The Homecoming

The Return

After ten years at Troy and a harrowing journey home, Agamemnon finally returned to Mycenae. He brought with him the spoils of war and Cassandra, the Trojan princess cursed by Apollo to speak true prophecies that no one would believe.

Cassandra saw what awaited them inside the palace. She screamed warnings of blood and death. No one listened. They never did.

Clytemnestra's Revenge

For ten years, Clytemnestra had nursed her rage. Her daughter Iphigenia, lured to Aulis with the promise of a wedding, slaughtered on an altar so her husband could have his war. She had taken a lover — Aegisthus, son of Thyestes, Agamemnon's cousin and enemy by blood.

When Agamemnon arrived, Clytemnestra greeted him with all the ceremony of a loyal wife. She laid out purple tapestries — the color of royalty and sacrifice — from his chariot to the palace door. Agamemnon hesitated, knowing that to walk on such finery was an act of hubris reserved for gods. She persuaded him.

He stepped on the purple cloth. He entered his palace. She drew him a bath.

“She cast a net over him — a robe with no openings for his arms or head — and struck three times. He fell in the bath, and the water turned red.”

The Death of a King

Trapped in the net-like robe, unable to defend himself, Agamemnon — the man who had commanded the greatest army the world had ever seen — died helpless. Clytemnestra killed Cassandra as well. When the deed was done, she stood over the bodies and declared her justice to the people of Mycenae.

In Aeschylus' telling, she showed no remorse:

“He fell, and as he gasped, his blood sprayed me with dark drops of crimson rain — and I rejoiced, as the sown earth rejoices in the glad rain of heaven.”

The Cycle Continues

But the curse of the House of Atreus did not end with Agamemnon. His son Orestes, raised in exile, returned years later to avenge his father. He killed Clytemnestra and Aegisthus — matricide to avenge patricide.

Pursued by the Furies for the crime of killing his mother, Orestes was eventually tried before Athena's court in Athens. He was acquitted, and with that verdict, the cycle of blood vengeance that had consumed the House of Atreus for generations was finally broken.

But Agamemnon was long dead by then — a king who conquered Troy and lost everything at home.