=Ægisthus=, king of Argos, was son of Thyestes by his daughter Pelopea. Thyestes being at variance with his brother Atreus, was told by the oracle that his wrongs could be revenged only by a son born of himself and his daughter. To avoid such an incest, Pelopea had been consecrated to the service of Minerva by her father, who some time after met her in a wood, and ravished her, without knowing who she was. Pelopea kept the sword of her ravisher, and finding it to be her father’s, exposed the child she had brought forth. The child was preserved, and when grown up presented with the sword of his mother’s ravisher. Pelopea soon after this melancholy adventure had married her uncle Atreus, who received into his house her natural son. As Thyestes had debauched the first wife of Atreus, Atreus sent Ægisthus to put him to death; but Thyestes, knowing the assassin’s sword, discovered that he was his own son, and fully to revenge his wrongs, sent him back to murder Atreus. After this murder Thyestes ascended the throne, and banished Agamemnon and Menelaus, the sons, or as others say, the grandsons of Atreus. These children fled to Polyphidus of Sicyon; but as he dreaded the power of their persecutors, he permitted the protection of them to Œneus king of Ætolia. By their marriage with the daughters of Tyndarus king of Sparta, they were empowered to recover the kingdom of Argos, to which Agamemnon succeeded, while Menelaus reigned in his father-in-law’s place. Ægisthus had been reconciled to the sons of Atreus; and when they went to the Trojan war, he was left guardian of Agamemnon’s kingdom, and of his wife Clytemnestra. Ægisthus fell in love with Clytemnestra, and lived with her. On Agamemnon’s return, these two adulterers murdered him, and, by a public marriage, strengthened themselves on the throne of Argos. Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, would have shared his father’s fate, had not his sister Electra privately sent him to his uncle Strophius king of Phocis, where he contracted the most intimate friendship with his cousin Pylades. Some time after, Orestes came to Mycenæ the residence of Ægisthus, and resolved to punish the murderers of his father, in conjunction with Electra, who lived in disguise in the tyrant’s family. To effect this more effectually, Electra publicly declared that her brother Orestes was dead; upon which Ægisthus and Clytemnestra went to the temple of Apollo to return thanks to the god for his death. Orestes, who had secretly concealed himself in the temple, attacked them, and put them both to death, after a reign of seven years. They were buried without the city walls. _See:_ Agamemnon, Thyestes, Orestes, Clytemnestra, Pylades, and Electra. _Ovid_, _de Remedia Amoris_, li. 161; _Tristia_, bk. 2, li. 396.――_Hyginus_, fables 87 & 88.――_Ælian_, _Varia Historia_, bk. 12, ch. 42.――_Pausanias_, bk. 2, ch.