Agamemnon sailed first to Mycenae with Trojan spoils and the prophetess Cassandra — and Clytemnestra, who had never forgiven the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis, welcomed him with a feast and cut him down in the bath, Aegisthus sharing the crime in most accounts. Cassandra died with him; Electra saved the infant Orestes, and the Erinyes would wait for the avenger.1
The first homecoming
Of all the kings who took Troy, Agamemnon reached Mycenae first — bringing the spoils of Ilion and Cassandra daughter of Priam, whom he had claimed as prize. His brother Menelaus was still storm-driven toward Egypt; Nestor had already made safe harbour at Pylos; Odysseus wandered yet among gods and monsters.2
The bath⚖
Clytemnestra had never forgiven the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis. She welcomed her husband with a feast and, when he stepped into the bath, cut him down — Aegisthus her lover sharing the murder in Apollodorus and Hyginus, though Homer's shade of Agamemnon sometimes lays the killing on Aegisthus alone while naming Clytemnestra as the plotter who did not even close her husband's eyes as he died.3
Cassandra and the saved prince
Cassandra died with Agamemnon — the full tale of the prophetess' curse and her piteous end lives in the nested episode at Mycenae. Clytemnestra also killed Tantalus son of Thyestes, whom Agamemnon had brought home as a child. Electra saved the infant Orestes and sent him to Strophius in Phocis; Pylades would later stand beside the avenger when the Erinyes came.4
The warning in Hades
When Odysseus descended to the house of Hades, Agamemnon's shade came among the heroes of Troy and told how he had died — not like Achilles, glorious on the plain, but betrayed in his own hall. He warned the Ithacan king that no death is more terrible than when a treacherous wife plots against the husband who trusted her.5
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Episodes
How the centuries saw it
Clytemnestra and Agamemnon
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1817
Guérin's Louvre night-scene: the returning king asleep as Clytemnestra hesitates with the dagger and Aegisthus urges the blow — Aeschylus' homecoming murder at the hinge.
Clytemnestra
John Collier, 1882
Collier's queen just after the deed: bloodied axe in hand on the palace threshold — Agamemnon's murder already fact behind the curtain.
Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos Watches for the Beacon Fires Which Are to Announce the Return of Agamemnon
Frederic Leighton, c. 1874
Leighton paints the watch that opens Aeschylus' Agamemnon: Clytemnestra alone on the Argive walls, waiting for the beacons that will bring her husband home to the axe.
The Ghost of Clytemnestra Awakening the Furies
John Downman, 1781
Downman stages the sequel the murder demands: the queen's shade rouses the Erinyes against Orestes — blood calling for blood after Agamemnon's death.
On screen
In music & on stage
In play
Agamemnon (play)
Aeschylus
The first play of the Oresteia — Clytemnestra's axe in the bath still defines how tragedy stages a homecoming murder.
Oresteia
Aeschylus
The trilogy that begins with Agamemnon's death and ends in Athenian justice — Western drama's founding blood-cycle.
Clytemnestra
The queen who waits with the net and the blade — Agamemnon's murder forever wears her name.