is told of Rhampsinitus by Herodotus (ii. 121). According
to Pindar (apud Plutarch), the brothers built the temple
of Apollo at Delphi; when they asked for a reward, the god
promised them one in seven days; on the seventh day they died.
Pausanias ix. 37; Plutarch, Consolatio ad
Apollonium, 14; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i. 47.
AGAMEMNON, one of the most distinguished of the Greek
heroes, was the son of Atreus (king of Mycenae) and Aerope,
grandson of Pelops, great-grandson of Tantalus and brother of
Menelaus. Another account makes him the son of Pleisthenes
(the son or father of Atreus), who is said to have been
Aerope's first husband. Atreus was murdered by Aegisthus
(q.v.), who took possession of the throne of Mycenae and
ruled jointly with his father Thyestes. During this period
Agamemnon and Menelaus took refuge with Tyndareus, king
of Sparta, whose daughters Clytaemnestra (more correctly
Clytaemestra) and Helen they respectively married. By
Clytaemnestra, Agamemnon had three daughters, Iphigeneia
(Iphianassa), Electra (Laodice), Chrysothemis, and a son,
Orestes. Menelaus succeeded Tyndareus, and Agamemnon,
with his brother's assistance, drove out Aegisthus and
Thyestes, and recovered his father's kingdom. He extended his
dominion by conquest and became the most powerful prince in
Greece. When Paris (Alexander), son of Priam, had carried
off his brother's wife, he went round to the princes of the
country and called upon them to unite in a war of revenge
against the Trojans. He himself furnished 100 ships, and
was chosen commander-in-chief of the combined forces. The
fleet, numbering 1200 ships, assembled at the port of Aulis in
Boeotia. But Agamemnon had offended the goddess Artemis by
slaying a hind sacred to her, and boasting himself a better
hunter. The army was visited by a plague, and the fleet was
prevented from sailing by the total absence of wind. Calchas
announced that the wrath of the goddess could only be appeased
by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (q.v..) The fleet then set
sail. Little is heard of Agamemnon until his quarrel with Achilles
(q.v..) After the capture of Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of
Priam, fell to his lot in the distribution of the prizes of
war. On his return, after a stormy voyage, he landed in
Argolis. His kinsman, Aegisthus, who in the interval had
seduced his wife Clytaemnestra, invited him to a banquet at
which he was treacherously slain, Cassandra also being put
to death by Clytaemnestra. According to the account given
by Pindar and the tragedians, Agamemnon was slain by his
wife alone in a bath, a piece of cloth or a net having first
been thrown over him to prevent resistance. Her wrath at the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and her jealousy of Cassandra, are
said to have been the motives of her crime. The murder of
Agamemnon was avenged by his son Orestes (q.v..) Although
not the equal of Achilles in bravery, Agamemnon is a dignified
representative of kingly authority. As commander-in-chief,
he summons the princes to the council and leads the army in
battle. He takes the field himself, and performs many heroic
deeds until he is wounded and forced to withdraw to his
tent. His chief fault is his overweening haughtiness, due to
an over-exalted opinion of his position, which leads him to
insult Chryses and Achilles, thereby bringing great disaster
upon the Greeks. But his family had been marked out for
misfortune from the outset. His kingly office had come to
him from Pelops through the blood-stained hands of Atreus and
Thyestes, and had brought with it a certain fatality which.
explained the hostile destiny which pursued him. The fortunes
of Agamemnon have formed the subject of numerous tragedies,
ancient and modern, the most famous being the Oresteia of
Aeschylus. In the legends of Peloponnesus, Agamemnon was
regarded as the highest type of a powerful monarch, and in
Sparta he was worshipped under the title of Zeus Agamemnon. His
tomb was pointed out among the ruins of Mycenae and at Amyclae.
In works of art there is considerable resemblance between
the representations of Zeus, king of the gods, and
Agamemnon, king of men. He is generally characterized
by the sceptre and diadem, the usual attributes of kings.
See articles in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie
and Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie.
AGAPE (Gr. agape, ``Love''), the early Christian
lovefeast. The word seems to be used in this sense in the
epistle of Jude 12: ``These are they who are hidden rocks in
your lovefeasts when they banquet with you.'' But this is not
certain, for in 2 Pet. ii. 13 the verse is cited, but reading
apatais (``deceits'') for agapais, and the oldest MSS.
hesitate. The history of the agape coincides, until the
end of the 2nd century, with that of the eucharist (q.v.),
and it is doubtful whether the following detailed account of
the agape given in Tertullian's Apology (c. 39) is to
be regarded as exclusive of an accompanying eucharist: ``It
is the banquet (triclinium) alone of the Christians that is
criticised. Our supper (coena) shows its character by its
name. It is called by a word which in Greek signifies love
(i.e. agape.) Whatever it costs, it is anyhow a clear
gain that it is incurred on the score of piety, seeing that
we succour the poorest by such entertainments (refrigerio.)
We do not lie down at table until prayer has been offered to
God, as it were a first taste. We eat only to appease our
hunger, we drink only so much as it is good for temperate
persons to do. If we satisfy our appetites, we do so without
forgetting that throughout the night we must say our prayers
to God. If we converse, it is with the knowledge that the
Lord is listening. After washing our hands and lighting the
lamps, each is invited to sing a hymn before all to God,
either taken from holy writ or of his own composition. So
we prove him, and see how well he has drunk. Prayer ends,
as it began, the banquet; and we break up not in bands of
brigands, nor in groups of vagabonds, nor do we burst out
into debauchery. . . . This meeting of Christians we admit
deserves to be made illicit, if it resembles illicit acts; it
deserves to be condemned, if any complain of it on the same
score on which complaints are levelled at factious meetings.
But to do harm to whom do we ever thus come together?''
The evidence of Tertullian is good for Africa. But in Egypt
about the same time (180-210), Clement of Alexandria in his
Pedagogus (ii. 1) condemns the ``little suppers which were
called, not without presumption, agape.'' This word, he
complains, should denote the heavenly food, the reasonable
feast alone, and the Lord never used it of mere junketings.
Clement wished the name to be reserved for the eucharist.
because the love-feasts of the church had degenerated, as
Tertullian too discovered, as soon as he turned Montanist.
For in his tract on fasting (ch. xvii.) he complains that the
young men misbehaved with the sisters after the agapee.
Among the spurious works of Athanasius is printed a tract
entitled About Virginity, ch. xiii. of which directs how
the sisters after the synaxis of the ninth hour (3 P.M.)
are to dine: ``When you sit down at a table and come to break
bread, seal it thrice with the sign of the cross and thus give
thanks: `We thank thee, our Father, for thy holy resurrection;
for through Jesus thy servant thou hast shewn it unto us.
And as this bread on this table was scattered, but has been
brought together and become one, so may thy church be brought
together into thy kingdom. For thine is the power and the
glory, for ever and ever, Amen.' This prayer as you break the
bread, and are about to eat, you must say. And when you lay
it on the table and desire to eat it, repeat the `Our Father'
entire. But after dinner (or breakfast), and when we rise
from table, we use the prayer given above, viz. `Blessed be
God, who hath pity and nourisheth us from our infancy, who
giveth food to all flesh. Fill our hearts with joy and
gladness, that ever having of all things a sufficiency, we
may superabound in all good works, in Christ Jesus our Lord,
&c.''' The writer then enjoins that, ``if two or three other
virgins are present, they also shall give thanks over the
bread set out, and join in the prayers. But if a catechumen
be found at the table, she shall not be suffered to join with
the full believers in their prayers, nor shall the latter sit
with her to eat the morsel'' (fiomon, used specially of
the sanctified bread). ``Nor shall they sit with frivolous
and joking women, if they can help it, for they are sanctified
to God, and their food and drink have been hallowed by the
prayers and holy words used over them. . . . If a rich woman
sits down with them at table, and they see a poor woman,
they shall invite her also to eat with them, and not put
her to shame because of the rich one.'' The last words echo
1 Cor. x., and the prayer is nearly the same as that which
the teaching of the Apostles assigns for the eucharistic
rite. Here, then, we have pictured as late as the 4th century
a Lord's supper, which like the one described in 1 Cor. x.
is agape and eucharist in one, and it is held in a private
house and not in church, and the celebrants are holy women!
The historian Socrates (Hist. Eccl. v. 22) testifies to the
survival in Egypt of such Lord's suppers as were love-feasts
and eucharists in one. Around Alexandria and in the Thebaid,
he says, they hold services on the sabbath, and unlike other
Christians partake of the mysteries (i.e. sacrament). For
after holding good cheer and filling themselves with meats of
all kinds, they at eventide make the offering (prosfora)
and partake of it. So Basil of Cappadocia (Epistle 93), about
the year 350, records that in Egypt the laity, as a rule,
celebrated the communion in their own houses, and partook of
the sacrament by themselves whenever they chose. In the old
Egyptian church order, known as the Canons of Hippolytus,
there are numerous directions for the service of the agape,
held on Sundays, saints' days or at commemorations of the
dead. The 74th canon of the council of Trullo (A.D. 692)
forbade the holding of symposia known as agapes in church.
In his 54th homily (tom. v. p. 365) Chrysostom describes how
after the eucharistic synaxis was over, the faithful remained
in church, while the rich brought out meats and drink from
their houses, and invited the poor, and furnished ``common
tables, common banquets, common symposia in the church
itself.'' The council of Gangra (A.D. 355) anathematized
the over-ascetic people who despised ``the agapes based
on faith.'' Only a few years later, however, the council of
Laodicea forbade the holding of agapes in churches. The
42nd canon of the council of Carthage under Aurelius likewise
forbade them, but these were only local councils. In the
age of Chrysostom and Augustine the agape was frequent.
In the east Syrian, the Armenian and the Georgian churches,
respectively Nestorian, Monophysite and Greek Orthodox in their
tenets, the agape was from the first a survival, under
Christian and Jewish forms, of the old sacrificial systems of
a pre-Christian age. Sheep, rams, bullocks, fowls are given
sacrificial salt to lick, and then sacrificed by the priest and
deacon, who has the levitical portions of the victim as his
perquisite. In Armenia the Greek word agape has been
used ever since the 4th century to indicate these sacrificial
meals, which either began or ended with a eucharistic
celebration. The earlier usage of the Armenians is expressed
in the two following rules recorded against them by a renegade
