Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Agamemnon reached Mycenae (or Argos) with Cassandra among his spoils. In his absence Clytemnestra had taken Aegisthus—Thyestes’ surviving son—as lover, nursing hatred for Iphigenia’s sacrifice and for the concubine brought home in triumph. The *Nostoi* and Apollodorus follow the Homeric shape: Aegisthus set an ambush; Agamemnon was killed at a banquet like an ox at the stall; Cassandra died with him. Aeschylus’s *Agamemnon* restages the homecoming as a carpet of hybris, prophetic terror from Cassandra, and Clytemnestra’s own hands in the bath—net and blade—claiming justice for the child at Aulis even as the Chorus hears the dynastic curse. Aegisthus ruled beside Clytemnestra until Orestes came of age. Proteus or the *Odyssey*’s Menelaus already narrates the murder to Telemachus as the cautionary nostos: the king who took Troy died in his own hall. This entry stops at the murder and usurpation; the Oresteia’s purification and trial are later catalogue material if continued beyond the Trojan folder’s early nostoi.