Atreus

Atreus and his twin brother Thyestes were exiled by their father for murdering their half-brother Chrysippus in their desire for the throne of Olympia.

Eurystheus had meant for their stewardship to be temporary, but it became permanent after his death in battle, which ended the rule of the Perseid dynasty in Mycenae.

[2] The plural forms, deriving from the Latin Atreidae, itself from Ancient Greek 'Atreidai' (Ἀτρεῖδαι), refer to both sons collectively.

Most of the gods, as they sat down to dinner with Tantalus, immediately understood what had happened, and, because they knew the nature of the meat they were served, were appalled and did not partake.

But Demeter, who was distracted due to the abduction by Hades of her daughter Persephone, obliviously ate Pelops's shoulder.

The gods threw Tantalus into the underworld to spend eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches.

The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory with the help of Hephaestus, thus marking the family forever afterwards.

Upon searching his flock, however, Atreus discovered a golden lamb which he gave to his wife, Aerope, to hide from the goddess.

Helen later left Sparta with Paris of Troy, and Menelaus called on all of his wife's former suitors to help him take her back.

A prophet named Calchas told him that in order to appease Artemis, Agamemnon would have to sacrifice the most precious thing that had come to his possession in the year he killed the sacred deer.

While he was fighting the Trojans, his wife Clytemnestra, enraged by the murder of her daughter, began an affair with Aegisthus.

In some versions he was sent away by Clytemnestra to avoid having him present during the murder of Agamemnon; in others his sister Electra herself rescued the infant Orestes and sent him away to protect him from their mother.

Orestes realized that he must work out the curse on his house, exact vengeance and pay with his own ruin.

Plato in his dialogue The Statesman tells a "famous tale" that "the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.

"[8] Virgil, in book IV of the Aeneid, refers to the House of Atreus and specifically Orestes in describing the death of Dido.

The indictment describes several army clashes between the Greeks and the Hittites which took place around the late 15th or early 14th centuries BC.