InGreek mythology,Aerope (Ancient Greek: Ἀερόπη)[1] was aCretan princess as the daughter ofCatreus, king of Crete. She was the sister ofClymene,Apemosyne andAlthaemenes. After an oracle said he would be killed by one of his children, Catreus gave Aerope toNauplius to be sold abroad.[2] Nauplius spared her, and she became the wife ofAtreus orPleisthenes (or both). By most accounts, she is the mother ofAgamemnon andMenelaus. While the wife of Atreus, she became the lover of his brotherThyestes, and gave Thyestes the golden lamb that allowed him to become king ofMycenae.[3]
Aerope's father was Catreus, son ofMinos, and king ofCrete. Catreus had two other daughters, Clymene and Apemosyne, and a son, Althaemenes.[4]
In most accounts, Aerope was the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus, fathered byAtreus. However, their father is occasionally named asPleisthenes.[5] In other retellings, Aerope was instead the mother of Pleisthenes by Atreus. When Pleisthenes died young, his sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, were adopted by Atreus.[6] In others, Aerope was the wife ofboth Atreus and Pleisthenes, having married Atreus after Pleisthenes died, with Atreus adopting her children from the first marriage.[7] Such accounts were perhaps attempts to reconcile separate traditions.[8]
According toHyginus, Aerope was the mother of two sons,Tantalus andPleisthenes, fathered by Thyestes. He claims these were the children that Atreus famously fed to Thyestes.[9] Additionally, Aerope has also been named as the mother of a daughter, Anaxibia.[10]
According to the tradition followed byEuripides in his lost playCretan Women (Kressai), Catreus found Aerope in bed with a slave and handed her over toNauplius to be drowned. Instead, Nauplius spared Aerope's life and she marriedPleisthenes.[11]Sophocles, in his playAjax, may also refer to Aerope's father finding her in bed with a man and handing her over to Nauplius to be drowned. However, the potentially corrupt text may instead refer to Aerope's husband Atreus finding her in bed with Thyestes, and having her drowned (see below).[12]
The mythographerApollodorus followed a different tradition, with no mention of any sexual transgression. In his account, Catreus gave Aerope and her sister Clymene to Nauplius to be sold off in foreign lands after an oracle prophesied that he would be killed by one of his children. Aerope's brother Althaemenes also found out about the prophecy, and fearing thathe would be the one to kill Catreus, fled toRhodes with Apemosyne.[13] In this telling, Aerope eventually becomes the wife of Pleisthenes.
From Crete, Aerope was taken toMycenae. There, while the wife of Atreus, she became the lover of Atreus' twin brotherThyestes, involving herself in the brothers' power struggle for the kingship of Mycenae.[14]
Atreus and Thyestes were the sons ofPelops andHippodamia, king and queen ofPisa.[15] Their desire for their father's throne led to the murder of their half-brotherChrysippus, for which they were banished, and sought refuge in Mycenae.[16] According to Hyginus, the brothers were encouraged to commit the act by their mother Hippodamia, who killed herself upon being accused of doing so.[17] When thePerseid dynasty came to an end, the Myceneans received a prophesy saying they should choose a son of Pelops as their king. Aerope stole the golden lamb (a portent linked to the kingship of Mycenae) from her husband Atreus and gave it to Thyestes, so that the Myceneans would choose Thyestes as their king.[18]
From Byzantine period annotations to Euripides'Orestes, we learn that, in some unspecified Sophocles work, Atreus cast Aerope into the sea in revenge for her adultery and theft of the golden lamb.[19]
According to Homer, Agamemnon was the son of Pelops’ son Atreus, and his mother was Aerope; but according to Hesiod he was the son of Pleisthenes [and Aerope?].[21]
Since Aerope is not inHomer's Iliad orOdyssey (where Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Atreus, with no mother mentioned),[22] the scholiast is presumably taking the Homeric reference from somewhere in theEpic Cycle, which was also attributed to Homer.[23]
Fragmentary lines from theHesiodicCatalogue of Women seem to make Aerope, (without naming a father) the mother of three sons Agamemnon, Menelaus (and Anaxibios?).[24] While theByzantine scholarJohn Tzetzes says that according to "Hesiod", Aerope was, byAtreus, the mother ofPleisthenes.[25]
The story of Aerope, Atreus and Thyestes, was popular in Greek tragedy, however no complete plays on the story survive.[26]Aeschylus' playAgamemnon contains several obscure allusions to the story, which indicate that, by at least 458 BC, the story was well known.[27] In that play,Cassandra hints at Aerope's affair with Thyestes, where he is referred to as "the one who defiled" his "brother's bed".[28]
There are many references to Aerope in the plays of Euripides. She was apparently an important character in his lost tragedyCretan Women.[29] The play told how Aerope was "secretly violated by a servant", and that when her father discovered this, he gave her to Nauplius to be drowned, but instead Nauplius gave her in marriage to Pleisthenes.[30] According to the scholiast onAristophanes'Frogs 849, her behavior in the play was "like a whore's".[31] This, along with Euripides treatment of other "profligate women" suggests that the play dealt with Aerope's seduction of Thyestes, rather than Thyestes' seduction of Aerope.[32] Although she was given to Pleisthenes as his wife, in hisCretan Women, in his playsOrestes, andHelen, Euripides has Agamemnon and Menelaus as the sons of Aerope and Atreus.[33] Also in hisOrestes, he refers to the "treacherous love of Cretan Aerope in her treacherous marriage",[34] while in hisElectra, he tells us that Thyestes, "persuaded Atreus' own wife to secret love, and carried off to his house the portent; coming before the assembly he declared that he had in his house the horned sheep with fleece of gold."[35] Euripides possibly also wrote a playThyestes.[36]
Sophocles, in his playAjax, refers to Aerope being found in bed with a lover, and ordered drowned by someone's "father". As the text stands, the "father" is Aerope's, and the reference is to Catreus giving her to Nauplius to be drowned, as in Euripides’Cretan Women.[37] However, a small "correction" to the text would make the father Agamemnon's, and the reference would then be to Atreus finding Aerope in bed with Thyestes.[38] There were several other plays by Sophocles, all lost, which presumably also dealt with the story:Atreus,Thyestes (possibly more than one), andThyestes in Sicyon.[39] Byzantine scholia to Euripides'Orestes 812, possibly referring to the passage from theAjax noted above, say that in some (unnamed) play by Sophocles, Atreus "revenged himself on his wife Aerope (both because of her adultery with Thyestes and because she gave away the lamb) by casting her into the sea".[40]
Agathon, wrote a play titledAerope (and aThyestes), and perhaps so did the younger Carcinus.[41] We are told that in some such play, Alexander of Pherai was moved to tears by the performance of the actor Theodorus as Aerope, suggesting a sympathetic portrayal.[42]
The Roman mythographerHyginus has Agamemnon as the son of Aerope and Atreus[43] and Tantalus and Plethenes as the sons of Aerope and Thyestes, with these being the children that Atreus fed to Thyestes.[44]
InOvid'sArs Amatoria, Aerope is given as one of several examples of "women's lust" being "keener" than men's and having "more of madness":[45]
Had the Cretan woman abstained from love for Thyestes (and is it such a feat to be able to do without a particular man?), Phoebus had not broken off in mid-career, and wresting his car about turned round his steeds to face the dawn.
The mythographerApollodorus gives the following account:
Catreus, son of Minos, had three daughters, Aerope, Clymene, and Apemosyne, and a son, Althaemenes. When Catreus inquired of the oracle how his life should end, the god said that he would die by the hand of one of his children. ... And Catreus gave Aerope and Clymene to Nauplius to sell into foreign lands; and of these two Aerope became the wife of Plisthenes, who begat Agamemnon and Menelaus.[46]
However elsewhere he says that Agamemnon and Menelaus were the sons of Aerope and Atreus[47] and that
the wife of Atreus was Aerope, daughter of Catreus, and she loved Thyestes. And Atreus once vowed to sacrifice to Artemis the finest of his flocks; but when a golden lamb appeared, they say that he neglected to perform his vow, and having choked the lamb, he deposited it in a box and kept it there, and Aerope gave it to Thyestes, by whom she had been debauched.[48]
Stories of Aerope share key elements with those ofAuge andDanae. These elements include prophesies of death, daughters' sexual impurity, and punishment by their fathers by either being cast into the sea or given away to be sold overseas.[49]
Auge was the daughter ofAleus, king ofTegea, and the mother of the heroTelephus. According to one version of the story, Aleus had received a prophesy that his sons would be killed by the son of Auge. In response, Aleus made Auge a priestess of Athena, a role which required her to remain a virgin. Nevertheless, she became pregnant byHeracles.[50] Then, by various accounts, she was either cast into the sea[51] or given to Nauplius to be either drowned[52] or sold overseas.[53] However, regardless of the telling, she ends up inMysia as the wife of KingTeuthras.
Danae was the daughter ofAcrisius, king ofArgos, and the mother of the heroPerseus. An oracle told Acrisius that he would be killed by the son of Danae, so he locked her away. Nevertheless, Danae became pregnant byZeus and gave birth to their son Perseus. In response, Acrisius locked her and her son in a wooden chest and cast it into the sea, hoping to kill them without invoking the wrath of the gods. They survived through Zeus and Poseidon's intervention, and washed up on the shores ofSeriphos.[54]
^Gantz, p. 552; Hard,p. 508;Tzetzes,Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (=HesiodCatalogue of Womenfr. 137b Most); Compare with Scholia onIliad 2.249, which has Pleisthenes dying young and his sons raised by Atreus;Hyginus,Fabulae86, which has Aerope as Atreus' wife and Pleisthenes as Atreus' son; Scholia onIliad 1.7 (=HesiodCatalogue of Womenfr. 137a Most), which says that, according to Hesiod, Agamemnon was the son of Pleisthenes; andDictys Cretensis,1.1, which has Agamemnon and Menelaus, as the sons of Aerope and Pleisthenes, being adopted by Atreus.
^Gantz, pp. 552–553. According to Webster, p. 38, Euripides'Cretan Women probably had "Pleisthenes die young and leave his sons (and his wife) to Atreus".
^Collard and Cropp 2008b,pp. 79–80; Fowler, p. 435 n. 28; Grimal, s.v. Aerope.
^Hard,p. 355; Gantz, p. 271. Euripides' treatment of the story is according to the Scholia onSophocles,Ajax 1297, citing Euripides'Cretan Women, see: Collard and Cropp 2008a,pp. 520, 521; Webster, pp. 37–38; Jebb's note toAjax1295Κρήσσης.
^Gantz, pp. 554–555; Jebb's note toAjax1296ὁ φιτύσας πατήρ. The possible Sophoclean reference is found in lines 1295–1297, spoken byTeucer toAgamemnon. Here, by way of insulting Agamemnon, Teucer malign's Agamemnon's mother Aerope as having been found in bed with a strange man, by a "father" who then has her drowned. The difficulty arises in knowing whose "father" is meant, Aerope's, or Agamemnon's. CompareJebb's: "a Cretan mother,whose father (i.e. Catrues) found ... ", with'sLloyd-Jones's: "a Cretan mother,whom your father (i.e. Atreus), finding ...".
^Byzantine scholia atOrestes line 812, see Gantz, pp. 548, 555 and Jebb's note toAjax1296ὁ φιτύσας πατήρ.
^For a discussion on sources on Aerope's story see Gantz, pp. 545–550, 552–553.
^Scholia onIliad 1.7 (=HesiodCatalogue of Womenfr. 137a Most). Compare with Scholia onTzetzes'Exegesis in Iliadem 1.122 (=HesiodCatalogue of Womenfr. 137c Most), which says the same thing. That the scholiast means that Aerope was also the mother in Hesiod, is assumed by Armstrong,p. 12, while Gantz, p. 552, simply says that according to the scholium, "while Homer makes Agamemnon the son of Atreus and Aerope ... in Hesiod he and his brother are the sons of Pleisthenes". Collard and Cropp 2008b,p. 79, says that in the Hesiodic tradition, "Pleisthenes and (probably) Aerope ... were the parents of Agamemnon and Menelaus".
^Gantz, p. 552. AlthoughAtreides, the standard Homeric epithet for Agamemnon or Menelaus, normally understood to mean "son of Atreus", can also mean simply "descendant of Atreus", in some places Homer specifically refers to Agamemnon or Menelaus as a "son" of Atreus ("Ἀτρέος υἱέ") e.g.Iliad11.131,Odyssey4.462, see alsoIliad2.104 ff..
^Collard and Cropp 2008a,p. 516. For discussions of the play, see Collard and Cropp 2008a,pp. 516–527 (including testimonies and fragments); Webster, pp. 37–39.
^Gantz, pp. 554–556;Sophocles, 'Ajax 1295–1297,(Jebb): [Teucer addressing Agamemnon] "you yourself were born from a Cretan mother, whose father found ..".
^Gantz, p. 555; Jebb's note toAjax1296ὁ φιτύσας πατήρ;Sophocles, 'Ajax 1295–1297,(Lloyd-Jones): "you yourself are the son of a Cretan mother, whom your father, finding ...". The Greek text has Aerope being found in bed with anepaktos ('alien'), which, as Gantz points out, "would more naturally refer to an adulterer".
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