Monday 11 May 2015

Aerope

Aerope1
In Greek mythology, Aerope was described as the daughter of  Catreus, the king of Crete (son of Minos) and sister of Clymene, Apemosyne and Althaemenes.
Aerope

                     According to some versions, Catreus caught his daughter, Aerope, in bed with a slave and handed her over to Nauplius (son of Clytoneusson) to be drowned, but Nauplius spared Aerope's life and she married Atreus (or Pleisthenes, son of Atreus), the son of Pelops, and king of Mycenae.

                         According to some versions, Catreus received an oracle saying that he would be killed by one of his children, so Catreus gave Aerope and her sister Clymene to Nauplius to be sold off in foreign lands. Aerope another sister, Apemone, and her brother, Aethemenes, who had heard of the oracle, had fled from Crete and went to Rhodes. Nauplius kept Clymene for himself and Aerope was sold to Atreus or Atreus' son Pleisthenes. 
                                                                    In some version, Aerope married Pleisthenes, by whom she became the mother of Agamemnon, Menelaus and Anaxibia. Because Pleisthenes was sickly, he died young, and so Atreus decided to marry his daughter-in-law and adopt his grandchildren. In other version, by Atreus,  Aerope became mother of Agamemnon, Menelaus and Anaxibia.
Aerope and Thyestes

                                                 Later Aerope had secret love affair with her husband brother, Thyestes.  
  Atreus, the king of Mycenae, vowed to sacrifice his best lamb to goddess Artemis. Upon searching his flock, however, Atreus discovered a golden lamb which he gave to his wife, Aerope, to hide from the goddess. Thyestes, then convinced Atreus to agree that whoever had the lamb should be king. Aerope stole the golden lamb from her husband Atreus and gave it to Thyestes, so that the Myceneans would choose Thyestes as their king. Thyestes produced the lamb and claimed the throne.
                             But Zeus sent Hermes to instruct Atreus to make a new agreement with Thyestes by which Atreus should be king if the sun should go backwards. And when Thyestes  agreed to this impossibility, the sun set in the east, as nothing was impossible for Zeus, the king of gods.
                                             Atreus retook the throne and banished Thyestes. Atreus then learned of Thyestes' and Aerope's adultery and plotted revenge. He killed Thyestes' sons and cooked them, save their hands and feet. He tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and then taunted him with their hands and feet. Thyestes was forced into exile for eating the flesh of a human. 

   In some versions, Aerope was the mother by Thyestes of two sons, Tantalus and Plisthenes. According to some version, it may have been these children that Atreus famously fed to Thyestes.
                                      According to some versions, Atreus cast Aerope into the sea in revenge for her adultery and theft of the golden lamb.

Aerope2
In Greek mythology, Aerope was described as the daughter of Cepheus of Arcadia. She was loved by Ares, god of war, and had by him a son Aeropus, but herself died in labor. By the will of Ares, Aerope's dead body was still able to produce an abundance of breastmilk to feed the newborn Aeropus.
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