[380] Æschyl. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608; Hygin. 86; Attii Fragm. 19. This was the story of the old poem entitled Alkmæônis; seemingly also of Pherekydês, though the latter rejected the story that Hermês had produced the golden lamb with the special view of exciting discord between the two brothers, in order to avenge the death of Myrtilus by Pelops (see Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 996).
A different legend, alluded to in Soph. Aj. 1295 (see Schol. _ad loc._), recounted that Aeropê had been detected by her father Katreus in unchaste commerce with a low-born person; he entrusted her in his anger to Nauplius, with directions to throw her into the sea: Nauplius however not only spared her life, but betrothed her to Pleisthenês, father of Agamemnôn and son of Atreus.
The tragedy entitled _Atreus_ of the Latin poet Attius, seems to have brought out, with painful fidelity, the harsh and savage features of this family legend (see Aul. Gell. xiii. 2, and the fragments of Attius now remaining, together with the tragedy called Thyestês, of Seneca).
Homeric legend is never thus revolting. Agamemnôn and Menelaus are known to us chiefly with their Homeric attributes, which have not been so darkly overlaid by subsequent poets as those of Atreus and Thyestês. Agamemnôn and Menelaus are affectionate brothers: they marry two sisters, the daughters of Tyndareus king of Sparta, Klytæmnêstra and Helen; for Helen, the real offspring of Zeus, passes as the daughter of Tyndareus.[382] The “king of men” reigns at Mykênæ; Menelaus succeeds Tyndareus at Sparta. Of the rape of Helen, and the siege of Troy consequent upon it, I shall speak elsewhere: I now touch only upon the family legends of the Atreids. Menelaus, on his return from Troy with the recovered Helen, is driven by storms far away to the distant regions of Phœnicia and Egypt, and is exposed to a thousand dangers and hardships before he again sets foot in Peloponnêsus. But at length he reaches Sparta, resumes his kingdom, and passes the rest of his days in uninterrupted happiness and splendor: being moreover husband of the godlike Helen and son-in-law of Zeus, he is even spared the pangs of death. When the fulness of his days is past he is transported to the Elysian fields, there to dwell along with “the golden-haired Rhadamanthus” in a delicious climate and in undisturbed repose.[383]