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ATREUS

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Originally appearing in Volume V02, Page 877 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ATREUS , in See also:

Greek See also:legend, son of See also:Pelops and Hippodameia, and See also:elder See also:brother of Thyestes. Having murdered his step-brother See also:Chrysippus, Atreus fled with Thyestes to See also:Mycenae, where he succeeded Eurystheus in the See also:sovereignty. His wife Aerope was seduced by Thyestes, who was driven from Mycenae. To avenge himself, Thyestes sent Pleisthenes (Atreus' son whom Thyestes had brought up as his own) to kill Atreus, but Pleisthenes was himself slain by his own See also:father. After this Atreus, apparently reconciled to his brother, recalled him to Mycenae and invited him to a banquet to eat of his son, whom Atreus had slain. Thyestes fled in horror. Subsequently Atreus married the daughter of Thyestes, Pelopia, who had by her own father a son, See also:Aegisthus, who was adopted by Atreus. Thyestes was found by See also:Agamemnon and See also:Menelaus, the sons of Atreus, and imprisoned at Mycenae. Aegisthus being sent to See also:murder Thyestes, mutual recognition took See also:place, and Atreus was slain by the father and son, who seized the See also:throne, and drove Agamemnon and Menelaus out of the See also:country (See also:Thucydides 9; See also:Hyginus, Fabulae; See also:Apollodorus). See also:Homer does not speak of the horrors of the See also:story, which are first found in the tragedians; he merely states (Iliad, ii. 105) that Atreus at his See also:death See also:left the See also:kingdom to Thyestes. See T.

Voigt in Dissert, philol. Halenses. vi. (1886).

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