Atreus

Thyestes, in Ennius, curses in fine verses indeed, first that Atreus may perish by shipwreck:

the rocks themselves will not be more void of all sensation than that man hanging by the side, for whom he thinks to wish this torment.

for in alternate verses the gravest insults are hurled between the brothers, so that it readily appears that they are the sons of Atreus, of him who plots a new punishment against his brother:

and, long before these, Atreus received Argos from Eurystheus, when Eurystheus marched against Athens, the Athenians refusing to give up the children of Heracles;

Atreus was the brother of Thyestes and the uncle of the children whom he cut to pieces;

and that Aerope, the wife of Atreus, admitted the embrace of Thyestes;

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

He 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.

both the banquet to which Thyestes gave his name, and the treacherous love of Cretan Aerope, in her treacherous marriage;

And he who prepared the deadly banquet for his brother — does he not turn his reasoning this way and that in thought?

Medea and Atreus were just now mentioned by us, heroic persons plotting wicked crimes by reckoning taken and cast up.

and they honored the house of Atreus.

for he persuaded Atreus’ own wife to secret love, and carried off to his house the portent;

but he employed base treachery, unworthy of Atreus.

By Pelops, I entreat you spare me, by your father Atreus and my mother here, who suffers now a second time the pangs she felt before when bearing me!

Alas for the house of the Atreidae;

Do you know of the strife that was between Atreus and Thyestes?

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;

and those that throw the javelin stood up - to wit the son of Atreus, king of men Agamemnon, and Meriones, stalwart squire of Idomeneus.

but to those who understand about names it makes the meaning of Atreus plain enough;

Such an one is the portent connected with the tale of the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes.

I mean the change in the rising and setting of the sun and the other heavenly bodies, how in those times they used to set in the quarter where they now rise, and used to rise where they now set, but the god at the time of the quarrel, you recall, changed all that to the present system as a testimony in favor of Atreus.

That Atreus, your own begetter, set before his brother a most unholy feast made from the flesh of his brother’s children?

) and when Eurystheus did not return again, they say that at the wish of the Mycenaeans themselves, through their fear of the Heraclidae, and also because he appeared to be powerful, and had courted the commons, Atreus received the kingdom of the Mycenaeans and all that Eurystheus ruled over;