Clytaimnestra
Klytaimnestra or Klytaimestra ( ancient Greek Κλυταιμ (ν) ήστρα Klytaim (n) ēstra , German also Klytämnestra ) is a figure of Greek mythology . She was the daughter of the Spartan king Tyndareus and Leda , wife of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon and sister of the beautiful Helena . Their children were Iphigenia , Orestes , Elektra and Chrysothemis .
Clytaimnestra hated her husband because he was ready to sacrifice their daughter Iphigenia in order to get favorable wind for the war expedition to Troy . After Agamemnon returned from the Trojan War , Clytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthus murdered her husband and his Trojan hostage Kassandra , who accused them of having an affair with her husband.
Elektra asked Orestes to avenge her father's killing. So eight years after the bloody act he questioned the oracle of Delphi , which advised him to take revenge. He moved to Mycenae and pretended to be the herald of Strophios , who was to announce the death of Orestes and bring his ashes home. After laying a lock of hair on his father's grave, he revealed himself to his sister Elektra and killed Aigisthus and his mother Clytaimnestra. Since matricide was then considered the worst of all crimes, the Erinyen persecuted him .
In another version of the myth, Clytaimnestra was already married to a tantalus who is referred to as either the son of Thyestes or the tantalid Broteas . The two had a son when Agamemnon first met them. Agamemnon killed Tantalus and her child in front of her eyes and raped her before he married her.
literature
- Beatrice Baldarelli: Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra. In: Maria Moog-Grünewald (Ed.): Mythenrezeption. The ancient mythology in literature, music and art from the beginnings to the present (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 5). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02032-1 , pp. 27-32.
- Otto Höfer : Klytaimnestra . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, Col. 1230-1245 ( digitized version ).
- Verena Vogel-Ehrensperger: The worst of all women? Klytaimestra in texts from Homer to Aeschylus and Pindar (= Swiss contributions to classical studies. Volume 38). Schwabe, Basel 2012, ISBN 978-3-7965-2846-0 .
