So-called death mask of Agamemnon, found at Grave Circle A, Mycenae, 16th c. BCE.

---

We now backtrack to the Greek side of the war's aftermath. Only a few of the major Greek heroes make it home safely, among them, Nestor and the two leaders of the expedition, Agamemnon and Menelaus. Ten years before, at the outset of the war, Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to gain favorable winds for the Greek armada. Enraged at this, his wife Clytemnestra takes up with Aegisthus (Agamemnon's cousin) and the two of them plot to assassinate the king on his return from Troy and to assume rule over Agamemnon’s kingdom. Wholly unsuspecting, Agamemnon is axed to death in his bathtub by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The story of his murder is told over and over again in Homer's Odyssey, perhaps out of the secret fear that Odysseus could face the same fate on his return.

(The photograph above shows a death mask discovered at Mycenae by Schliemann and said to be Agamemnon's death mask, although it is dated 300 years earlier than the conjectured date of the Trojan War. There is also strong suspicion that it is a forgery.)

Some time later, Agamemnon's son Orestes returns and avenges his father by killing his own mother and Aegisthus. Hounded by the Furies (Greek Erinyes), he is finally absolved on the Areopagus at Athens by Athena and a jury established by her. The whole story of Agamemnon’s return, his murder, the vengeance and acquittal of Orestes is told in Aeschylus' great tragic trilogy, the Oresteia.

As for Odysseus, it will take another ten years of wandering to reach his wife and son in Ithaca.

BACK CONTENTS & INDICES NEXT