Atreid
English
Etymology
From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Ancient Greek; compare Ἀτρείδης (Atreídēs).
Noun
Atreid (plural Atreids)
- (mythology) Any of the family and descendants of the mythical Mycenaean king Atreus, including either of his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon, who both feature in the Iliad.
- 1998, Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War[1], page 157:
- Ancient tradition said that Mycenae was founded by the Perseid dynasty and that the Atreids (Pelops, Atreus, Agamemnon) were outsiders.
- 1999, Barbara Goff, The Violence of Community: Ritual in the Iphigenia in Tauris , Mark William Padilla (editor), Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society, page 112,
- While in the Oresteia sacrifice operated as a metaphor for the intrafamilial murders of the Atreids, among the Taurians the metaphor takes on materiality.
- 2010, Chiron the Centaur, The Mythic Warrior's Handbook[2], page 28:
- The family history of the Atreids is so complicated you'd need a flow chart to get it; what's more, that chart would flow with the blood of doomed family members. Situated in Mycenae, the Atreids were a brutal and competitive bunch; they worked hard to outdo each other with generation after generation of heinous crimes.