The Murder of Agamemnon
Electra was absent from Mycenae when her father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War to be murdered, either by Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus, by Clytemnestra herself, or by both. Clytemnestra had held a grudge against her husband Agamemnon for murdering their eldest daughter, Iphigenia, as sacrifice to Artemis, so he could send his ships to fight Troy for the Trojan war(disputed). When he came back he brought with him his war prize, who had already bore his twin sons. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra, Agamemnon's war prize, a prophet-priestess of Troy, the girl cursed by Apollo never to have her prophesies believed. Eight years later, Electra was brought from Athens with her brother, Orestes. (Odyssey, iii. 306; X. 542).
According to Pindar (Pythia, xi. 25), Orestes was saved by his old nurse or by Electra, and was taken to Phanote on Mount Parnassus, where King Strophius took charge of him. When Orestes was 20, the Oracle of Delphi ordered him to return home and avenge his father's death.
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Famous quotes containing the words murder and/or agamemnon:
“We don’t murder, we kill.... You don’t murder animals, you kill them.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter. Sergeant (Lee Marvin)
“The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)