Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Hermione, only child of Menelaus and Helen, was promised first to her cousin Orestes (by Tyndareus’s arrangement in Euripides), then given instead to Neoptolemus as prize of the Trojan alliance—or as Menelaus’s postwar choice (*Odyssey* 4 shows Menelaus marrying her to Neoptolemus while sending a son to Mycenae). The marriage to Achilles’ son proved childless and bitter; Hermione’s jealousy of Andromache drives Euripides’ *Andromache*. When Neoptolemus is slain at Delphi, Orestes claims Hermione as his rightful bride. In *Andromache* he arrives at Phthia, takes her from the brink of suicide, and announces both the Delphic plot and their forthcoming marriage. Apollodorus states simply that Orestes recovered Hermione after Neoptolemus’s death and married her; they have a son Tisamenus, who later falls in the return of the Heraclidae. Euripides’ *Orestes* ends with Apollo commanding that Orestes marry Hermione and Pylades marry Electra—divine settlement of the Atreid and Spartan houses. The marriage closes a double feud: Orestes’ blood-guilt cycle turns toward dynastic continuity, and Hermione passes from the doomed Aeacid line back to the Atreid–Tyndarid cousinhood. Helen and Menelaus’s daughter becomes queen beside the avenger of Agamemnon.