Ch. 15: The Line of Tantalos
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♠ Σ Or 995 – Scholia to Euripides, Orestes – Scholia in Euripidem 1, pp. 197-98, ed. E. Schwartz. Berlin 1887.
Same as
♠ Alkmaionis fr 6 PEG – Poetae Epici Graeci 1, p. 34, ed. A. Bernabé. Leipzig 1987.
♠ Ag 1191-93 – Aischylos, Agamemnon
and, each in turn, they spurn with loathing a brother’s bed, for they bitterly spurn the one who defiled it. Greek Text
♠ Ag 1219-22 – Aischylos, Agamemnon
Children, they seem, slaughtered by their own kindred, [1220] their hands full of the meat of their own flesh; they are clear to my sight, holding their vitals and their inward parts （piteous burden!）, which their father tasted. Greek Text
♠ Ag 1583-1611 – Aischylos, Agamemnon
For Atreus, lord of this land, this man’s father, challenged in his sovereignty, drove forth, from city and from home, Thyestes, who （to speak it clearly） was my father [1585] and his own brother. And when he had come back as a suppliant to his hearth, unhappy Thyestes secured such safety for his lot as not himself to suffer death and stain with his blood his native soil. [1590] But Atreus, the godless father of this slain man, with welcome more hearty than kind, on the pretence that he was cheerfully celebrating a happy day by serving meat, served up to my father as entertainment a banquet of his own children’s flesh. [1595] The toes and fingers he broke off <
*> sitting apart. And when all unwittingly my father had quickly taken servings that he did not recognize, he ate a meal which, as you see, has proved fatal to his race. Now, discovering his unhallowed deed, he uttered a great cry, reeled back, vomiting forth the slaughtered flesh, and invoked [1600] an unbearable curse upon the line of Pelops, kicking the banquet table to aid his curse, “thus perish all the race of Pleisthenes!” This is the reason that you see this man fallen here. I am he who planned this murder and with justice. For together with my hapless father he drove me out, [1605] me his third child, as yet a baby in swaddling-clothes. But grown to manhood, justice has brought me back again. Exile though I was, I laid my hand upon my enemy, compassing every device of cunning to his ruin. [1610] So even death would be sweet to me now that I behold him in justice’s net. Greek Text
♠ Perekydes 3F133 FGrH – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, p. 94, ed. F. Jacoby. 2 nd ed. Leiden 1957.
♠ DP 66.6 – Dion of Prusa (Dio Chrysostom), Orationes
Why, because of a golden lamb it came to pass that a mighty house like that of Pelops was overturned, as we learn from the tragic poets. And not only were the children of Thyestes cut in pieces, but Pelopia’s father lay with her and begot Aegistheus; and Aegistheus with Clytemnestra’s aid slew Agamemnon, “the shepherd of the Achaeans”; and then Clytemnestra’s son Orestes slew her, and, having done so, he straightway went mad. One should not disbelieve these things, for they have been recorded by no ordinary men — Euripides and Sophocles — and also are recited in the midst of the theatres. Furthermore, one may behold another house, more affluent than that of Pelops, which has been ruined because of a tongue, and, in sooth, another house which is now in jeopardy. Greek Text
♠ AP 9.98 – Palatine Anthology (Greek Anthology) 3, pp. 52-53, ed. W.R. Paton. Cambridge Mass. 1916.
Greek Text and English Translation
♠ Euripides, Kressai fr 460 N² – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, p. 502, ed. A. Nauck, 2nd ed. Leipzig 1889.
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Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, April 2024.
