Ch. 15: The Line of Tantalos
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♠ Sophokles, Thyestes – Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta vol. 4, pp.239-46, ed. S. L. Radt. Göttingen 1977.
♠ Fab 88 – Hyginus, Fabulae
Thyestes, when he realized the horrible crime, fled to King Thesprotus, where Lake Avernus is said to be, and from there he came to Sikyon, where Pelopia, Thyestes’ daughter, had been brought. He came there by chance at night when they were sacrificing to Minerva, and, fearing to profane the rites, hid in a grove. Pelopia, however, in leading the dancing bands, slipped and stained her garment with the blood of the slain animals. When she went to the stream to wash of the blood, she laid aside her stained tunic. Thyestes, his head covered, leaped out from the grove; in that ravishing Pelopia drew his sword from the sheath, and on her return to the temple hid it under the pedestal of Minerva’s statue. The next day Thyestes asked the king to send him back to his country, Lydia. In the meantime sterility of crops and want came to Mycenae because of the crime of Atreus. The oracle said that he should bring back Thyestes into his kingdom. When he came to King Thesprotus, thinking Thyestes was staying there, he saw Pelopia, and asked that she be given to him in marriage, under the impression that she was Thesprotus’ daughter. Thesprotus, to avoid suspicion, gave her to him, though she had already conceived Aegisthus by her father Thyestes. When she came to Atreus, she gave birth to Aegisthus, and exposed him, but shepherds gave him to a goat to suckle. Atreus ordered the boy to be found and raised as his own. In the meantime Atreus sent Agamemnon and Menelaus his sons in search of Thyestes, and they went to Delphi to inquire. By chance Thyestes had come there to consult the oracle about taking vengeance on his brother. They seized him, and he was brought to Atreus and cast into prison. Atreus summoned Aegisthus, thinking him to be his son, and sent him to kill Thyestes. When Thyestes saw Aegisthus and the sword which he wore, and recognized it as the one he had lost at the ravishing, he asked Aegisthus where he got it. He replied that his mother Pelopia had given it to him. He bade her be summoned. She told him she had taken it from some unknown person in a rape by night, and from that embrace had borne Aegisthus. Then Pelopia snatched the sword, pretending to examine it, and plunged it in her breast. Aegisthus, drawing the bloody sword from his mother’s breast, bore it to Atreus, who rejoiced, believing Thyestes dead. Aegisthus slew him as he was sacrificing on the shore, and with his father Thyestes returned to his father’s kingdom. Latin Text
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1987.53. Apulian red figure crater by the Darius Painter. Thyestes, infant Aigisthos, Adrastos, Pelopia and Amphithea.
https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/mixing-bowl-calyx-krater-154119
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Literary sorces edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, April 2024.
