Agamemnon (in ancient Greek Agamemnôn, “immutable, stubborn”), one of the heroes of the Trojan War, son of King Atreus of Mycenae (or Argos) and Queen Erope, and brother of Menelaus. Other sources make him the son of Pleisthenes (the son or father of Atreus), who is said to have been the first husband of Erope.
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Atreus having been assassinated by Aegisthus and Thyestes, who take possession of the throne of Argos, Agamemnon and Menelaus are forced into exile. They find refuge with Tyndareus, King of Sparta, whose daughters they marry:respectively Clytemnestra and Helena. By Clytemnestra, Agamemnon would have three daughters - Iphigenia, Chrysothemis and Laodice (Electra is a late addition to the legend) - and a son, Orestes.
Menelaus having succeeded Tyndareus, he helps Agamemnon to recover his father's kingdom, thus making him the most powerful prince in Greece.
Following the kidnapping of Helen by Paris, and after long negotiations, Agamemnon was appointed to lead the expedition against Troy. However, before Agamemnon's fleet left, the winds suddenly stopped, bringing the ships to a standstill. Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis by claiming to have killed a deer with a skill that even the goddess could not match. The diviner Calchas announced that the anger of the goddess could only be appeased by the sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon himself. Agamemnon consented. Fortunately, shortly before the sacrifice, Artemis' anger subsided and she replaced Iphigenia with a doe. The fleet was then able to leave.
Little is known of Agamemnon's story until his quarrel with Achilles. Agamemnon received as an honorary share of the booty the captive Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, Trojan priest of Apollo. He refused to return it against ransom to his father, and Apollo, to avenge the honor of his priest, struck the Greeks with a devastating plague. Calchas having explained the anger of the god, he had to return Chryseis, but as compensation, attributed Briseis to himself, the share of honor of Achilles. The wrath of Achilles shutting himself in his tent forms the main story of the Iliad. After the capture of Troy, Agamemnon obtained Cassander, Priam's daughter, during the distribution of the spoils of war.
On his return, he was greeted by Aegisthus. The latter, who in the meantime had seduced Clytemnestra, invited him to a banquet at which he killed him unfairly. Cassandra is put to death by Clytemnestra. According to Pindar and the Tragedians, Agamemnon was killed in his bath by his wife alone, after having been immobilized with a cloth or a net. She would thus have taken revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigenia and gave free rein to her jealousy vis-à-vis Cassandra. The murder of Agamemnon was avenged by his son Orestes.
In the story, Agamemnon represents royal authority. As commander-in-chief (anax), he calls the princes to council and leads the army into battle. His scepter, forged by Hephaestus, passed through Zeus, Hermes, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes. He took part in the fighting himself, killing eleven Trojans in all, and performed many acts of heroism before being wounded and forced to retreat to his tent. Twice, however, he is blinded by the ate (the error sent by the gods), which leads him to insult Chryses and Achilles, thus bringing disaster upon the Greeks.
The fate of his family, the Atreides, had been marked by misfortune from the start. His kingship came to him from Pelops through the bloodstained hands of Atreus and Thyestes.
Agamemnon's fortunes have formed the subject of many tragedies, ancient and modern, the most famous being Aeschylus' Oresteia. In the legends of the Peloponnese, Agamemnon was considered the archetype of the powerful monarch and in Sparta he was worshiped under the title of Zeus Agamemnon. His tomb is located in Mycenae and Amycleia.