found myself unexpectedly emotional at a moment in seneca's thyestes when the chorus (a group of argives) sing in horror,
Are we of all generations
in human history judged worthy
of being crushed by the world's collapse?
Is ours the final age of man?
and it made me realize that surely one of the oldest fears of humanity has to be the idea of the world ending within our lifetime; seeing the end coming and being alive to experience it. i worry about it, and here's an ancient roman expressing it, by making a people of an ancient-to-him mythological past worry about it. in every generation someone's been certain the world will collapse very very soon, and here we still are.
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I'm sorry I have to say this but I think this is what double standards looks like in Greek mythos talk;
Them: Clytemnestra did nothing wrong! Ever!
Me: You mean...apart from cheating, murder, coup and child abuse?
Them: Shut up misogynist! She was a grieving mother and any mother would do that for her child and men cheat too and Agamemnon is a piece of trash and had it coming!
Me: And Cassandra too, I presume...and her other children
Them: You do not understand! She was traumatized and she has been through a lot! She was forced to marry Agamemnon even if he killed her husband and child so of course she would turn like this! They made her do that!
Me: So...if trauma excuses any horrible behavior shouldn't that also apply for the Atreides too?
Them: Fuck no! They are men! They can never have it as hard as Clytemnestra!
Meanwhile the Atreides: Their mother was sold to a relative by her own father to drown because she was having a fling with a slave and then she was married to Atreus whom she proceeded on cheating on him with his brother Thyestes. Thyestes being a man wishing to do anything for power even to cheat on his own brother thus using his lover to collaborate with him. Atreus arguably being one of the scariest figures of myth takes revenge for adultery to the sickest level by killing his nephews and feeding them to their own father and taunting him for it. Thyestes raping his own daughter so he can have his revenge. Atreus raising Aegisthus under his own roof. They becoming exiles when their father got killed and Aegisthus did the full coup after arguably facing the most traumatic childhood a child of myth could go through and had to claw themselves back to their original place...
Me: ...
Me: Yeah they had "La Vie en Rose" playing at the background of their childhood alright. Trauma definitely doesn't apply to them...
Just to be clear I am NOT saying that Clytemnestra had it easy or that her emotions are not valid but if one always uses the trauma as an excuse rather than an explanation for someone's bad deeds in myth then I have to say that the Atreides had all the reasons to become villains and they chose not to and I believe we do not appreciate that enough
And no Agamemnon did NOT want to sacrifice Iphigenia. It was a dictation of the gods and he had no way of refusing that.
some early character design work for my sci-fi graphic novel, Malicious Compliance: The Feast of Thyestes! i fucked around for a long while trying to figure out exactly what story i wanted to tell re: the iliad and the house of atreus, so not all of these designs will appear in the book, but i wanted to show em anyway.
unfortunately you ARE all doomed to see more of this askeladd-looking, L. ron hubbard-sounding motherfucker. what a tool 🙄
Was thinking about how, in some sources, Clytemnestra had a husband named Tantalus and a son before Agamemnon killed them both:
"And Agamemnon reigned over the Mycenaeans and married Clytaemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus, after slaying her former husband Tantalus, son of Thyestes, with his child."
- Apollodorus Bibliotheca E.2.16
"Thyestes, son of Pelops, his children by Aerope — Tantalus and Plisthenes."
- Hyginus, Fabulae 246
What's interesting is that this previous husband not only shares the name of their great-grandfather Tantalus, the infamous ancestor whose crimes set the curse of the family in motion, but was the son of Thyestes by Aerope, the wife of Atreus, the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus.
In Agamemnon's perspective, this younger Tantalus embodies every humiliation suffered by the House of Atreus, from his name to being born from his uncle's adultery with his mother, the first domino that killed his father.
He could be thinking that he's correcting a mistake, ending the cycle, but by killing Tantalus, his son, and forcing Clytemnestra to marry him, he's simply giving her more of a blood debt to avenge, way before Iphigenia.
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Boxes generally show someone became king, apart from where space was an issue. Whilst colours usually denote families, red shows the Mycenaean succession. Although Thyestes and Aegisthus did rule Mycenae, they're in dark green so the mess of branches in the middle is a bit more distinguishable.
I couldn't include all of Niobe's kids since there's so many of them. Chloris is there because (at least in Apollodorus) she's the mother of Nestor. I think it's a different Chloris in the Odyssey, but decided it'd be interesting to connect another character related to the Trojan war. Palamedes, Odysseus, and Achilles are here for the same reason
I also didn't have space for every single one of Pelops' children. Chrysippus is there because his death at Atreus and Thyestes' hands leads to their exile. Pittheus shows their connection to Theseus, and Nicippe links to Eurystheus (the king of Mycenae before Atreus)
I added Gorgophone's children with Perieres because of how they connect to a myth with the Dioscuri. Essentially, the sons of Aphareus were betrothed to the daughters of Leucippus until Castor and Polydeuces abducted them
There's contradictory sources as to whether Tyndareus and Icarius were also sons of Perieres, or sons of Oebalus. I made them sons of Oebalus to simplify the Spartan succession.
Nicostratus is a bastard here, mainly for the sake of the Spartan succession. Pausanias records how the Spartans accepted Orestes as king over Menelaus' illegitimate sons, because of his marriage to Helen's child Hermione
His mother is not explicitly named, but since his brother Megapenthes was also born of a slave (Pieris/Tereis), I gave them the same parentage. Side note, but Pausanias describes a statue of the two on one horse, so I like to think they were close
The line of Dardanus started out just linking Cassandra and Paris through Priam. I decided to extend their line all the way to Zeus, because a) I love the Trojans, and b) I wanted something to fill that massive gap at the top
Pleisthenes is the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus in a surprising number of accounts. I was thinking of including this on the chart, but decided that section between Thyestes and Atreus was convoluted enough.... Still, he's such an interesting character from what little there is of him – Hesiod records him as being disabled and gender non-conforming – so I think more people should talk about him
Hippodamia really was a grooming and CSA victim who kills another grooming and CSA victim in order to preserve her sons status only for one of her sons to assault his own child.
