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[Merge into Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Pleisthenes]

For Homer, in the Iliad and Odyssey, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Atreus, with Aerope nowhere mentioned. However Iliad scholia say that "Homer" names Aerope as their mother, presumably taking this from somewhere in the Epic Cycle, which was attributed to Homer. And although in Euripides' Cretan Women, and the passage by Apollodorus cited above, Aerope was the wife of Pleisthenes, with Apollodorus saying that Pleisthenes was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, elsewhere both Euripides and Apollodorus follow Homer. Indeed, most sources do so.

However Euripides and Apollodorus were not alone in making Pleisthenes the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. These included, so we are told, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Porphyry, and "others". Bacchylides calls Menelaus both "Atreides" and "Pleisthenides"—meaning a descendant of (usually son of) Atreus and Pleisthenes respectively—in the same poem.

Sources

Ancient

Aeschylus

Agamemnon

60

Even so Zeus, whose power is over all, Zeus, lord of host and guest, sends against Alexander the sons of Atreus

1191–1193

Lodged within its halls they chant their chant, the primal sin; and, each in turn, they spurn with loathing a brother's bed, for they bitterly spurn the one who defiled it.

1219–1222

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.

1569

...As for me, however, I am willing to make a sworn compact with the Fiend of the house of Pleisthenes ...

1580 ff.

[Aegisthus:] Now that, to my joy, I behold this man lying here in a robe spun by the Avenging Spirits and making full payment for the deeds contrived in craft by his father's hand. 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 ...

1583

For Atreus, lord of this land, this man's father,

1590

[1590] But Atreus, the godless father of this slain man,

1590 ff.

[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!"

1602

... thus perish all the race of Pleisthenes!

Apollodorus

3.2.1

But Catreus, son of Minos, had three daughters, Aerope, Clymene, and Apemosyne, and a son, Althaemenes.¹ When Catreus inquired of the oracle how his life should end, the god said that he would die by the hand of one of his children. Now Catreus hid the oracles, but Althaemenes heard of them, and fearing to be his father's murderer, he set out from Crete with his sister Apemosyne, and put in at a place in Rhodes, and having taken possession of it he called it Cretinia.

3.2.2

And Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell into foreign lands; and of these two Aerope became the wife of Plisthenes, who begat Agamemnon and Menelaus; and Clymene became the wife of Nauplius, who became the father of Oeax and Palamedes.

E.2.10

The sons of Pelops were Pittheus, Atreus, Thyestes, and others. Now the wife of Atreus was Aerope, daughter of Catreus, and she loved Thyestes. And Atreus once vowed to sacrifice to Artemis the finest of his flocks; but when a golden lamb appeared, they say that he neglected to perform his vow,

E.2.11

and having choked the lamb, he deposited it in a box and kept it there, and Aerope gave it to Thyestes, by whom she had been debauched. For the Mycenaeans had received an oracle which bade them choose a Pelopid for their king, and they had sent for Atreus and Thyestes. And when a discussion took place concerning the kingdom, Thyestes declared to the multitude that the kingdom ought to belong to him who owned the golden lamb, and when Atreus agreed, Thyestes produced the lamb and was made king.

E.2.12

But Zeus sent Hermes to Atreus and told him to stipulate with Thyestes that Atreus should be king if the sun should go backward; and when Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east; hence the deity having plainly attested the usurpation of Thyestes, Atreus got the kingdom and banished Thyestes.¹

E.3.12

Of the Mycenaeans, Agamemnon, son of Atreus and Aerope: a hundred ships. Of the Lacedaemonians, Menelaus, son of Atreus and Aerope: sixty ships.

Bacchylides

15.6 (Castriota, p. 233)

[5] of the Argives, to Odysseus [son of Laertes] and Menelaus, the royal son of Atreus,

15.48 (Castriota, p. 234)

[45] and raising their hands to the immortal gods, they prayed for an end to their griefs. Muse, who was the first to begin the words of justice? Menelaus son of Pleisthenes ...

Byzantine Orestes scholia

Byzantine scholia on Sophocles Orestes 812 (quoted by Gantz, p. 548)

[Atreus] not enduring his misfortune and being angry that he was unjustly deprived of the rule (1) revenged himself on his wife Aerope (both because of her adultery with Thyestes and because she gave away the lamb) by casting her into the sea, as Sophokles says, and (2) killing Aglaos, Orchomenos, and Kaleos the three children of Thyestes served them to their father and later killed him also.

http://library.tufts.edu/record=b1428641~S1

Dictys Cretensis (4th century AD)

1.1

Also Menelaus and his older brother Agamemnon, the sons of Aerope and Plisthenes, came to get their share. (They had a sister, Anaxibia, who at that time was married to Nestor.) People often thought that their father was Atreus, because when their real father, Plisthenes, died young without having made a name for himself, Atreus, pitying their plight, had taken them in and brought them up like princes.

Diodorus Siculus

4.9.1

This, then, is the story as it has been given us: Perseus was the son of Danaê, the daughter of Acrisius, and Zeus. Now Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, lay with him and bore Electryon, and then Eurydicê, the daughter of Pelops, married him and gave birth to Alcmenê, who in turn was wooed by Zeus, who deceived her, and bore Heracles.

4.33.8

Aleos was ignorant of what had taken place, but when the bulk of the child in the womb betrayed the violation of his daughter he inquired who had violated her. And when Augê disclosed that it was Heracles who had done violence to her, he would not believe what she had said, but gave her into the hands of Nauplius his friend with orders to drown her in the sea.

4.60.4

And marrying Pasiphaê, the daughter of Helius and Cretê, he [Minos] begat Deucalion and Catreus and Androgeos and Ariadnê and had other, natural, children more in number than these.

Euripides

Electra

699–719

The story remains in old legends [700] that Pan, the keeper of wild beasts, breathing sweet-voiced music on his well-joined pipes, once brought from its tender mother on Argive hills [705] a lamb with beautiful golden fleece. A herald stood on the stone platform and cried aloud, “To assembly, Mycenaeans, go to assembly [710] to see the omens given to our blessed rulers.” . . . and they honored the house of Atreus. The altars of beaten gold were set out; and through the town the [715] altar fires of the Argives blazed; the flute, handmaid of the Muse's song, sounded its note sweetly, and lovely songs of the golden lamb swelled forth,

719–725

Thyestes had the luck; for he [720] persuaded Atreus' own wife to secret love, and carried off to his house the portent; coming before the assembly he declared that he had in his [725] house the horned sheep with fleece of gold.

Cretan Women

test. iiia

'You (Menelaus) were yourself born from a Cretan mother, whom her own father (Catreus) caught with a man taken into her bed, and sent her to death and destruction by dumb fishes': the story is in Euripides' Cretan Women, that when (Aerope) had been secretly violated by her servant her father handed her over to Nauplius with orders to drown her; Nauplius did not do this, however, but pledged her in marriage to Pleisthenes.

• Webster pp. 37–38

The scholiast on the reference to Aerope in ‘’Ajax’’ 1297 says ‘the story is in Euripides’ ‘’Cretan Women’’ that when Aerope had been seduced by a servant, her father (Katreus of Crete) handed her over to Nauplios with instructions to drown her, but he failed to do so and engaged her to Pleisthenes’.

Helen

390–392

before you ever begot my father, Atreus, to whom were born, from his marriage with Airope, Agamemnon and myself, Menelaos, a famous pair;

Iphigenia in Tauris 1 ff.

Pelops, son of Tantalus, coming to Pisa with swift horses, married Oenomaus' daughter, and she gave birth to Atreus, whose children are Menelaus and Agamemnon;

Orestes

11 ff.

... [Tantalus] begot Pelops, the father of Atreus, for whom the goddess, when she had carded her wool, spun a web of strife—to make war with his own brother Thyestes. But why need I retrace that hideous tale? [15] Well, Atreus slew Thyestes' children and feasted him on them.

15

Well, Atreus slew Thyestes' children and feasted him on them.

16

... from Atreus and Aerope of Crete were born the famous Agamemnon, if he really was famous, and Menelaus.

810 ff.

[810] went back again from good fortune for the Atreidae long ago, from an old misfortune to their house, when strife came to the sons of Tantalus over a golden ram, to end in most pitiable banqueting and [815] the slaughter of high-born children; and this is why murder exchanges for murder, through blood, and does not leave the two Atreidae.

995 ff.

From this came a woeful curse upon my house, brought to birth among the sheep by the son of Maia, when there appeared a baleful, baleful portent of a lamb with golden fleece, [1000] for Atreus, breeder of horses; from which Strife changed the course of the sun's winged chariot, fitting the westward path of the sky towards the single horse of Dawn; [1005] and Zeus diverted the career of the seven Pleiads into a new track and exchanged . . . death for death: both the banquet to which Thyestes gave his name, and the treacherous love of Cretan Aerope, [1010] in her treacherous marriage; but the crowning woe has come on me and on my father by the bitter constraints of our house.

1009–1010

and the treacherous love of Cretan Aerope, [1010] in her treacherous marriage;

Hesiod

fr. 137 Most [= fr. 194 MW]

137 (194 MW)

137

a Schol. D in Hom. Il. 1.7 (p. 21 van Thiel²)

a Scholia on Homer’s Iliad

According to Homer, Agamemnon was the son of Pelops’ son Atreus, and his mother was Aerope; but according to Hesiod he was the son of Pleisthenes.

b Tzetz. Exeg. Il. 1.122 (p. 68.19 Hermann)

b Tzetzes’ commentary on Homer’s Iliad

Agamemnon, and Menelaus likewise, are considered to be children of Atreus’ son Pleisthenes according to Hesiod and Aeschylus, but according to the poet (i.e., Homer) and everyone they were simply sons of Atreus himself. . . . According to Hesiod, Aeschylus, and some others, Pleisthenes was the son of Atreus and Aerope, and the children of Pleisthenes and Dias’ daughter Cleolla were Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Anaxibia. Because Pleisthenes died young, they were brought up by their grandfather Atreus, and so they are considered by many to be Atreids.

c Schol. in Tzetz. ad loc. (p. 11 Papathomopoulos)

c Scholia on Tzetzes’ commentary on Homer’s Iliad

According to Homer, Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Pelops’ son Atreus and of Aerope from Crete, Catreus’ daughter; according to Hesiod they were the sons of Pleisthenes, a hermaphrodite or lame, who wore women’s clothing.

fr. 138 Most [= fr. 195 MW]

138 (195 MW; 91 H) 1–Scutum 18: P. Oxy. 2494A; 1–Scutum 5: P. Oxy. 2355

138 1–Shield 18: Oxyrhynchus papyrus; 1–Shield 5: Oxyrhynchus papyrus

from Crete] he¹ led off [

the daughter of Catreus] and of the beautiful-haired Naead

] beautiful-ankled Aeropea

] to his home, to be called [his dear wife. [5]

she bore]bius, and warlike Menelaus and godly Agamemnon, who over spacious [Argos

to his father, was lord and ruler. [5]

¹ Pleisthenes

• Gantz, p. 552

fragmentary lines of that poem [the Ehoiai] just preceding the tale of Alkmene appear to attest that Aerope (not Kleola) is the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaos (and a third son: Anaxibios?), although whether by Atreus or Pleisthenes we cannot tell (Hes fr 195 MW).

Homer

Iliad

2.104 ff.

and Hermes, the lord, gave it to Pelops, driver of horses, [105] and Pelops in turn gave it to Atreus, shepherd of the host; and Atreus at his death left it to Thyestes, rich in flocks, and Thyestes again left it to Agamemnon to bear, that so he might be lord of many isles and of all Argos.

11.126–131

lord Agamemnon took, the twain being in one car, and together were they seeking to drive the swift horses, for the shining reins had slipped from their hands, and the two horses were running wild; but he rushed against them like a lion, [130] the son of Atreus [Ἀτρεΐδης], and the twain made entreaty to him from the car: “Take us alive, thou son of Atreus, [Ἀτρέος υἱέ] and accept a worthy ransom;

Odyssey

4.462

Ἀτρέος υἱέ (son of Atreus)

Hyginus

Fabulae [Grant]

63

DANAE: Danae was the daughter of Acrisius and Aganippe. A prophecy about her said that the child she bore would kill Acrisius, and Acrisius, fearing this, shut her in a stone-walled prison. But Jove, changing into a shower of gold, lay with Danae, and from this embrace Perseus was born. Because of her sin her father shut her up in a chest with Perseus and cast it into the sea. By Jove's will it was borne to the island of Seriphos, and when the fisherman Dictys found it and broke it open, he discovered the mother and child. He took them to King Polydectes, who married Danae and brought up Perseus in the temple of Minerva. When Acrisius discovered they were staying at Polydectes' court, he started out to get them, but at his arrival Polydectes interceded for them, and Perseus swore an oath to his grandfather that he would never kill him. When Acrisius was detained there by a storm, Polydectes died, and at his funeral games the wind blew a discus from Perseus' hand at Acrisius' head which killed him. Thus what he did not do of his own will was accomplished by the gods. When Polydectes was buried, Perseus set out for Argos and took possession of his grandfather's kingdom.

85

Laius, son of Labdacus, carried of Chrysippus, illegitimate son of Pelops, at the Nemean Games because of his exceeding beauty. Pelops made war and recovered him. At the instigation of their mother Hippodamia, Atreus and Thyestes killed him. When Pelops blamed Hippodamia, she killed herself.

86

Because Thyestes, son of Pelops and Hippodamia, lay with Aëropa, Atreus’ wife, he was banished from the kingdom by his brother Atreus. But he sent Atreus’ son, Plisthenes, whom he had reared as his own, to Atreus to be killed. Atreus, believing him to be his brother’s son, unknowingly killed his own son.

97

Agamemnon, son of Atreus and Aërope, from Mycenae, with a hundred ships;

246

Those Who Ate Their Own Sons at Meals

...

Thyestes, son of Pelops, his children by Aerope – Tantalus and Plisthenes.

Ovid

Ars Amatoria

1.327–330

Had the Cretan woman abstained from love for Thyestes (and is it such a feat to be able to do without a particular man?), Phoebus had not broken off in mid-career, and wresting his car about turned round his steeds to face the dawn.

1.341–342

All those crimes were prompted by women’s lust; keener is it than ours, and has more of madness.

Pausanias

2.18.1

Advancing a little way in the Argive territory from this hero-shrine one sees on the right the grave of Thyestes. On it is a stone ram, because Thyestes obtained the golden lamb after debauching his brother's wife. But Atreus was not restrained by prudence from retaliating, but contrived the slaughter of the children of Thyestes and the banquet of which the poets tell us.

2.29.4

To Panopeus was born Epeus, who made, according to Homer, the wooden horse; and the grandson of Crisus was Pylades, whose father was Strophius, son of Crisus, while his mother was Anaxibi, sister of Agamemnon.

8.53.4

It is also said that all the surviving sons of Tegeates, namely, Cydon, Archedius and Gortys, migrated of their own free will to Crete, and that after them were named the cities Cydonia, Gortyna and Catreus. The Cretans dissent from the account of the Tegeans, saying that Cydon was a son of Hermes and of Acacallis, daughter of Minos, that Catreus was a son of Minos, and Gortys a son of Rhadamanthys.

Plato

Cratylus 395b

And so, too, the name of Atreus is likely to be correct; for his murder of Chrysippus and the cruelty of his acts to Thyestes are all damaging and ruinous (ἀτηρά) to his virtue.

Statesman 268e

Stranger: "Of the portents recorded in ancient tales many did happen and will happen again. Such an one is the portent connected with the tale of the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes. You have doubtless heard of it and remember what is said to have taken place."

Younger Socrates: "You refer, I suppose, to the token of the golden lamb."

Scholia on Sophocles, Ajax

1297a (= Euripides, Cretan Women test. iiia)

'You (Menelaus) were yourself born from a Cretan mother, whom her own father (Catreus) caught with a man taken into her bed, and sent her to death and destruction by dumb fishes': the story is in Euripides' Cretan Women, that when (Aerope) had been secretly violated by her servant her father handed her over to Nauplius with orders to drown her; Nauplius did not do this, however, but pledged her in marriage to Pleisthenes.

Scholia on Iliad

1.7 [= Hesiod fr. 137a Most = fr. 194 MW]

According to Homer, Agamemnon was the son of Pelops' son Atreus, and his mother was Aerope; but according to Hesiod he was the son of Pleisthenes.

Gantz, p. 552

Iliad scholia tell us that while Homer makes Agamemnon the son of Atreus and Aerope (she is not mentioned in the Iliad or Odyssey; presumably the scholiast gets this from the Epic Cycle), in Hesiod he and his brother are the sons of Pleisthenes (ΣA Il 1.7 = Hes fr. 194 MW).

2.249

Gantz, p. 552

Another Iliad scholion repeats this idea, although without mentioning Hesiod; it does cite Porphyrios and "many others" for it, and adds that Pleisthenes died young, having done nothing of note, whereupon his sons were raised by Atreus (ΣA Il 2.249)

Scholia on Orestes

4

• Gantz, p. 553

But in the scholia to Orestes (where Dias is again a brother of Atreus), we find just the opposite: here Atreus marries Kleola, daughter of Dias, she who was the wife of Pleisthenes in Tzetzes, the two of them become the parents of the (infirm of body) Pleisthenes (Σ Or 4).

812

• Gantz, p. 548

The Byzantine scholia at Orestes 812²⁰ ... "(1) revenged himself on his wife Aerope (both because of her adultery with Thyestes and becuase she gave away the lamb) by casting her into the sea, as Sophokles says, and (2) killing Aglaos, Orchomeros, and Kaleos the three children of Thyestes served them to their father and later killed him also"

• Gantz, p. 555

but if the manuscript correction is accepted we would have here our first reference to Aerope being thrown from a cliff as punishment for her adultery. The account of the Byzantine Orestia scholia at line 812, where Sophokles is said to attest that fate for Aerope, seems to guarantee that it appeared somewhere in his work, but of course the scholiast might be referring to this same passage of the Aias, where the meaning is as we have seen controversial.

• Jebb, note to Ajax 1296 ὁ φιτύσας πατήρ

Now, according to the schol. on Eur. Or. 812, Sophocles (in a play not named there, but which was probably the “Ἀτρεὺς ἢ Μυκηναῖαι”) somewhere described Atreus himself as drowning his false wife for a twofold crime,—adultery with Thyestes, and the theft of the golden lamb: “τὴν γυναῖκα Ἀερόπην τιμωρεῖται κατ᾽ ἄμφω...ῥίψας αὐτὴν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, ὡς φησὶ Σοφοκλῆς”.

Scholia on Tzetzes' Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122

Hesiod fr. 137c Most [= fr. 194 MW]

Accordimg to Homer, Agamemmnon and Menelaus were the sons of Pelops' son Atreus and Aerope from Crete, Catreus' daughter, according to Hesiod they were the sons of Pleisthenes, a hemaphrodite or lame, who wore women's clothing.

Gantz, p. 553

Tzetzes offers one other curious bit of information, not in his Exegesis but in his scholia to that work: while in Homer Agamemnon and Menelaos are the sons of Atreus, son of Pelops, in Hesiod they are the sons of Pleisthenes, the hermaphrodite or lame one, who wore a woman's mantle (addendum to Hes fr. 194 MW).²⁴

Servius

Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil 1.458

ATRIDAS Atrei filios, Agamemnonem et Menelaum; sed usurpatum est, nam Plisthenis filii fuerunt.

Translation (according to Cynwolfe):

the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus; but this is to make an unjustified assertion, for they were the sons of Pleisthenes.

Sophocles

Sophocles, Ajax 1295–1297.

Jebb's translation

And you yourself were born from a Cretan mother, whose father found a stranger straddling her and who was consigned by him to be prey for the mute fish.

Lloyd-Jones' translation:

And you yourself are the son of a Cretan mother, whom your father, finding a lover with her, sent to be destroyed by dumb fishes.

Thucydides

Thucydides, 1.9

Now Atreus had been banished by his father on account of the murder of Chrysippus.

Tzetzes

Allegories of the Iliad

Prolegomena

508–511

The Greeks were commanded by two kings:

the famous Agamemnon and Menelaos

sons, according to most authorities, of Atreus and Aerope;

according to others, the children of Pleisthenes and Kleole.

Exegesis in Iliadem

1.122

Hesiod fr. 137b Most

Agamemnon, and Menelaus likewise, are considered to be children of Atreus' son Pleisthenes according to Hesiod and Aeschylus, but according to the poet (i.e. Homer) and everyone they were simply sons of Atreus himself. ... According to Hesiod, Aeschylus, and some others, Pleisthenes was the son of Atreus and Aerope, and the children of Pleisthenes and Dias' daughter Cleolla were Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Anaxibia. Because Pleisthenes died young, they were brought up by their grandfather Atreus, and so they are considered by many to be Atreids.

(Evelyn-White pp. 202–203)

Agamemnon and Menelaus likewise according to Hesiod and Aeschylus are regarded as the sons of Pleisthenes, Atreus' son. And according to Hesiod, Pleisthenes was a son of Atreus and Aerope, and Agamemnon, Menelaus and Anaxibia were the children of Pleisthenes and Cleolla the daughter of Dias.

Gantz, p. 552

Tzetzes (in his Exegesis in Iliadem) explains further what we will have already guessed, that in this version Pleisthenes is the son of Atreus. He goes on to say that for Hesiod, Aischylos, and others, Pleisthenes is born of Aerope, and that this Pleisthenes, wed to Kleola, daughter of Atreus' brother Dias (she is thus his own first cousin), begets Agamemnon and Menelaos, and Anaxibia (pp. 68-69 Hermann, reproduced in part as Hes fr. 194 MW).^{23 [Pelops' children here (which in fact match perfectly those reported by Σ Or 4) are in part omitted by Merkelbach and West. For the form "Kleolla" actually reported by Tzetzes, see West 1985.111-12.]}

Modern

Armstrong

See

p. 7

In the next generation, Aerope, daughter of Catreus and neice of Ariadne and Phaedra, continues the tradition of Cretan sin. ...

p. 12

Early versions of Aerope's myth are misty,³⁸ but there is evidence that she was known to the epic poets and Hesiod. Scholia on the Iliad say that while Homer makes Agamemnon the son of Atreus and Aerope, in Hesiod, he is the son of Aerope and Pleisthenes.³⁹ Since this information is not given to us in the Iliad or Odyssey, the scholiast presumably gets it from somewhere in the Epic Cycle. Her myth is particularly popular in Greek tragedy, and many variants on her story are to be found. However, although many tragic versions of the Atreus-Thyestes myth are attested, no complete plays survive.⁴⁰ Euripides' Cressae probably dealt with the story of Aerope's seduction by Thysestes [sic], and seems to have focused on her wantoness.⁴¹ Certainly, in Sophocles' Ajax, Aerope has become a byword for immorality, and Teucer argues that Agamemnon should be ashamed of his mother (1291-7). In Euripides' Electra, the Choras tells the story of the golden lamb, placing a little more emphasis on Thyestes' duplicity than on Aerope's wantonness, but there is no sense either that we should forgive her for allowing herself to be seduced.⁴²

³⁸ The Atreus-Thyestes myth seems not to have captured the imagination of the visual artist. Although the men in her life appear in art from time to time, there are no represetations of Aerope to be found in LIMC.

³⁹ ΣA Il. 1.7 = Hesiod fr. 194 MW. Tzetzes asserts that in Hesiod, Aeschylus, and others, Pleisthenes is the son of Aerope and father of Agamemnon and Menelaus (Exegesis in Iliadem, pp. 68-9 Hermann). For further discussion, cf. Gantz (1993), 552-3.

⁴⁰ The list of tragedies in which Aerope either certainly or probably appeared is long: Sophocles, Atreus, Thyestes, Thyestes in Sicyon (but there is debate about the number of Thyestes plays by Sophocles); Euripides, Cressae, Thyestes (?); Agathon, Aerope; the yonger Karkinos, Aerope (?).

⁴¹ Or so says the scholion on Aristophanes' Frogs (Σ Batr. 849).

⁴² Euripides, El. 699-736. On Aerope: ... ('persuading Atreus' own wife by sleeping with her in secret, [Thyestes] took the wondrous lamb to his house', 720-3).

Collard and Cropp

2008a

p. 516

Euripides’ plot is summarized with extreme concision in the Scholia on Sophocles, Ajax 1297a (= test. iiia below): when the Cretan king Catreus discovered that his daughter Aerope had slept with a servant, he handed her to Nauplius to drown, but instead Nauplius married her to Pleisthenes. Aerope’s behaviour in the play is described by the scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs 849 (= test. iiib) as ‘like a whore’s’; since Frogs 1043 uses the word ‘whore’ of Phaedra (see Hippolytus Veiled) and Stheneboea (Stheneboea), who are other ‘wicked’ women in this early phase of Euripides’ career, it looks as if Aerope was an important character here. Apollodorus 3.2.1–2 and 5 (= test. *iiic), however, tells Aerope’s story differently, with no sexual wrongdoing (and without mention of Euripides): Catreus received an oracle that he would die at the hands of one of his children and tried to prevent this by giving his two daughters Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell into [cont.]

p. 517

slavery (see note on F 466); but Pleisthenes married Aerope and she bore him Menelaus and Agamemnon. Apollodorus is at least consistent with the Sophocles scholiast in this last detail; myth more commonly has Atreus as Aerope’s husband, and Menelaus and Agamemnon their sons, not Pleisthenes as the husband and father (see further our Introduction to Pleisthenes).

p. 520

αὐτὸς δὲ μητρὸς ἐξέφυς Κρήσσης, ἐφ᾽ ᾗ | λαβὼν ἐπακτὸν ἄνδρ᾽ ὁ φιτύσας πατὴρ | ἐφῆκεν ἐλλοῖς ἰχθύσιν διαφθοράν. ...

Sophocles, Ajax 1295-7 and Schol. on 1279a

p. 521

'You (Menelaus [should be Agamemnon]) were yourself born from a Cretan mother, whom her own father (Catreus) caught with a man taken into her bed, and sent her to death and destruction by dumb fishes':¹ the story is in Euripides' Cretan Women, that when (Aerope) had been secretly violated by her servant her father handed her over to Nauplius with orders to drown her; Nauplius did not do this, however, but pledged her in marriage to Pleisthenes.

¹ 'Dumb fishes': to consume her totally, so that nothing of her disgrace should ever be told.

2008b

p. 79

Not much can be said about the subject of this play. Pleisthenes is an obscure figure, unknown or ignored in the Homeric poems but apparently identified in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (F 194) as a son of Atreus; in this tradition Pleisthenes and (probably) Aerope, rather than Atreus and Aerope, were the parents of Agamemnon and Menelaus.¹ In Cretan Women Euripides seems to have had Pleisthenes take Aerope as his wife after her expulsion from Crete (see our Introduction to that play). In 5th-century poetry Agamemnon and Menelaus could be referred to both as Atreus’ sons and as Pleisthenes’ offspring (see e.g. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1569, 1602). According to the [cont.]

p. 80

Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes, ‘Hesiod’ explained that the two had become Atreus’ heirs after Pleisthenes died prematurely, and that Pleisthenes had been lame and sexually ambiguous;² but it is not clear whether these details really stem from early mythical traditions (as Papathomopoulos argues) or from later rationalizations of conflicting legends about their parentage.

Fowler

p. 435

The scholion on Eur. Or. 4, which we saw in the last section might derive from Hellanikos, ... goes on to say that Atreus married Kleola daughter of Dias, another son of Pelops, and fathered Pleisthenes, who had a weak constitution; Pleisthenes married Eriphyle (unknown) and had Agamemnon, Menelaos, and a daughter Anabixia; when Pleisthenes died the children reverted to Atreus' care.²⁸

²⁸Cf. Hes. fr. 194, schol. Il. 2.249. The story above is a typical attempt to accomodate the shadowy Pleisthenes (below, n. 44).

Frazer

Note to Apollodorus, E.2.12

This story of the golden lamb, and of the appeal made to its possession by the two brothers in the contest for the kingdom, is told in substantially the same way by Tzetzes, Chiliades i.425ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.106; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 811, 998. Tzetzes records the vow of Atreus to sacrifice the best of his flock to Artemis, and he cites as his authority Apollonius, which is almost certainly a mistake for Apollodorus. Probably Tzetzes and the Scholiasts drew on the present passage of Apollodorus, or rather on the passage as it appeared in the unabridged text instead of in the Epitome which is all that we now possess of the last part of the Library. Euripides told the story allusively in much the same way. See Eur. El. 699ff.; Eur. Or. 996ff. Compare Plat. Stat. 12; Paus. 2.18.1; Lucian, De astrologia 12; Dio Chrysostom lxvi. vol. ii. p. 221, ed. L. Dindorf; Accius, quoted by Cicero, De natura deorum iii.27.68; Seneca, Thyestes 222-235; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.306; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 125ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 22; Second Vatican Mythographer 147). From these various accounts and allusions it would seem that in their dispute for the kingdom, which Atreus claimed in right of birth as the elder （Tzetzes, Chiliades i.426）, it was agreed that he who could exhibit the greatest portent should be king. Atreus intended to produce the golden lamb, which had been born in his flocks; but meanwhile the lamb had been given by his treacherous wife Aerope to her paramour Thyestes, who produced it in evidence of his claim and was accordingly awarded the crown. However, with the assistance of Zeus, the rightful claimant Atreus was able to exhibit a still greater portent, which was the sun and the Pleiades retracing their course in the sky and setting in the east instead of in the west. This mighty marvel, attesting the divine approbation of Atreus, clinched the dispute in his favour; he became king, and banished his rival Thyestes. According to a different account, which found favour with the Latin poets, the sun reversed his course in the sky, not in order to demonstrate the right of Atreus to the crown, but on the contrary to mark his disgust and horror at the king for murdering his nephews and dishing up their mangled limbs to their father Thyestes at table. See Tzetzes, Chiliades i.451; Statyllius Flaccus, in Anth. Pal. ix.98.2; Hyginus, Fab. 88, 258; Ovid, Tristia ii.391ff.; Ovid, Ars Am. i.327ff.; Seneca, Thyestes 776ff.; Martial iii.45.1ff. From the verses of Statyllius Flaccus we may infer that this latter was the interpretation put on the backward motion of the sun by Sophocles in his tragedy Atreus. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, i.93. In later times rationalists explained the old fable by saying that Atreus was an astronomer who first calculated an eclipse, and so threw his less scientific brother into the shade （Hyginus, Fab. 158; Serv. A. 1.568）, or who first pointed out that the sun appears to revolve in a direction contrary to the motion of the stars. See Strab. 1.2.15; Lucian, De astrologia 12. A fragment of Euripides appears to show that he put in the mouth of Atreus this claim to astronomical discovery. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), p. 639, frag. 861. A still more grandiose explanation of the myth was given by Plato l.c., who adduced it, with grave irony, as evidence that in alternate cycles of vast duration the universe revolves in opposite directions, the reversal of its motion at the end of each cycle being accompanied by a great destruction of animal life. This magnificent theory was perhaps suggested to the philosopher by the speculations of Empedocles, and it bears a resemblance not only to the ancient Indian doctrine of successive epochs of creation and destruction, but also to Herbert Spencer's view of the great cosmic process as moving eternally in alternate and measureless cycles of evolution and dissolution. See Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed. （London, 1875）, i.7, quoting the Laws of Manu; Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 3rd ed. （London, 1875）, pp. 536ff. Compare Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii.303ff.

Gantz

p. 271

We know at any rate that this play [Euripides' Kressai] told how Katreus discovered his daughter Aerope to have been seduced by a servant, and gave her to Nauplios to drown; the latter instead gave her to Pleisthenes to wife (Σ Ai 1297). In Apollodorus, Katreus hands over two daughters, Aerope and Klymene, to Nauplios to be sold (not drowned); Nauplios gives Aerope to Pleisthenes, as in Euripides, but keeps Klymene for himself, and she becomes the mother of Palamedes and Oiax (ApB 3.2.2).

p. 543

Pindar's Olympian 1 assign's to Pelops and Hillodameia six sons ...

p. 544

...

p. 546

golden lamb ... we find no other trace of their conflict before Aischylos' Agamemnon, but Kassandra's dark hints and barely coherent allusions in that drama show that the story was well known, at least in its general outlines. What we learn from her ravings and visions is that Thyestes entered his brother's bed, and that Atrues in turn fed ... (Ag 1191-93, ...

The latter part of the fifth century offer Athenians quite a range of dramatic treatments: Sophokles' lost Atreus and Thyestes in Sicyon, plus at least one (possibly two) more Thyestes plays, and Euripides' similarily lost Kressai and perhaps a Thyestes, for the latter poet we have as well substantial references in his Elektra and Orestes Of the lost plays both [Sophocles'] Atreus and [Euripides'] Kressai probably related the power struggle preceding the feast, and Dion of Prusa come close to saying that in both playwrights the golden lamb was a factor (66.6). ... the same is true of the throwing of Aerope into the sea, which may come from the Aias (see below). Euripides' Kressai told the story of Aerope's seduction on Krete, and her father's consequent consigning her to Nauplios to be drowned, but judging from the fragments this was all prologue, and the actual plot concerned adutery and the feast that followed.

...

There is also a slight hint in the fragments that the children killed may have been born Thyestes and Aerope, not to Thyestes and a legitimate wife (fr. 460 N ². ... We know that Agathon and perhaps the younger Karkinos wrote plays entitled Aerope, ...

p. 547

... whatever the truth of that story, the implied focus on Aerope [rather than on Atreus or Thyestes) as a pathetic figure might mean that here [some play] too the children were hers.

p. 548

The Byzantine scholia at Orestes 812²⁰ do seem to suppose such a sequence of events, for in their exegesis, immediately after Thyestes' trick, Atreus "not enduring his misfortune and being angry that he was unjustly deprived of his rule (1) revenged himself on his wife Aerope (both because of her adultery with Thyestes and because she gave away the lamb) by casting her into the sea, as Sophokles says, and (2) killing Aglaos, Orchomenos, and Kaleos the three children of Thyestes served them to their father and later killed him also."

p. 552

Homer never mentions him [Pleisthenes], either in Iliad 2's succession account or elsewhere, and while the standard epithet Atridês can me simply "descendant of Atreus," both the Iliad and the Odyssey on occasion call Agamemnon or Menelaos specifically a son of Atreus. But the Hesiodic Corpus saw matters differently: Iliad scholia tell us that while Homer makes Agamemnon the son of Atreus and Aerope (she is not mentioned in the Iliad or Odyssey; presumably the scholiast gets this from the Epic Cycle), in Hesiod he and his brother are the sons of Pleisthenes (ΣA Il 1.7 = Hes fr. 194 MW). Another Iliad scholion repeats this idea, although without mentioning Hesiod; it does cite Porphyrios and "many others" for it, and adds that Pleisthenes died young, having done nothing of note, whereupon his sons were raised by Atreus (ΣA Il 2.249). Tzetzes (in his Exegesis in Iliadem) explains further what we will have already guessed, that in this version Pleisthenes is the son of Atreus. He goes on to say that for Hesiod, Aischylos, and others, Pleisthenes is born of Aerope, and that this Pleisthenes, wed to Kleola, daughter of Atreus' brother Dias (she is thus his own first cousin), begets Agamemnon and Menelaos, and Anaxibia (pp. 68-69 Hermann, reproduced in part as Hes fr. 194 MW).^{23 [Pelops' children here (which in fact match perfectly those reported by Σ Or 4) are in part omitted by Merkelbach and West. For the form "Kleolla" actually reported by Tzetzes, see West 1985.111-12.]} Here too we find the father dying young, so that the grandfather Atreus raises the sons who come to be thought of as his. Whether the "Hesiodic" source for all this could be the Ehoiai is unclear, for fragmentary lines of that poem just preceding the tale of Alkmene appear to attest that Aerope (not Kleola) is the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaos (and a third son: Anaxibios?), although whether by Atreus or Pleisthenes we cannot tell (Hes fr 195 MW). If that is correct, then either Tzetzes has drawn some of this information from his other named sources alone, or his reference to "Hesiod" intends another part of the Hesiodic Corpus.

We should note here (as likely happens in Euripides) that a father adopting [cont.]

p. 553

his sons' children might possibly marry the mother as well; thus it would be no surprise to find Aerope (or even Kleola) in some accounts married first to Pleisthenes then Atreus. But in the scholia to the Orestes (where Dias is again a brother of Atreus), we find just the opposite: here Atreus marries Kleola, daughter of Dias, she who was the wife of Pleisthenes in Tzetzes, the two of them become the parents of the (infirm of body) Pleisthenes (Σ Or 4). We might suppose that the roles of Aerope and Kleola have simply been reversed, were it not that Pleisthenes marries someone quite new, one Eriphyle by whom he becomes the father of Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Anaxibia.

p. 554

Turning to Sophocles' Aias ... He adds too (by way of insult to Agamemnon) Thyestes' feast, and then Agamemnon's Kretan mother, "in whose bed finding an alien man the father enjoined that she be quarry for the fishes." As these words stand the [cont.]

p. 555

reference would seem to be Katreus, Aerope's father, who found her with a slave and gave her to Nauplios to kill. But the word here translated as alien (epaktos) would more naturally refer to an adulterer, since in the bed of an unmarried woman any man would be inappropriate, and only a small ajustment to the text (involving the word father) would produce rather a reference to Aerope and Thyestes. Either way, Aerope must be the Kretan mother, married to Atreus, but if the manuscript correction is accepted we would have here our first reference to Aerope being thrown from a cliff as punishment for her adultery. The account of the Byzantine Orestia scholia at line 812, where Sophokles is said to attest that fate for Aerope, seems to guarantee that it appeared somewhere in his work, but of course the scholiast might be referring to this same passage of the Aias, where the meaning is as we have seen controversial.

No later source says anything at all about Aerope's death, ... The scholia for the Aias passage tell us that in Euripides' Kressai Nauplios (as usual disobeying Katreus' order to drown Aerope) gave her to Pleisthenes in marriage (Σ Ai 1279). ...

Grimal

s.v. Aerope

Hard

p. 354

KATREUS, the eldest son of and successor of Minos, had four children, a son Althaimenes and three daughters, Apemosyne, Aerope and Klymene.^{99 [Apollod. 3.2.1.]} When he once consulted an oracle ...

p. 355

Katreus had come to fear that his daughters KLYMENE and AEROPE might present a danger to him, and therefore handed them over to Nauplios to be sold abroad. Nauplios treated them more generously, however, as in the similar story of Auge (see p. 543), by offering Aerope to Pleisthenes, king of Mycenae, as a wife and taking Kymene as his own wife.¹⁰⁵ Or according to a conflicting tale from a lost play by Euripides, Katreus asked Nauplios to drown Aerope at sea after discovering that she had been seduced by a slave, but Nauplios took her to Pleisthenes instead¹⁰⁶ Although there was disagreement on whether she married Atreus or Pleisthenes (an obscure figure who was sometimes interposed into the Mycenean king-list between Atreus and Agamemnon, see p. 508), she became the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaos in either case. It so happens that Nauplios is said to have deliveried her to Pleisthenes in surviving accounts of that story. ... As for Klymene, she bore two or more sons to Nauplios, including the prince of inventions, Palamedes (see p. 236).

¹⁰⁵ Apollod. 3.2.2

¹⁰⁶ Schol. Soph. Ajax 1279 citing Eur. Kressai.

p. 506

For whatever reason, the golden lamb proved to be no blessing for Atreus, for his wife Aerope was seduced by Thyestes and secretly stole it to advance her lover's cause.

p. 508

Agamemnon and Menelaos are sometimes described as the sons of PLEISTHENES, son of Atreus, rather than as sons of Atreus himself.^{178 [Hes. fr. 194, 195.]} It is stated in this connection that Atreus was married to his niece Kleola or Kleolla, a daughter of Dias, son of Pelops, while Pleisthenes was married to Aerope; or else the pattern is inverted and Atreus is said to have married Aerope as usual while Pleisthenes married Kleola.^{179 [Aerope seems to be the mother of Menelaos in the papyrus fragment in Hes. fr. 195, even if Tzetzes (under fr. 194) quotes 'Hesiod' as saying that Menelaos and Agamemnon were chidren of Pleisthenes and Kleolla. According to Apollod. 3.2.2, Nauplios married Aerope to Pleisthenes, who fathers A. and M. by her (a story probably derived from Euripides, see schol. Soph. Ajax 1297).]} This makes little difference since Pleisthenes is a shadowy figure who is said to have died prematurely, leaving his sons to be reared by Atreus.^{180 [Schol. Il. 2.249.]}

Jebb

1295

Κρήσσης: Aëropè, daughter of Catreus, king of Crete, a descendant of Minos. According to the legend which Sophocles follows here, Catreus found Aëropè with a paramour (a slave), and sent her to Nauplius, king of Euboea, charging him to drown her. Nauplius, however, spared her life, and she afterwards married Atreus. The scholiast on 1297 says that this was the story treated by Euripides in the “Κρῆσσαι” (Nauck Trag. Frag. p. 501); with the difference, however, that Aëropè married Pleisthenes, not Atreus. The “Κρῆσσαι” was produced in 438 B.C. (Argum. Eur. Alc.）

1296

ἐπακτὸν, ‘imported,’ ‘alien’; Tr. 259“στρατὸν..ἐπακτόν”, cp. O. C. 1525 n.: Eur. Ion 592“πατρός τ᾽ ἐπακτοῦ καὐτὸς ὢν νοθαγενής” (bastard son of the alien Xuthus): here, a paramour, as opposed to a lawful husband.

ὁ φιτύσας πατήρ can mean only the father of Aëropè, Catreus. Now, according to the schol. on Eur. Or. 812, Sophocles (in a play not named there, but which was probably the “Ἀτρεὺς ἢ Μυκηναῖαι”) somewhere described Atreus himself as drowning his false wife for a twofold crime,—adultery with Thyestes, and the theft of the golden lamb: “τὴν γυναῖκα Ἀερόπην τιμωρεῖται κατ᾽ ἄμφω...ῥίψας αὐτὴν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, ὡς φησὶ Σοφοκλῆς”. Hence it has been proposed to change πατὴρ into σ᾽ Ἀτρεὺς (Hermann), or σ᾽ ἀνὴρ (Wolff). A simpler correction would be, “ὁ σ᾽ ἐκφύσας πατήρ”. But it cannot be assumed that Sophocles must have followed here the same version which he used elsewhere. In his “Ἀλήτης”, for example, he appears to have modified the version of the “Ὀρεστεία” which he adopts in his Electra (see El., Introd., p. xliii, n. 4). The story of Aëropè's detection by Catreus is effective for the purpose here, which is to represent Agamemnon as born of a mother who had sinned before his birth. Nor is that story necessarily inconsistent with the other, that she was false to Atreus, and was drowned by him.

Smith

s.v. Aerope

(Ἀερόπη), a daughter of Crateus, king of Crete, and granddaughter of Minos. Her father, who had received an oracle that he should lose his life by one of his children, gave her and her sister, Clymene, to Nauplius, who was to sell them in a foreign land. Another sister, Apemone, and her brother. Aethemlenes, who had heard of the oracle, had left Crete and gone to Rhodes. Aerope afterwards married Pleisthenes, the son of Atreus, and became by him the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus. (Apollod. 3.2.1, &c.; Serv. ad Aen. 1.458; Dictys Cret. 1.1.) After the death of Pleisthenes Aeriope married Atreus, and her two sons, who were educated by Atreus, were generally believed to be his sons. Aerope, however, became faithless to Atreus, being seduced by Thyests. (Eur. Orest. 5, &c., Helen. 397; Hyg. Fab. 87; Schol. ad Hom. Il. 2.249; Serv. ad Aen. 11.262.)

Tripp

s.v. Aërope

A daughter of Catreus, king of Crete. Haing learned from an oracle that one of his own children would kill him, Aërope's father gave her and her sister Clymene to Nauplius, king of Nauplia, to be sold abroad. (Sophocles [Ajax 1295-1297] says that Catreus threw Aërope into the sea for taking a foreign slave as her lover.) Atreus married her, but her adultry with his brother Thyestes led to a bloddy feud between the brothers. According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, Aërope was the mother of Pleisthenes; the more usual story is that she was the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaüs. [Apollodorus 3.2.1-2, "Epitome" 2.10.]

Webster

p. 37

The scholiast on the reference to Aerope in ‘’Ajax’’ 1297 says ‘the story is in Euripides’ ‘’Cretan’’ [cont.]

p. 38

’’Women’’ that when Aerope had been seduced by a servant, her father (Katreus of Crete) handed her over to Nauplios with instructions to drown her, but he failed to do so and engaged her to Pleisthenes’. ... the scholiast on Frogs 849 gives various explanations of 'composer of Cretan monodies, dramatizer of unholy marriages'; according to Apollonius 'this could refer to Aerope in the Cretan Women whom Euripides introduced prostituting herself'.

...

The prologue told of Aerope's seduction in Crete and her punishment; ... Probably Euripides followed Hesiod in making Pleisthenes die young and leave his sons (and his wife) to Atreus. ... She seems to have offered Thyestes, the younger brother of Atreus, the golden lamb on which the kingship depended: so Phaidra in the First Hippolytos offered Hippolytos Theseus' throne. Two fragments of this dialogue survive: 461N², 'a young man should be prepared to work for his happiness' and Thyestes' answer, 462N² (with Snell's addition) 'I know only too well that all men are friends of the rich, but the poor have none'.

Atreus must have discovered that Aerope was infatuated with Thyestes and that she had borne Thyestes children. This must be the shameful disaster which he is advised to conceal (fr. 460N²), and he bursts forth into a tirade against wives and marriage (463-4N²). His revenge was to kill Thyestes' sons and serve them up to him to eat. A difficult fragment may belong here: fr. 466N² can be read either as ‘for [cont.]

p. 39

your sake shall I not kill the children?’ or, with a slight change, ‘for your sake am I to kill your daughter?’ The second version has been taken as Nauplios speaking to Katreus; and even if the action takes place at Mycenae, it could conceivably belong in the prologue as a quotation of Nauplios’ words; a minor difficulty is that Katreus gave ‘’two’’ daughters to Nauplios. If this solution is rejected, the first version may have been spoken to Aerope by Atreus before the feast.

p. 238

According to Strabo (XIII, 615) Euripides said that Auge was put in a chest with her child Telephos by her father Aleos, but Athena arranged for the chest to be cast up at the mouth of the Kaikos, and Teuthras found them and ‘made Auge his wife and Telephos his son’. This must depend on ‘’Auge’’ rather than the ‘’Telephos’’ because in the papyrus version of the prologue of the ‘’Telephos’’ (Page, ‘’G.L.P.’’, no. 17) Telephos says that he came to Mysia ‘’and there found’’ his mother.

Wright

p. 83

Two of Agathon's tragedies, Aerope and Thyestes, dramatized portions of the grotesque story of the House of Atreus. ... The story ... was among the most recurrently popular myths for tragedians of all periods. In the surviving works of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles the focus is on the doings of the younger generation of descendants of Atreus and [cont.]

p. 84

Thyestes. Parts of the story were dramatized by Ion (in his Agamemnon), Apollodorus (in his Thyestes), Carcinus the Younger (in Aerope and Orestes), Chaeremon (in Thyestes), Theodectes (in Orestes), and many others; and the theme was still popular many years later among Roman tragedians such as Accius, Varius, Maternus and Seneca.

p. 110

Plutarch regarded Carcinus' [cont.]

p. 111

Aerope (along with ...) as one of the crowning glories of classical theatre, and thought that a day of celebration ought to have been established to mark the aniversary of its first production, while Aelian reports that Aerope could even move tyrants to tears with its emotional power.