In the story of these brothers, the curse uttered on the generation of Pelops continued giving misfortunes to the Tantals. Chrysippos was the child of Pelops and a Nymph, but he was still his favorite son. Naturally, his real wife Hippodameia hated this child and convinced her two sons Atreus and Thyestes to kill their brother. To escape from the revenge of their father after the murder, they both left to Mycenae, where the king Stehenelos was living married to their sister Nikippe.

One day the only son of the king fell in a battle against the Athenians and the Heraklids, leaving the reign without a heir to the throne. Atreus got then the power of all Mycenae. But Thyestes was envious of his brother and wanted the power as much as him, so he decided to take it away from Atreus.

But it was said that Gods would show with signs who was supposed to get the power. One day Atreus found a golden lamb and he understood it as a divine sign. Thyestes, who was having an affair with the wife of Atreus, Aerope, asked her to steal the golden lamb of her husband. This way Thyestes managed to get the power on Mycenae.

After that, Zeus spoke personally with Atreus and told him that, next day, he should make a bet with his brother and say that the sun would go back the same way it came out. So he did. Thyestes thought that his brother had gone completely crazy, but he still accepted the bet. And, although it was strange, because it was the wish of the Gods the God Helios accepted to change the curse of the sun just for this one time in all the story of the mythology.

So Atreus recovered the power and Thyestes ran away. But the story cannot finish here: Thyestes took Pleisthenes, a son of Atreus who he had brought up as his own child, and sent him to kill his father. However, the king defeated his son quite fast and, as he realized the dead man was his own son, he prepared a really horrible revenge for his brother. In fact, the stories about Atreus and Thyestes are of unique cruelty in the Greek Mythology.

This is what he did. First, he pretended to want to reconcile with Thyestes and to bury all the old fights, so he asked his brother to come back to Mycenae. Thyestes believed him. When he arrived, Atreus took him to his house and offered him a generous meal. But the food he served him was Thyestes’ own children. Of course, when he realized what he had eaten he fell in a deep mourning and swore revenge on his brother. Near by, Atreus’ wife, who was still Thyestes’s lover, was thrown into the sea with tied hands and feet by her husband, who finished with this his own revenge. Then Thyestes left to Epirus to meet the king Thesprotos.

After some time, a plague and famine broke out in Mycenae and the surrounding lands, and Atreus got foretold that this situation would just finish if Thyestes was back home. So he started to search him, but he could not find him. However, he did find his son Aigisthos, who he grew up also as his own child. Finally, the sons of Atreus Agamemnon and Menelaos managed to find their uncle and took him to Mycenae. There, Atreus locked him up and after he sent Aigisthos to kill him. But father and son recognized each other and they planed a revenge.

So Aigisthos told Atreus he had murdered Thyestes, and then he waited for a good moment and he killed him. Together with his father, they took the place of Agamemnon and Menelaos and recovered the power of Mycenae.

Agamemnon and Menelaos found protection in Sparta with the king Tyndareos. There they married the daughters of the king, Klytaemnestra and Helena, and Menelaos got the throne of Sparta after the king’s death. Agamemnon returned to Mycenae, killed Thyestes and got back the power of his father’s land.

But this is not at all the end of the tragic stories that happened because of the curse…