Thyestes
mythological figure · 7 works · 13 mentions · 16 anchored passages
Thyestean · Thyestes' son (of Aegisthus) · his brother · that man sprung of Tantalus · the children of Thyestes
in the texts
Orations
Mythological figure whose sufferings were a subject of tragic performance, excluded from the sacred choruses endorsed by the speaker
And accordingly neither tragic nor comic actors, nor producers of unmixed laughter through mimes, nor dancers nor chorus-men — save those of the sacred choruses, but not those singing or dancing the sufferings of Niobe or Thyestes — nor lyre-singers nor flute-players contending for victory in theatres, even if certain of the famous cities will on these accounts be ill-disposed toward us, Smyrna an …
And the children of Thyestes were cut to pieces, and the father lay with Pelopia and begot Aegisthus;
Atreus was the brother of Thyestes and the uncle of the children whom he cut to pieces;
Tusculan Disputations
Mythological figure who, in Ennius' tragedy, curses his brother 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.
\" Will you, Thyestes, condemn yourself and rob yourself of the light because of the force of another's crime?
Orestes
Brother of Atreus whose children were slaughtered and served to him at a feast.
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.
Well, Atreus slew Thyestes’ children and feasted him on them.
both the banquet to which Thyestes gave his name, and the treacherous love of Cretan Aerope, in her treacherous marriage;
On the Nature of the Gods
Brother of Atreus, seduced Atreus's wife and stole a golden-fleeced lamb, later served his own children at a banquet in revenge.
'I add,' he says, 'to this, that as a portent the father of the heavenly ones sent me a prodigy, the prop of my reign, a lamb among the flock, bright with golden fleece, which Thyestes once dared to steal from the palace, wherein he took my wife to aid him in the deed.
Electra
Aegisthus's father, whose ancient quarrel with his brother Atreus over the golden lamb is recalled by the Chorus as the root of the house's curse.
but at home he died by the guile of his wife Clytemnestra and the hand of Aegisthus, son of Thyestes.
the flute, handmaid of the Muse’s song, sounded its note sweetly, and lovely songs of the golden lamb swelled forth, saying that Thyestes had the luck;
Kill Thyestes’ son and your mother.
Iphigenia in Tauris
Brother of Atreus, whose quarrel over a golden ram is recalled as a shared family memory confirming Orestes's identity.
Do you know of the strife that was between Atreus and Thyestes?
Iphigenia:
Ad Nationes
Mythological figure whose story of eating his own children is invoked as the model for the cannibalism accusation.
They keep silence, then, and accept it, and break out in no Thyestean or Oedipal tragedy, and do not drag it forth before the people.