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  Idomeneus of Crete was caught in a storm and promised the gods that he would sacrifice the first human who greeted him on shore if he survived. When the ship reached Crete, the first person to greet Idomeneus was his firstborn son. Idomeneus had no choice but to sacrifice the youth and keep his promise to the gods. Idomeneus then discovered that his wife had taken a lover, Leucus, in his absence. Heartbroken at having lost both his son and his wife, he decided to leave his city that was no longer home, and live the rest of his days in exile.

  The Stri Parva, or the women’s chapter, in the Mahabharata speaks of the horrors of war: how the fighting between men makes widows and orphans.

  The story of the Greek warlords returning comes from Nostoi, which forms part of the Epic Cycle of stories, dating back to 700 BCE.

  The Greeks sacrifice Iphigenia before leaving Greece and they sacrifice Polyxena before leaving Troy. In each case, Achilles is involved. Iphigenia is brought to Aulis on the false promise that she will be married to Achilles and the ghost of Achilles demands the sacrifice of Polyxena at his grave.

  In Mozart’s eighteenth century opera Idomeneo, Poseidon stops the sacrifice of the prince Idamante but demands that old Idomeneus abdicate his throne and let the next generation take over.

  Dictys Cretensis was the legendary companion of Idomeneus who, as per lore, compiled a diary of the events during the Trojan War. A Latin version of this Greek work was made popular in the fourth century CE and was seen as the ‘authentic’ source of stories from the ancient Greek world.

  Nauplius

  During the Trojan War, Palamedes was falsely accused of accepting a bribe of gold from the Trojans and killed without a fair trial. His father, Nauplius, came to Troy and demanded justice for his son, but Agamemnon ignored him.

  Enraged, Nauplius came up with a deadly plan. He lit beacons on rocky shores all along the sea route from Troy to Greece. As a result, many of the Greek ships that sailed from Troy crashed against the rocks and never reached home. Those men who did reach home found that their wives had taken second husbands because Nauplius, on his return to Greece, had told all these women that their husbands had abandoned them and settled in Troy with Trojan wives.

  Diomedes was one of the unfortunate men whose wives had taken other lovers. She and her lover refused to let Diomedes enter his own city. So he took to the sea once again, determined to find a new home. But wherever he went, he was chased by birds. These birds were the ghosts of warriors who had fallen at Troy, who would cry all the time of their sorrow, driving Diomedes mad, until he sailed and made himself a home in faraway Italy. There he waited for a Trojan to whom he could return the Palladium stolen from Troy, for it had brought him nothing but bad luck.

  The Trojan War lasts for ten years. This is considered a long time in Greek mythology. Hindu mythology also mentions forest exiles of fourteen years, or a drought of twelve years, but these are contrasted with much longer timelines of hundreds and thousands, even millions, of years. The Vedas are full of huge numbers denoting time that are of no practical value, and certainly not part of human experience. They are calculated in imagination. These epochs align with the Indian obsession with vastness and infinity (ananta, in Sanskrit), compared to which human mortal life, with its finite lifespan, is insignificant. Thus, there are stories of kings visiting gods for a day and returning to find that a thousand years have passed on earth, for a day in the divine realm is a thousand years in the mortal realm. Such concepts are not found in Greek mythology.

  Nauplius descends from his namesake Nauplius, son of Poseidon, a great seafarer, who was part of the Argonaut expedition. Poseidon saved a maiden named Amymone from a satyr who was trying to rape her; he made love to her and she gave birth to Nauplius.

  There are many tales of the fate of Diomedes, who was worshipped as a god by many in post-Homeric times. The Roman poet Virgil connects him with many Italian cities.

  The Greek heroes all live within a few generations of each other. Minos, born of Europa, is a contemporary of Theseus, who is a contemporary of Oedipus. Cadmus is Minos’s uncle. Perseus, born of Io, is an ancestor of Heracles, who is a contemporary of Jason. Heracles’s follower, Philoctetes, who witnesses the hero’s death, plays a key role in the Trojan War. This was called the Heroic Age.

  The Heroic Age of the Greeks (when the Trojan War was fought) and the Epic Age of the Hindus (the time of the Mahabharata) are located in the Bronze Age by rationalists who think of mythology as proto-history.

  Palamedes invented dice games to help Greek soldiers pass the time during the war.

  Clytemnestra

  Agamemnon, unaware of the fates of many of his companions, returned home to Mycenae in triumph. He was welcomed by his wife Clytemnestra, who was relieved to learn of Helen’s rescue.

  But all was not well.

  While Agamemnon was away, Clytemnestra had had an affair with Aegisthus, son of Thyestes. She was angry with her husband for sacrificing her daughter, Iphigenia. She was angrier still when she learned that Agamemnon had brought back with him a Trojan concubine, Cassandra.

  She welcomed the victorious Agamemnon and even Cassandra. But then, when they were bathing and refreshing themselves, she had them both killed. Thus the great conqueror of Troy, who had spent ten years away fighting, died at home, in his own bath, killed by his unfaithful wife.

  Unfaithful wives are a common theme in Hindu mythology as well. Jamadagni orders the beheading of his wife, Renuka, because she desires another man momentarily. Ahalya is turned to stone by her husband, rishi Gautama. Ram sends his wife, Sita, to the forest as her reputation is soiled following her abduction by Ravana.

  Hittite sources dating back to 1400 BCE mention an Akagamunas, ruler of Ahhiyawa (land of the Achaeans, or ancient Greeks).

  The earliest reference of the killing of Agamemnon by his wife comes to us from Homer’s Odyssey, written in 800 BCE. Here, Odysseus encounters the shade (ghost) of Agamemnon who warns him against trusting women.

  Orestes

  Electra, another daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, was heartbroken when she learned that her mother had killed her father. She goaded her brother, Orestes, to kill their mother and her lover Aegisthus. With Apollo’s support, Orestes did as his sister asked, for he was furious too.

  For the crime of killing his own mother, the deadly Furies chased Orestes around the world. No king of Greece was willing to give shelter to the son of Agamemnon. The only one to share his suffering was his dear friend, Pylades of Phocis.

  The Furies, however, did not punish Electra. She begged the gods to save her brother and end the family curse. Moved by her entreaties, Zeus agreed that the curse on the House of Pelops had to end. And so Athena was sent to argue with the Furies, saying that the killing of Clytemnestra by her son was no blood crime. ‘A son is a father’s child, not a mother’s child. A woman is just the oven in which a man bakes his bread like a baker,’ she said. The argument made sense to the Furies who stopped chasing Orestes.

  The concept of avenging angels like the Furies and Nemesis is not found in Hindu mythology. In righteous anger, the Hindu gods may assume fierce forms, like Shiva turning into Bhairava or Virabhadra, but there is no tale of punishment embodying itself into a being.

  In Hesiod’s Theogony, the Furies are created from the blood of Uranus after Cronus castrated him. They are imagined as three vengeful goddesses. The Furies are referred to in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, famous playwrights who lived around 500–400 BCE. The Furies are also called Erinyes. After the trial of Orestes, Athena renames them as Eumenides, or good spirits. In Roman mythology, they are called Dirae.

  Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy has three plays which tell the story of the tragedy in the House of Pelops. The theme of Agamemnon, the first play, is the murder of the Greek king by his unfaithful wife. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, Orestes murders his mother and her lover on Apollo’s orders. And in the final play, Eumenides, Orestes is troubled by the Furies