until Orestes returned several years later and killed him. Orestes later married Aegisthus's daughter Erigone.
In Aeschylus's Oresteia, Aegisthus is a minor figure. In the first play, Agamemnon, he appears at the end to claim the throne, after Clytemnestra herself has killed Agamemnon and Cassandra. Clytemnestra wields the axe she has used to quell dissent. In The Libation Bearers he is killed quickly by Orestes, who then struggles over having to kill his mother. Aegisthus is referred to as a "weak lion", plotting the murders but having his lover commit the deeds. According to Johanna Leah Braff, he "takes the traditional female role, as one who devises but is passive and does not act."Johanna Leah Braff, Animal Similes and Gender in the "Odyssey" and "Oresteia", University of Maryland, MA Thesis, 2008, p.64. Christopher Collard describes him as the foil to Clytemnestra, his brief speech in Agamemnon revealing him to be "cowardly, sly, weak, full of noisy threats - a typical 'tyrant figure' in embryo."Christopher Collard (ed), Oresteia: Aeschylus, Oxford University Press, 2003, p.xxvii.
Aeschylus's portrayal of Aegisthus as a weak, implicitly feminised figure, influenced later writers and artists who often depict him as an effeminate or decadent individual, either manipulating or dominated by the more powerful Clytemnestra. He appears in Seneca's Agamemnon, enticing her to murder. In Richard Strauss's and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's opera, Elektra his voice is "a decidedly high-pitched tenor, punctuated by irrational upward leaps, that rises to high pitched squeals during his death colloquy with Elektra." In the first production he was depicted as "an epicene...with long curly locks and rouged lips, half-cringing, half-posturing seductively."Lawrence Kramer, Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss, University of California Press, 2004, pp.207-8.
An ancient tomb in Mycenae is fancifully known as the "Tomb of Aegisthus". It dates from around 1510 BC.William Bell Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece: An Account of Its Historic Development, Biblo & Tannen Publishers, 1950, p.29.
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