the ancestral curse on the house of Atreus
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 5 anchored passages
one pain comes after another · the curse of the house of Pelops · the family's hereditary doom · troubles dart out from troubles
spoken of as
1 expressionAncestral curse of the house of Atreus1 mention
Iphigenia in Tauris (Greek)
Once they ruled as prosperous kings in Argos, but troubles dart out from troubles:
in the texts
Iphigenia in Tauris
The recurring, seemingly hereditary pattern of catastrophe afflicting the descendants of Tantalus and Pelops, culminating in Agamemnon's line.
Once they ruled as prosperous kings in Argos, but troubles dart out from troubles:
We are fortunate in our family, but in our circumstances, my sister, we were born to be unfortunate in life.
One pain comes after another, to the house of the golden lamb.
Orestes
The theme, elaborated at length by the Chorus and Electra, that the house of Atreus is bound by a hereditary curse stretching back through generations of crime.
by avenging fiends, this house has fallen, fallen, through blood, by reason of the hurling Myrtilus from the chariot.
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, for Atreus, breeder of horses;
The great prosperity and the prowess, proudly boasted throughout Hellas and by the streams of Simois, 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 the slaughter of high-born children;