[13]
But afterwards being apprized of the
adultery, he sent a herald to Thyestes with a proposal of accommodation; and when he had
lured Thyestes by a pretence of friendship, he slaughtered the sons, Aglaus, Callileon,
and Orchomenus, whom Thyestes had by a Naiad nymph, though they had sat down as suppliants
on the altar of Zeus. And having cut them limb from limb and boiled them, he served them
up to Thyestes without the extremities; and when Thyestes had eaten heartily of them, he
showed him the extremities, and cast him out of the country.1
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1 As to the famous, or infamous, Thyestean banquet, see Aesch. Ag. 1590ff.; Paus. 2.18.1; Tzetzes, Chiliades i.447ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 88; Seneca, Thyestes 682ff.; Serv. Verg. A. 1.568, xi.262; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.306; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 126, 209 (First Vatican Mythographer 22; Second Vatican Mythographer 147; Third Vatican Mythographer viii.16). Sophocles wrote at least two tragedies on the fatal feud between the brothers, one of them being called Atreus and the other Thyestes. The plots of the plays are not certainly known, but it is thought probable that in the former he dealt with the cannibal banquet, and in the latter with the subsequent adventures and crimes of Thyestes. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 91ff., 185ff. Euripides also wrote a tragedy called Thyestes. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 480ff. Tzetzes agrees with Apollodorus as to the names of the three murdered sons of Thyestes, except that he calls one of them Callaus instead of Callileon. Only two, Tantalus and Plisthenes, are named by Seneca and Hyginus.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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