Mythic Figure

Thyestes

Θυέστης

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Atreus’s rival brother, fed his own children — father of the avenger Aegisthus.

Seducer of his brother’s wife and claimant of his throne, Thyestes ate the flesh of his own sons at Atreus’s table and pronounced the curse that shapes three tragedies. His surviving son Aegisthus — begotten, in the grimmest tradition, expressly to be an avenger — completes the reprisal a generation later by murdering Agamemnon.

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