Thyestes

Also Known As: Greek Thyestes, Θυέστης; son of Pelops, grandson of Tantalus, brother of Atreus and father of Aegisthus
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He has no powers at all, only an appetite and a willingness to accept anything that is put in front of him.
Role in Mythos: He is the brother whose adultery costs Atreus a throne and whose children Atreus cooks and serves to him, an act that curses the house of Pelops down to Orestes.
Relation to Humans: He is human, and the horror of his story is that everything in it is done by relatives at close range with ordinary domestic equipment. Nothing supernatural touches him except the sun, which once ran backwards to settle an argument about which of two brothers should be king.

The meat has been boiled rather than roasted, which is unusual at a reconciliation feast, and it has been carved small. The man eating it has been in exile and has not eaten well in a long time, so he takes a second helping without asking what it is. His brother sits across the table and watches him do it. There is a covered dish to one side that has not been brought out yet.

Thyestes is the son of Pelops and the grandson of Tantalus, which means the appetite runs in the family and so does the menu. His grandfather had once cut up his own son and served him to the gods to see whether they would notice; they did, and Tantalus is still standing in the water that will not rise to his mouth. His father Pelops won a chariot race, a bride and a kingdom by arranging for the opposing charioteer to be killed, and then killed the man who had arranged it, who cursed the line on his way down. By the time the story reaches Thyestes and his brother Atreus, the family has an established method and a debt.

The quarrel between them starts with a sheep. Atreus vowed the finest animal in his flocks to Artemis, and when a lamb with a golden fleece appeared he found he could not part with it. He choked it, put it in a box, and kept it. What Atreus did not know is that his wife Aerope was sleeping with his brother, and that she took the box out of the house and gave it to him.

Then Mycenae needed a king, and the oracle said the king should be a son of Pelops, and both brothers were sent for. In front of the assembled people Thyestes proposed the fairest possible test: let the throne go to whichever of them owns the golden lamb. Atreus, who believed the lamb was still in his box, agreed in public. Thyestes produced it. It is the best moment he ever has.

It does not last, because Zeus takes an interest. Hermes is sent to Atreus with a counter-proposal to put to his brother: let Atreus be king if the sun goes backward in the sky. Thyestes, who had every reason to think this was a safe bet, agreed to that as well. The sun set in the east. Nobody could argue with a sky that had reversed itself, and Atreus took the throne and drove his brother out of the country.

Later Atreus learned about the adultery, and having learned it, sent a herald after his exiled brother with an offer of peace.

Thyestes came back. He brought his three young sons with him, Aglaus and Callileon and Orchomenus, whose mother was a water nymph. Atreus killed them at the altar of Zeus, where they had sat down as suppliants, which in Greek terms is the second worst thing in this paragraph. He cut them apart and boiled the pieces and served them to their father with the hands and the feet held back. Thyestes ate a lot, and he ate quickly. Then Atreus brought out the extremities and showed him what was left.

In the version Aeschylus puts in the mouth of Aegisthus, the toes and fingers were broken off and set aside, and the father took the servings he did not recognise without looking twice, and when he understood what had happened he cried out, went backwards, brought the meal up, and kicked the table over as he laid a curse on the whole line. The curse he speaks there is the engine of the entire Oresteia. Agamemnon dies in a bath in Argos two generations later because of a dinner in Mycenae.

What Thyestes does next has no defenders. He goes to the oracle to ask how he can be revenged, and is told that it can be done if he fathers a son on his own daughter. He does it. The child is Aegisthus, who grows up, learns whose son he is, kills Atreus, and hands the kingdom back to his father. The sources do not agree about him: Aeschylus makes him simply the third child of Thyestes, exiled with his father as an infant in swaddling clothes, with no incest anywhere in the account. Two of the most-read versions of the story cannot settle who Aegisthus was, and both were written for audiences who already knew the answer.

Thyestes has the throne back for a little while. Then Agamemnon and Menelaus, the sons of Atreus, are brought home by Tyndareus, and they drive their uncle out again to live on Cythera, having first made him swear an oath at the altar of Hera. That is where the record leaves him, on an island, under oath, alive.

There is nothing in him that could be called a power. He wins the kingdom twice and loses it twice, and both wins come from someone else’s dishonesty rather than from anything he does. What he has is patience, and the ability to wait out an exile, and a stomach.

The weakness is the same organ. Everything that destroys him arrives as an offer he accepts without inspecting: a stolen lamb from a lover, a wager on the movement of the sun, a herald bringing terms of friendship, a dish of boiled meat at his brother’s table. The one time he is warned in advance, by an oracle, the warning is about a thing he then does deliberately. He is not a fool. He is simply a man who has never once turned down what was put in front of him, in a family where the food is the trap.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Thyestes in Greek mythology?

Thyestes was a son of Pelops and brother of Atreus, kings of Mycenae, and the grandson of Tantalus. He seduced Atreus’s wife Aerope, briefly took the throne of Mycenae with a stolen golden lamb, and was later served his own children at a banquet by his brother. He was the father of Aegisthus.

What happened at the banquet of Thyestes?

Atreus lured Thyestes back from exile with an offer of peace, killed his three sons Aglaus, Callileon and Orchomenus at the altar of Zeus, cut them up and boiled them, and served the meat to Thyestes without the hands and feet. When Thyestes had eaten his fill, Atreus produced the extremities to show him what he had done. Thyestes vomited and cursed the whole house of Pelops.

Why did the sun move backwards for Atreus and Thyestes?

Thyestes had taken the throne by producing a golden lamb his lover Aerope had stolen from Atreus. Zeus sent Hermes to arrange a second wager: Atreus would be king if the sun reversed its course. Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east, and the reversal was taken as divine proof that Thyestes had usurped the kingdom.

Was Aegisthus really the son of Thyestes and his own daughter?

The sources disagree. Apollodorus says an oracle told Thyestes he could only be avenged by a son fathered on his own daughter, and that Aegisthus was born that way and later killed Atreus. Aeschylus makes Aegisthus simply the third son of Thyestes, driven into exile as a baby alongside his father, with no incest in the story at all.

How does the curse of Thyestes affect the Trojan War stories?

The curse Thyestes utters after the banquet falls on the descendants of Pelops, which includes Atreus’s sons Agamemnon and Menelaus. Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia, his murder by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, and the revenge taken by Orestes are all told as the continuing consequences of that meal.