Agamemnon

WHO WAS AGAMEMNON?

He was the king of Mycenae and

Argos. 

He was the one who commanded

and finance the expedition to Troy.

He was a valiant hero and one of

the principal characters in The

Iliad.

HIS FAMILY

His parents were Atreus en Aerope.

His brother was Menelaus.

His sister was Anaxibia.

His wife was Clytemnestra.

His sons and daughters were Orestes, Electra,

Iphigenia and Chrysothemis.

His cousin was Aegisthos.

TANTALUS

He was part of the Tantalus

family .

Tantalus was the king of little-

Asia. He wanted to test the

omniscience from the gods, so he

invited them for a dinner. And he

gave them his own son. But the

gods found out and they send him

to the underworld. He had to be

always hungry and thirsty.

AGAMEMNON PUNISHMENT

Agamemnon haunted Artemis’s favourite deer and the

goddess sent to the expedition a plague and she stopped

the winds, so the Greeks couldn’t get to Troy. To pleased

the goddess, Agamemnon had to sacrificed his daughter

Iphigenia so the Greeks could continue the expedition.

THE TROJAN WARAgamemnon was the commander-in-chief of the

Greeks during the Trojan War. During the fighting, he

killed Antiphus and 15 other Trojan soldiers.

Agamemnon took an attractive slave, Briseis, from

Achilles. Achilles, the greatest warrior of the age,

withdrew from battle in revenge and nearly cost the

Greek armies the war.

THE MASK

The so-called Mask of Agamemnon is a golden death mask in 1876

by Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae during an excavation found.

He thought that the mask on the face of King Agamemnon was

placed when he laid in his grave. Since then it has become clear that

the mask a few centuries older was than the time when Agamemnon

would have lived. The golden death mask clears indication of the

belief in an afterlife, and it approves that the Mykers are good in

forge the gold

At this moment the mask is in the National Archaeological Museum

of Athens.

HIS DEATH

Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife had taken  Aegisthus, son of Thyestes, as a lover. When Agamemnon came home he was slain by either Aegisthus (in the oldest versions of the story) or Clytemnestra.  Orestes later avenged his father's murder, with the help or encouragement of his sister Electra, by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra.

CREDITS

-Patricia López

-Birgitte Hennink

-Joanna Latasa

-Sven de Haan