Aerope

Aerope was a princess of Crete, a daughter of Catreus and granddaughter of Minos. She became the wife of Atreus of Mycenae, or in one account of Plisthenes, and was the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus. In the story of the house of Atreus she is the wife who secretly gave the golden lamb, the sign of kingship, to her brother-in-law Thyestes.

Family

Apollodorus says that Catreus, a son of Minos, had three daughters, Aerope, Clymene and Apemosyne, and a son, Althaemenes (Library 3.2.1). Euripides calls Agamemnon and Menelaus the sons of Atreus and of Cretan Aerope (Orestes 16–18), and Apollodorus’ summary of the Trojan catalogue gives the same parents (Epitome 3.12).

Exile from Crete

The sources give different reasons why Aerope left Crete. In Apollodorus, an oracle had told Catreus that one of his children would kill him, and Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to be sold into foreign lands. Clymene became the wife of Nauplius, and Aerope became the wife of Plisthenes, who was the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus (Library 3.2.1–2). In Sophocles’ Ajax, Teucer says that Atreus’ wife was a Cretan woman whose father found her with a stranger lover and gave her to the fish to be destroyed (Ajax 1295–1297). The sources also disagree on whether her husband was Plisthenes or Atreus. A fragment of Hesiod’s Catalogue, quoted by Tzetzes, makes Pleisthenes a son of Atreus and Aerope, and Agamemnon, Menelaus and Anaxibia the children of Pleisthenes and Cleolla, a daughter of Dias; in that version Aerope is their grandmother.

The Golden Lamb

Apollodorus tells the best-known story about her. Atreus had vowed to sacrifice the finest animal of his flocks to Artemis. When a golden lamb appeared, he neglected his vow, strangled the lamb, hid it in a box and kept it, and his wife Aerope, who loved Thyestes, gave it to him. The Mycenaeans had received an oracle telling them to choose a king from the sons of Pelops, and they sent for Atreus and Thyestes. When the claim to the throne was argued, Thyestes said that the kingdom should belong to the man who owned the golden lamb. Atreus agreed, and Thyestes produced it and was made king (Epitome 2.10–11).

Then Zeus sent Hermes to Atreus, telling him to propose that he should be king if the sun went backward. Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east, and Atreus took the kingdom and banished Thyestes, since the god had plainly shown that Thyestes was a usurper (Epitome 2.12). Euripides alludes to the same story in two passages. In the Electra the chorus sing that Thyestes persuaded Atreus’ wife in secret union and carried the portent to the house (Electra 699–725). In the Orestes, Electra laments the golden lamb, the strife that turned the sun’s chariot, and the marriage bed of Cretan Aerope, won by deceit (Orestes 996–1012).

Aerope and Thyestes

When Atreus learned of the adultery, he pretended friendship and invited Thyestes back. He then killed Thyestes’ sons, Aglaus, Callileon and Orchomenus, whom Thyestes had by a Naiad nymph, though they had sat as suppliants at the altar of Zeus. He cooked their bodies and served them to their father (Apollodorus, Epitome 2.13). In Aeschylus, Cassandra hears the Furies of the house singing of its first ruin and loathing the man who defiled his brother’s bed (Agamemnon 1190–1193). The surviving sources do not say how Aerope died.

Aerope Sources

Apollodorus, Library 3.2.1–2 and Epitome 2.10–13, 3.12; Euripides, Orestes 16–18 and 996–1012; Euripides, Electra 699–726; Sophocles, Ajax 1295–1297; Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1190–1193; Hesiod, Catalogue of Women fragment (quoted by Tzetzes, Exegesis of the Iliad).

See Also: Minos, Atreus, Pleisthenes, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Thyestes, Pelops, Trojan War