Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/193

 ATREUS AND THYESTES. 161 and most acceptable person for his successor. 1 Such was the tale which Thucydides derived " from those who had learnt ancient Peloponnesian matters most clearly from their forefathers." The introduction of so much sober and quasi-political history, unfor- tunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly poet- ical legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it. Atreus and Thyestes are known in the Iliad only as successive possessors of the sceptre of Zeus, which Thyestes at his death bequeathes to Agamemnon. The family dissensions among this fated race commence, in the Odyssey, with Agamemnon the son of Atreus, and ^Egisthus the son of Thyestes. But subsequent poets dwelt upon an implacable quarrel between the two fathers, The cause of the bitterness was differently represented: some al- leged that Thyestes had intrigued with the Kretan Aerope, the wife of his brother ; other narratives mentioned that Thyestes procured for himself surreptitiously the possession of a lamb with a golden fleece, which had been designedly introduced among the flocks of Atreus by the anger of Hermes, as a cause of enmity and ruin to the whole family. 2 Atreus, after a violent 1 Thucyd. i. 9. heyovai SI oi TU Hel.oirovvr/oiuv cra^eorara fivf/fir/ irapa TUV -irporepov Sedey/iEvoi.. According to Hellanikus, Atreus the elder son re- turns to Pisa after the death of Pelops with a great army, and makes him- self master of his father's principality (Hellanik. ap Schol.ad Iliad, ii. 105) Hellanikus does not seem to have heen so solicitous as Thucydides to bring the story into conformity with Homer. The circumstantial genealogy giv- en in Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 5. makes Atreus and Thyestes reside during their banishment at Makestus in Triphylia : it is given without any special authority, but may perhaps come from Hellanikus. 2 JEschil. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608; Hygin. 86 ; Attii Fragm.19. This was the story of the old poem entitled Alkmaeonis ; seemingly also of Phe- rekydes, though the latter rejected the story that Hermes had produced the golden lamb with the special view of exciting discord between the two broth- ers, in order to avenge the death of Myrtilus by Pelops (see Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 996J. A different legend, alluded to in Soph. Aj. 1295 (see Schol. ad foe.), recounted that Aerope 1 had been detected by her father Katreus in unchaste commerce with a low-born person ; he entrusted her in his anger to Nau- plius, with directions to throw her into the sea : Nauplius however not only epared her life, but betrothed her to Pleisthenes, father of Agamemnon and son of Atreus. The tragedy entitled Atreus of the Lctin poet Attius, seems to hav VOL. I. 11 OC.