Clytemnestra
daughter of Tyndareus in Greek mythology
In Greek mythology, Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the half-sister of Helen of Troy. With Agamemnon, she is the mother of Iphigenia, Orestes, Electra, and Chrysothemis. She appears as a character in multiple ancient Greek works, including the Homeric epics and plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. She is infamous for murdering Agamemnon and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had taken as a war prize, when they returned from the Trojan War. In Homer's Iliad, her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued. However, in the Odyssey, Agamemnon's ghost tells Odysseus about Clytemnestra's role in his brutal murder.
Name
Her Greek name Klytaimnḗstra is also sometimes Latinized as Clytaemnestra. It is commonly glossed as "famed for her suitors." However, this form is a later misreading motivated by an erroneous etymological connection to the verb mnáomai (μνάoμαι, "woo, court"). The original form is believed to have been Klytaimḗstra (Κλυταιμήστρα) without the -n-. The present form of the name does not appear before the middle Byzantine period.
The public source identifies “Clytemnestra” as daughter of Tyndareus in Greek mythology. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clytemnestra, daughter and Tyndareus.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clytemnestra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.