Atrid curse
The legendary family of the Atrids - whose members are also called Tantalids - includes Tantalus and his descendants, namely King Atreus of Mycenae and the heroes Agamemnon and Menelaus known from Homer's Iliad .
The curse of the Atrids describes the prophecy of the gods that in every generation a murderer will turn against the clan and that by the fifth generation all descendants of the Tantalos will plunge into an ominous series of violence and crime.
background
The demigod Tantalus was once popular with the gods for his cleverness and was invited to them. He celebrated with them, but quickly became cocky, boasted and stole nectar and ambrosia from the gods , which gave them immortality. With a return invitation, Tantalus set his own son Pelops before the gods as a meal to test their omniscience. However, the gods noticed the deception, so they expelled Tantalos from their community in the Tartaros and cursed him and his family . This gave rise to the Tantalid Curse or Atrid Curse. In every generation that followed Tantalos, there were people who murdered their own family members and / or were killed by family members out of revenge and hatred.
Poetic adaptations
Already in antiquity the tantalid legends were the subject of dramas - for example in Aeschylus 'tragedy Orestie or in Euripides ' Iphigenia among the Taurians. Goethe transformed Euripides' drama in his work Iphigenie auf Tauris according to the ideals of the Weimar Classic .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Atriden in the Greek Myth Index ( Memento from May 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Thomas Maria Blisniewski : Reflections on the myth of the Atrids , In: ARTig. The magazine for those interested in art , 2.2000, pp. 3–7