CLYTEMNESTRA

Below: Dating from around 500 BCE, this vase painting depicts Clytemnestra being restrained by one of Agamemnon’s aides, Thaltybios.

Clytemnestra is one of the most vilified characters in Greek mythology because of her adultery and murderous deeds. She took a lover while her husband, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, was away fighting at the Trojan War, and then she killed him on his return.

The story of Clytemnestra (or Klytaimestra) and the murders she committed was presented in several different versions. The earliest depiction of her, by the Greek poet Homer (c. ninth-eighth century BCE), presents her as a malleable character who was led astray by her lover, Aegisthus. However, later depictions of Clytemnestra by dramatists including Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles generally show her as a heartless character who either led or orchestrated the killings.

Clytemnestra was the daughter of Tyndareos, king of Sparta, and Leda. Her sister was Helen (and sometimes Timandra), and her brothers were Castor and Pollux. According to some sources Helen and Pollux were the immortal children of Zeus, while Clytemnestra and the others were the mortal offspring ofTyndareos. Both Zeus and Tyndareos had slept with Leda on the same night, each making her pregnant with a boy and a girl.

According to one version of the Clytemnestra story, Agamemnon was not her first husband. She was originally married to Tantalus, the son of the Greek prince Thyestes, and they had a son. Agamemnon, who was Thyestes’ nephew and ruler of Mycenae, killed both Tantalus and the boy, then married Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra and Agamemnon had three daughters and a son who each featured in dramatic stories of their own, all of which involved their mother. The daughters were Iphigeneia, Chrysothemis, and Electra; the son was Orestes. (In the Iliad the daughters were named Chrysothemis, Laodike, and Iphianassa.)