# Agamemnon — Character guide

> Key figures in Agamemnon by Aeschylus.

- [Clytemnestra](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/clytemnestra.md): Clytemnestra rules the palace and the watchfires while her husband spends ten years at Troy, and her mind works with a vividness that unnerves the elders who remember this house's bloody history. Her hatred and fear of A
- [Agamemnon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/agamemnon.md): Agamemnon arrives as the man the Herald calls happy if anyone ever was, the crown of triumph resting on a king who sacked Troy's temples and paid for victory in blood. Against the Herald's open delight he stands remote a
- [Cassandra](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/cassandra.md): Cassandra enters the play as silent spoil of war, a royal daughter of fallen Troy standing on the terrace of the house that destroyed her city. Her gift of prophecy, once granted by Apollo and then twisted into a curse, 
- [Aigisthos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/aigisthos.md): Aigisthos belongs to the house of Atreus by blood and to its long ledger of wrongs, a man whose claim on Argos runs through a history of feuds older than the Trojan War. He works through Clytemnestra rather than openly, 
- [Apollo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/apollo.md): Apollo is the god the Chorus calls on as Paian and the god whose oracle shapes the war's beginning, a presence felt in prophecy, plague, and the riddling signs Calchas reads for the fleet. In tragedy he is often a sinist
- [Zeus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/zeus.md): Zeus presides over the play's moral architecture, the god to whom the Watchman prays, the altar at the palace's center, and the Chorus's great hymn on the law that the one who suffers shall learn. Aeschylus's Zeus is bou
- [Helen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/helen.md): Wife of Menelaus, whose abduction by Paris caused the Trojan War, often blamed for the bloodshed.
- [Calchas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/calchas.md): Prophet who interpreted the omen of the eagles and demanded Iphigenia's sacrifice.
- [Atreus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/atreus.md): Father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, whose curse haunts the family line.
- [Artemis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/artemis.md): Goddess who demanded the sacrifice of Iphigenia, causing the winds to fail at Aulis.
- [Herald](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/herald.md): Messenger who announces Agamemnon's return from Troy to the chorus.
- [Priam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/priam.md): King of Troy, father of Hector and Paris, killed after the fall of his city.
- [Aeschylus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters/aeschylus.md): Author of the play, referenced in the text as the poet.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/agamemnon_se/characters