Agamem`non, a son of Atreus, king of Mycenæ and general-in-chief of
the Greeks in the Trojan war, represented as a man of stately presence
and a proud spirit. On the advice of the soothsayer Calchas sacrificed
his daughter
Iphigenia (
q. v.) for the success of the enterprise
he conducted. He was assassinated by Ægisthus and Clytæmnestra, his wife,
on his return from the war. His fate and that of his house is the subject
of Æschylus' trilogy "Oresteia."