Pleisthenes (Pelopid)

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Pleisthenes ( Greek  Πλεισθένης ) is a scion of the curse-laden tantalid family in Greek mythology . The information about his ancestry vary in the different traditions.

On the one hand, Tantalus ' son Pelops and his wife Hippodameia are named as his parents - after that he would be a brother of Atreus and Thyestes ; In other sources, Atreus is considered his father. His wife Kleola died giving birth to the feeble Pleisthenes, who was later mistakenly murdered: Atreus had sent murderers to kill his namesake, the son of his brother Thyestes and Aërope . Thyestes made sure that Atreus' own son Pleisthenes fell victim to this attack. As is customary with the Tantalids, the counter-attack took place: Atreus made an appearance of reconciliation with Thyestes in order to then kill all of Thyestes' sons. He was particularly perfidious with Thyestes' twins. He killed the two babies, Pleisthenes the Second and Tantalus the Third, chopped off their limbs, boiled them in a cauldron and served selected pieces as a welcome meal for Thyestes. After he had eaten, he received the bloody heads, hands and feet of his children on another plate. Thyestes vomited and cursed the descendants of Atreus.

In another version, Pleisthenes, the son of Atreus, is the husband of Aërope, daughter of the Cretan king Katreus , and of this father of Agamemnon and Menelaus .

literature

  • Robert von Ranke-Graves: Greek Mythology. Sources and interpretation (rde 115/116) Reinbek near Hamburg 1961.
  • Albin Lesky: Pleisthenes . In: Der Kleine Pauly , Vol. 4 (1972), Col. 924-925.
  • Richard Carstensen : Greek legends . (dtv junior 70314) Munich 1998.
  • Lutz Käppel : Pleisthenes. In: The New Pauly . Vol. 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2003/2012, ISBN 978-3-534-26764-4 , Sp. 1130
  • Herder Lexicon Greek and Roman Mythology . (Herder spectrum 5218) Freiburg i. Br. 2004.