Saturday, May 23, 2015

Hegemon Book 3 Curse of the Gods

The House of Atreus was truly cursed, they say. Legend has it that Tantalus chopped his son Pelops and served it as a soup to the gods to test them. When Zeus, Foremost of the Gods of Olympus, found out, Tantalus lost his favor. Zeus cast Tantalus into a Hell known as Tartarus that was ripe with plump fruits of heavens, but when the starved Tantalus reached for it, the branches moved away from him. The winged herpes would pester him until he was rescued by the hero Hercules.

Zeus also bought Pelops back to life, and it was said that this Pelops was the same man as my grandfather. But if such tall tales were hard to believe, then surely what happened next was not.

Our father, still vengeful of the crimes of Theyetes, hath banished him from Mycannae. After many years, he invited Theyetes back and held a feast in his honor, where a soup was served. When Theyetes asked of the nature of the soup, Atreus answered, “The splendid soup is the flesh of thy own son!”

Theyetes was horrified. The two sons Arope hath borne him were butchered and served to him in such atrocious manner. Certainly, the deeds of Atreus hath gone too far, and like Tantalus, he would incur the hatred of the gods.

One day, a shepherd found a comely infant in the fields and presented him to my father, so he took the son as his own, our youngest brother Aegisthus, but little did we know of the foul nature of the child.

Aegisthus was the product of incest between Theyetes and his own daughter in answer to the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle wanted Theyetes to take revenge upon the House of Atreus, and so Theyetes was both father and grandfather of Prince Aegisthus.

One day, the four of us went hunting together. Father and Aegisthus went after the Caledonian boar, and they moved so fast that neither me nor Agamemnon could follow. By the time we followed the boar, Aegisthus hath fled, nowhere to be found, but what we saw was truly the Curse of the Gods!! Aegisthus hath stabbed our father King Atreus to death, thus fulfilling the curse that Theyetes and the gods of Olympus cast upon our family. One day, blood would wash over blood, but today, Aegisthus could not be found, and my brother Agamemnon would have greater things to attend to.

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