The First Hermione Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The story of Hermione in Greek mythology was really a continuation of the sad saga concerning the curse of the House of Atreus. Remember, they were the family that had been cursed by the gods because Tantalus had done the unspeakable. He fed his son, Pelops, to the gods to see if they could tell that they were eating human flesh. Pelops was resurrected, but Tantalus was banished to Tartarus, where he would always be hungry and thirsty. The curse continued to be passed through the generations of the family; Hermione was Tantalus' great-great granddaughter, and the curse was still going strong.

Hermione's parents were Helen and Menelaus. Menelaus was given the beautiful Helen in marriage after all of her other suitors swore an oath to help Helen's chosen husband. Some sources say that she chose Menelaus (others say that it was her father) because he was the wealthiest and had offered the most in bride gifts. Nevertheless, Helen eventually left her husband and ran away to Troy with Paris; since all the men who wanted to marry Helen in the first place had taken a loyalty oath to Menelaus, they had to follow him and support his efforts to retrieve her. The Trojan War had begun.

According to Homer, who mentioned Hermione in the "Odyssey", she was her parents' only child (some sources say that they also had sons) and had the "beauty of golden Aphrodite". Clytemnestra, who was Helen's sister, was left to raise Hermione after her mother ran away. Poor Hermione! You may remember that Clytemnestra's husband, Agamemnon, had sacrificed their daughter to help convince Artemis to allow the Greek ships to sail to Troy when the war began? While he was away, Clytemnestra took a lover, and together they made plans to kill Agamemnon when he returned home - which they did. Hermione couldn't have been raised in a loving atmosphere in Clytemnestra's home.

Clytemnestra and her husband, Agamemnon, who was the brother of Menelaus, were the parents of Orestes. Hermione apparently had been promised to Orestes by her maternal grandfather, Tyndareus, before the Trojan War began. He had wanted to keep the wealth and status in the family. It was likely that Orestes had been sent away, too young to fight in the war; he was not present when his father was murdered.

In his "Andromache", Euripides told that Menelaus promised her to Neoptolemus, who was nicknamed Pyrrhus (fire) for his reddish gold hair. He was the son of Achilles, and joined Greek forces after his father's death. Although he was very young at the time, a prophecy foretold that the Greeks could not win the war without his help. As a reward for his service, Menelaus promised Hermione to Neoptolemus.

Orestes was too busy with family business - he had committed several murders and was chased by the Furies, according to Aeschylus, the Greek dramatist. He probably really did have his hands full avoiding them until he was acquitted of the crime.

So Hermione became Queen of Epirus, but not a happy one. While her husband's concubine, Andromache, bore him children, she did not. She accused Andromache of cursing her to barrenness, and, overcome with jealousy, even tried to formulate a plot with her father to kill Andromache and her son, which did not succeed.

Finally, Orestes arrived in Epirus and convinced Hermione to flee with him as her rightful husband. According to some sources, he had Neoptolemus killed, and the couple married; other sources say that Neoptolemus was killed by one of Apollo's priests after he had denounced Apollo for his role in the death of his father.

Nevertheless, his death meant that Hermione was free to marry Orestes, and together they ruled Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta. Their son, Tisamenus, eventually ruled in their place, and was killed while protecting his land in battle.

Those Greeks knew how to have a curse, didn't they? Let's hope that Hermione's life was happier with her second husband. Orestes is considered to have been the one who ended the curse on the House of Atreus after he received the acquittal from the murder of his mother, so maybe they were able to live happily ever after.