| The key players in Iphigenia, and other
important Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, Places and Events of Antiquity.
Achilles
Aegisthus
Agamemnon
Artemis
Atreus
Aulis
Calchas
Cassandra
Clytemnestra
Helen
Ida
Iphigenia
Menelaus
Odysseus
Paris
Sirius
Thetis
Zeus
All information taken from The Chiron Dictionary of Greek &
Roman Mythology, translated by Elizabeth Burr - Chiron publications.
http://www.chironpublications.com/reference.html
Achilles - costume drawing by Hayden Griffin
Achilles
A hero of Greek legend and the foremost figure in the Iliad, he
was the greatest of the Hellenes who fought at Troy. His parents
were Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis. In order to endow her son
with immortality, his mother sought to destroy his mortal part by
anointing him with ambrosia and holding him over the fire at night.
According to another version, she immersed the boy in the river
Styx to make him invulnerable; only heel by which she held him remained
vulnerable. When her husband surprised her in this endeavour, he
snatched Achilles away from her and brought the child to the renowned
Centaur Chiron, who raised him. Knowing to her grief that her son
would die at Troy, Thetis tried to remove him from the war. Dressing
him as a girl, she took him to the Court of Lycomedes of Scyros,
where he won the love of the king’s daughter, Deidameia, who
bore him a son, Neoptolemus. Meanwhile, the Greeks searched for
Achilles, because an oracle had said that without him Troy could
not be conquered. Odysseus and his companions found him out at Scyros
and exposed his true identity by showing the disguised girl both
jewellry and weapons. Responding with a burning interest only in
the weapons, Achilles was revealed. He then accompanied his friend
Patroclus, his teacher Phoenix, and the Myrmidones with 50 ships
to Troy. On the way, and before the siege of the city began, he
had already performed many heroic deeds, including conquering a
string of cities. The Iliad portrays the quarrel between Achilles
and Agamemnon in the last year of the war. This quarrel was triggered
by Agamemnon claiming for himself the concubine of Achilles, Briseis.
The wrath of Achilles was so great that he refused to take any further
part in the fighting, even though the position of the Greeks was
increasingly threatened. Finally he let himself be persuaded to
lend his friend Patroclus his own armour and to send him into battle.
But Patroclus fell at the hands of Hector after he had repelled
the enemy. Only then was Achilles prepared to intervene again in
the war himself. His mother provided him with armour forged by Hephaestus
and with weapons. He drove the enemy back into the city except for
Hector, whom he killed in a duel and then dragged into the Greek
camp, tied to his chariot. When the aging Priam appeared at the
camp to ransom his son for burial with the proper rites, Achilles
himself met death from an arrow shot by Paris, which Apollo directed
into his vulnerable heel; according to another version, Apollo killed
him unaided, and a later tradition tells of his assassination in
the temple of Odysseus and Aias the Great achieved prominence contending
for the armour of the fallen hero, which was finally awarded to
Odysseus. After the events described in the Iliad, the shade of
Achilles lived on in Hades; in another version, his mother brought
him to the island of Leuce or to Elysium, where he enjoyed a happy
existence. As a hero, Achilles had a number of cult places in Greece.
He became a subject for literary treatment from an early date; Aeschylus
portrayed him in his Psychostaisa, Euripides in his Scyrians, and
the Roman poet Statius in his epic Achilleis. Episodes from his
adventurous life were also given expression in art.
Aegisthus
King of Mycenae and the son of Thyestes and Pelopia. Brought up
by his uncle Atreus, he was incited by the latter to kill his father,
who however recognized his son. Aegisthus thereupon killed Atreus.
During the Trojan War, Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra, the wife
of Agamemnon, who was away at Troy. When Agamemnon returned home,
Aegisthus and his lover drowned him in his bath; according to another
version, Agamemnon was struck down. Aegisthus then ruled at Mycenae
until the returning Orestes avenged his father by killing the murderer
as well as his own mother.
Agamemnon
A legendary king of Mycenae, he was the son of Atreus and Aerope
and the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Helen (Helen is usually
regarded as the daughter of Zeus by Leda). He married Clytemnestra
after eliminating her first husband and a child from that marriage.
Clytemnestra bore him Chrysothemis, Electra, Iphigenia and Orestes.
In the Trojan War Agamemnon, who had a certain preeminence among
the Greeks, assumed the supreme command over them. Before the fleet
could set sail, however, he was obliged to sacrifice his daughter
Iphigenia, in order to appease Artemis, whom he had offended and
to secure a favourable wind from her (or the stilling of a severe
storm, according to another version). The Iliad (Homer) narrates
the harsh arguments at Troy between Agamemnon and Achilles, whose
concubine Briseis Agamemnon claimed for himself. When the war was
over, the king returned to his homeland with the prophetic Cassandra
among his spoils. Meanwhile Clytemnestra, who never forgave her
husband for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, had entered into an adulterous
relationship with Aegisthus. She and her lover murdered Agamemnon
treacherously and also killed Cassandra. Aegisthus ascended the
throne, but once Electra succeeded in bringing Orestes safely to
Phocis, the murderers met a similar fate: Orestes with his friend
and kinsman Pylades killed Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon’s
homecoming and death received their most meaningful treatment in
Aeschylus’s Agamemnon.
Artemis
The most popular of all the goddesses in Greek mythology, she was
the daughter of Zeus and Leto and the sister of Apollo. As a virgin
goddess of the hunt, she gradually assimilated various features
that were transferred to her from other, local goddesses. Accompanied
by nymphs, she wandered through woods and meadows with her bow and
arrow in her capacity as patroness of hunters and mistress of animals.
Whoever offended her she severely punished. Thus she killed the
daughters of Niobe, the Aloades (who intended to storm Mount Olympus),
Actaeon because he had seen her naked in her bath, and Orion because
he challenged her to a discus-throwing contest or pursued one of
her huntresses - perhaps herself as well. Among many other examples,
that of Agamemnon is especially noteworthy: because he had offended
her, she demanded the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. On the
one hand she brought ruin, while on the other she protected life.
In her role as Eileithyia, she helped women in labour to have a
painless delivery. If a woman died in childbirth, it was believed
that she had been struck by an arrow of Artemis; nevertheless, the
dead woman’s clothes would be sacrificed to the goddess. Brides
and bridegrooms, particularly young maidens, entreated her protection
by making sacrifices to her before their weddings. Artemis also
appears in mythology as a vegetation and fertility goddess. In connection
with the tree cult, her image was hung up in trees and bushes. The
masked dances performed in her honour by youths and maidens (often
with bear masks), which had a somewhat phallic character, point
to Artemis in her capacity as a vegetation goddess as does the cult
image of her adorned with may breast-like formations. In Asia Minor
cultic veneration of Artemis was essentially the same as that of
the Great Mother. At a relatively late stage, Artemis was identified
with the moon goddess Selene, in whose person she visited the beloved
Endymion night after night. Her role in theTrojan War, following
the Iliad, was not very glorious, and she finally took refuge with
her father, Zeus. Artemis was frequently represented in art in various
guises but especially with her quiver of arrows.
Atreus
Member of the accursed line of the Tantalids (Tantalus); son of
Pelops and of Hippodameia; and the brother of Thyestes, with whom
he murdered their step-brother Chrysippus. Cursed by their father,
the two murderers were forced to go into exile. After the death
of Pelops, Atreus became king of Mycenae. Thyestes tried to usurp
the throne by seducing Aerope, his brother’s wife, in order
to acquire through her the golden lamb that was in her possession
and was regarded as the symbol of dominion over Mycenae. Atreus
thereupon banished his brother and drowned his wife in the sea.
Thyestes succeeded in taking Pleisthenes, Atreus’s small son,
with him and raised him as if he were his own child. When Pleisthenes
had grown up, his foster father sent him out to kill Atreus. But
Atreus anticipated his destroyer and had him killed, without realizing
that this was his own child. When Atreus grasped what he had done,
he plotted a terrible revenge. Ostensibly intending a reconciliation,
he invited his brother to his palace, where he served him Thyestes’
own children (whom he had killed) at a banquet. The legend reports
that on his day Helios reversed his course in horror, following
a path from west to east. Thyestes cursed the entire line of Tantalids
and obeyed an oracle which said that the son he would engender with
his daughter Pelopia would exact revenge for the outrage he had
suffered. Atreus married Pelopia and assumed that Aegisthus, the
son his wife bore, was his own. When Aegisthus reached manhood,
Atreus sent him out to murder Thyestes. At the last moment, however,
father and son identified each other; Aegisthus then slew Atreus.
The enmity between the fathers continued into the next generation.
The legendary material with its themes of murder and revenge found
a place in literature: Sophocles wrote plays entitled Thyestes and
Atreus, and Euripides wrote a tragedy called Thyestes. but these
works have not survived except in fragmentary from. Only the Thyestes
of Seneca is fully extant. - The ''Treasury of Atreus'', a beehive
tomb found a Mycenae, was named arbitrarily after the legendary
figure of Atreus.
Aulis
Boeotian harbor where the Greek fleet assembled before sailing against
Troy, and where Iphigenia was supposed to have been sacrificed.
At Aulis there was an important sanctuary to Artemis.
Calchas - costume drawing by Hayden Griffin
Calchas
Son of Thestor, he was a famous Greek seer who knew how to divine
the will of the gods especially from the observation of birds. In
the Trojan war, the duration of which he prophesied, Calchas played
an important role for the Greeks. Thus he explained the basis on
which Achilles would have to take part in the conflict and why Iphigenia
would be sacrificed at Aulis. According to a later version, the
stratagem of the wooden horse was his inspiration. When Calchas
lost a contest with the seer Mopsus, he died of chagrin, as had
been prophesied.
Cassandra
In Hellenistic poetry also called Alexandra. The legendary daughter
of Priam and Hecuba, she was endowed with prophetic powers. Apollo
fell in love with her, but because she did not return his affection
the god brought it about that her prophecies were never believed.
Thus in vain she foretold the fall of Troy and warned her compatriots
against the wooden horse. When Troy was captured by the Greeks,
she sought refuge with the image of Athena but was taken prisoner
by Aias the Locrian and according, to part of the tradition, raped.
In the distribution of booty among the Greeks, she fell to Agamemnon,
who took her home with him as his concubine. There she was murdered
together with her master by Clytemnestra. The expression ‘cry
of Cassandra’ derives from the thoroughly dark and foreboding
nature of Cassandra’s prophecies.
Clytemnestra - costume drawing by Hayden Griffin
Clytemnestra
Daughter of Tyndareos and Leda, she was the wife of Agamemnon, who
she killed in collusion with Aegisthus. Her children were Electra,
Iphigenia, Chrysothemis, and Orestes, who avenged the death of his
father. The role of Clytemnestra in the murder of her husband is
variously evaluated in the tradition. Sometimes her involvement
is viewed as slight, and sometimes the bloody deed is portrayed
as her own act.
Helen
Originally, in Greek mythology, she was probably a vegetation goddess
venerated in the tree cult practiced in several places in Greece.
Later she achieved prominence as a heroine considered to be the
most beautiful woman of her time; it is in this guise that she appears
in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The daughter of Zeus and Leda, she
was the sister or half sister of the Dioscuri and Clytemnestra.
Attic legend reports that at quite a young age she was abducted
by Theseus and Pirithous but released from her captivity in the
underworld by her brothers and brought back to Sparta. Her second
abduction was more significant, providing the legendary occasion
for the Trojan War: because of her extraordinary beauty, many suitors
sought her hand. Helen chose Menelaus and married him after her
stepfather Tyndareos (on the advice of Odysseus) made all the other
suitors swear to accept his stepdaughter’s choice and to come
to the aid of her husband should Helen be overtaken by any misfortune.
The suitors had to honour this oath when Helen was abducted by Paris
(Judgment of Paris) to Troy. With the fall of Troy, she was taken
captive; despite the fact that she had given herself to Deiphobos
after the death of Paris, Menelaus brought her back home to Sparta
with him. The traditional evaluation of Helen varies. On the one
hand, she was charged with complicity in the genesis of the Trojan
War, during which her attitude toward the two parties was depicted
as inconstant, for example, by Homer. On the other hand, an attempt
was made to demonstrate her fidelity and innocence with respect
to her husband, Menelaus, and his people. The second tendency is
most obvious in a story in which it was a second Helen, created
by Zeus, a nebulous phantom, who was abducted to Troy by Paris while
the real Helen as a virtuous wife in Egypt awaited the end of the
war and the return of her husband. Among the versions of this story
that have been handed down is Euripides’ dramatization in
Helen.
Ida
1. The karstic mountain range in the interior of Crete, which today
is called Psiloritis. According to Greek legend, it was the birth
place of Zeus.
2. A mountain range in the southern Troad (Asia Minor) and the locale
of numerous Greek legends. Here Paris is reputed to have delivered
his judgement in the beauty contest between Aphrodite, Athena, and
Hera. This range gives rise to many rivers, which also play a role
in mythology.
Iphigenia - costume drawing by Hayden Griffin
Iphigenia
Legendary daughter of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon and Clytemnestra,
she was the sister of Orestes, Electra, and Chrysothemis. When the
Greek fleet bound for Troy was becalmed at Aulis, the offended goddess
Artemis required of Agamemnon that he sacrifice Iphigenia to atone
either for having slaughtered an animal sacred to her or for having
claimed to be as excellent a hunter as she; without this sacrifice
the fleet would be unable to sail. However, at the last moment (according
to one version) Artemis carried Iphigenia off to Taurus, where she
had to officiate at the human sacrifices that were customary there.
Orestes arrived at Taurus and was supposed to be sacrificed but
the siblings recognised each other and fled to Attica, taking with
them the cult image of Artemis that had once been removed form Attica.
The story of Iphigenia has often been treated in world literature.
Menelaus - costume drawing by Hayden Griffin
Menelaus
King of Sparta, in Greek mythology, he was the son of Atreus and
Aerope and the brother of Agamemnon; a later version names Pleisthenes
and Kleolla as his parents. Menelaus married Helen, a daughter of
Zeus, who bore Menelaus Hermione and probably also Nikostratos.
When Helen was abducted by the Trojan Paris, her husband turned
to his brother for help. Agamemnon convened Helen’s erstwhile
suitors as an expeditionary force to make war against Troy. Once
Troy had fallen Menelaus killed Deiphobos, son of Priam, whom Helen
had married after the death of Paris. Then he and his wife travelled
eventfully back to Greece. According to another tradition, Menelaus
did not find his true wife (Helen) until he reached Egypt on his
return voyage from Troy. It turned out that she had remained faithful
to him all along. After his death, Menelaus was transposed to Elysium
together with Helen.
Odysseus
King of Ithaca, son of Laertes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope,
and one of the heroes of the Trojan War. He contributed a contingent
of twelve ships after he had first tried to avoid joining the expedition
(in which he was morally bound to participate as a former suitor
of Helen) by feigning madness. To this end, he hitched an ox and
a horse to a plow and proceeded to sow salt in the earth. But when
someone laid his tiny son Telemachus in one of the furrows, he immediately
desisted from his strange behaviour and so was unmasked. Odysseus
belonged to the Greek legation that sought in vain to regain Helen
peaceably from the Trojans. Similarly, he tended to come to the
forefront where diplomatic skills were called for in addition to
military ones. Thus he succeeded in extracting the Palladium from
Troy and was said to have been decisively involved in the proposal
to capture the city by means of the wooden horse. Odysseus’s
extraordinarily long and adventurous return voyage after the Trojan
War is the subject of the Odyssey. When he finally arrived in Ithaca,
his wife, Penelope, could hardly fend off the brazen suitors any
longer. She had pledged herself to whichever of them showed himself
capable of stringing Odysseus’s bow. At the last moment Odysseus
proved himself the only competitor able to do so. He was then recognized
by his wife and killed all those who had afflicted her. On the further
fate of the hero, the tradition diverges. The best known story is
of his being slain by Telegonus, the son Circe had born him: having
attained manhood, Telegonus set out in search of his father and,
failing to recognize him, killed him with the spine of a sting ray.
Odysseus’s many adventures on his homeward journey combine
fairy-tale features with heroic elements and motifs characteristic
of stories of homecoming. the narrative about Odysseus (or single
episodes from it) has provided writers and artists with favourite
models since antiquity.
Paris
(Alexander) In Greek mythology, a son of Priam and Hecuba, and brother
of Hector. When Hecuba was pregnant with Paris, she dreamed that
she would give birth to a burning torch which would set the whole
city of Troy on fire. To avert this catastrophe, the newborn infant
was abandoned on Mount Ida; shepherds raised him there, and he later
lived there as a shepherd himself. There he was also asked to decide
whether Aphrodite, Hera, or Athena was the most beautiful of goddesses
(the Judgment of Paris); the three could not agree because of the
golden apple of Eris. Paris chose Aphrodite, who had promised him
Helen in return. By abducting Helen (the wife of Menelaus) to Troy,
Paris kindled the flames of the Trojan War. In the course of it,
he killed Achilles and died himself when his wife Oenone refused
to save him, with a remedy that she possessed, in revenge for his
infidelity. For the most part, the character of Paris lacks sharply
defined features, since the Iliad dispenses with details. Nevertheless,
in antiquity the judgement of Paris was already a favourite theme
of writers and artists. Euripides treated the youth of the hero
in his Alexander, and Sophocles portrayed the judgement of Paris
in his Crisis; the two works have survived only in fragments.
Sirius
The Dog Star: the brightest star in the heavens, it represented
the faithful hound of Orion.
Pleiades
In Greek mythology, this refers to the seven daughters of Atlas
and the Oceanid Pleione: Alcyone, Asterope, Electra, Celaeno, Maia,
Merope, Taygete.. The following star legend is connected with them:
the famous hunter Orion fell in love with the mother of the Pleiades,
Pleione, and pursued her and her daughters for a long time. Finally
Zeus put an end to the pursuit by translating Orion and the fugitives
to heaven as constellations.
Thetis
Daughter of Nereus and Doris, she was the sister of the Nereids.
Both Zeus and Poseidon pursued her, but withdrew when they learned
of a prophecy to the effect that Thetis would bear a son whose strength
would exceed his father’s. After this only a mortal could
be considered as a possible husband for the sea goddess. The best
candidate proved to be Peleus, who won Thetis after a wrestling
match during which she turned herself into the most varied animals.
All of the Olympian gods were invited to the couple’s wedding
except for Eris, who avenged this insult by indirectly causing the
Trojan War. Thetis bore her husband seven children. In another version
she bore only one son, Achilles, whom she sought to immortalize
by holding him in the fire or in a pot of boiling water. When Peleus
discovered her doing this, she vanished into the underground palace
of her father, Nereus. But she continued to extend a protecting
hand to her son by trying to warn him of various dangers. Another
equally old version of the Thetis legend relates that Nereid refused
Zeus’s advances out of gratitude to his wife, Hera, who had
raised her. An intimacy with Hephaestus is also mentioned; Thetis
concealed him in the sea for years, and in return Hephaestus helped
her on many occasions, e.g. by forging armour for Achilles.
Zeus
The highest god of the Greeks, and the only one whose Indo-European
origin can be conclusively demonstrated. According to the myth,
Zeus was a son of Kronos and Rhea; he had numerous siblings, among
them Poseidon, Hades, Hera and Demeter. Kronos, who had once dethroned
his father Uranus, with a view to seizing power for himself, was
anxious lest the same fate befall him. For this reason, he swallowed
all of his children except Zeus, whom Rhea hid in a cave. Instead
of Zeus, she handed Kronos a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes,
which he took to be his son. Later Zeus forced his father to spit
out his siblings. After he had defeated the Titans with his brothers’
help, he divided the government of the world with Posedion and Hades:
Posedion was allotted the sea and Hades the underworld, while Zeus
reserved the heavens and the earth for himself. Once the Giants
and Typhon had been eliminated, Zeus’s ascendancy was uncontested.
From that point on, he acted as Nikephoros, or bringer of victory,
and his only possible rivals were the Moirai. At first the Greeks
saw Zeus as a weather god, whom they imagined on a mountain (Olympus
especially), or enthroned in the sky, hurling lightening and thunderbolts
down onto the earth. Yet his functions gradually extended far beyond
weather. He was the father of the family of gods but seen by humans
as the pater familias protecting their possessions. He was concerned
about custom and the political order, he guarded freedom and justice,
as Zeus Xenios he patronized strangers and hospitality, as Zeus
Meilichius he granted petitionary prayers, he received propitiatory
sacrifices, and he figured as the great Soter. There was hardly
any area of live in which he played no role. He was often called
'Father Zeus', but in the framework of a kind of Zeus monotheism,
his name was sometimes used simply to mean ‘God’. Although
he was recognized on all sides as the supreme deity, in the historical
period his cult had a relatively modest appearance. His most important
cult places were Dodona, the oracular seat with the famous oak tree
of Zeus, and Olympia, where originally an oracle of Zeus had likewise
operated and where the Olympian games honoured him. There, too,
the most splendid temple of Zeus in all Greece stood, housing the
cult stature of gold and ivory created by Pheidias, which was counted
among the Seven Wonders of the World. At Athens the festival of
the Diasia was celebrated in honour of the god. -On the one hand
a god of the highest dignity who guaranteed the world order, on
the other hand Zeus exhibited qualities verging on the burlesque
in his relationships with women. He had several goddesses in succession
as wives, although part of the tradition mentions the ever jealous
Hera as his only wife. In addition, he engaged in liaisons with
mortal women that produced a proportionally vast progeny. Almost
every aristocratic family in Greece could trace itself back to a
descendant of Zeus and thereby enhance its reputation.
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