Atreus

Atreus, son of Pelops, grandson of Tantalus, and elder brother of Thyestes. He was married first to Cleola, who bore him Pleisthenes, then to Ærope, who had been wife of his son Pleisthenes, and who bore him Agamemnon and Menelaus, and lastly to Pelopia, daughter of his brother Thyestes. Having to flee for the murder of his half-brother Chrysippus, he came along with Thyestes to Mycenæ, and ultimately became its king. Here his wife Ærope was seduced by Thyestes, who, when banished for this outrage, sent Pleisthenes to slay Atreus, but the latter slew the youth instead, not knowing him at the time to be his own son. In revenge he killed the two sons of Thyestes, and placed their flesh before the father at a banquet ostentatiously made to celebrate the reconciliation. The unhappy father fled in horror, and the vengeance of heaven, in the shape of famine, fell on Atreus for his abominable atrocity. Advised by the oracle to call back Thyestes, he went to search for him, and at the court of King Thesprotus married his third wife Pelopia, whom he believed to be a daughter of Thesprotus, but who was really a daughter of Thyestes, and at the time with child by him. This child, Ægisthus, afterwards slew Atreus when commissioned by the latter to slay his own father Thyestes. The tragic fate of the house of Pelops gave materials to the great tragic poets of Greece, whom Milton in his Il Penseroso speaks of as 'presenting Thebes or Pelops' line, or the tale of Troy divine.'