Aerope

In Greek mythology, Aerope (Ancient Greek: Ἀερόπη) was a Cretan princess as the daughter of Catreus, king of Crete. She was the sister to Clymene, Apemosyne and Althaemenes. Aerope's father Catreus gave her to Nauplius, to be drowned, or sold abroad, but Nauplius spared her, and she became the wife of Atreus, or Pleisthenes, (or both?) and by most accounts the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus. While the wife of Atreus, she became the lover of his brother Thyestes, and gave Thyestes the golden lamb, by which he became the king of Mycenae. Family Aerope's father was Catreus, the son of Minos, and king of Crete. Catreus had two other daughters, Clymene and Apemosyne, and a son Althaemenes. According to most accounts, Aerope was the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus, usually by Atreus, but sometimes Pleisthenes. According to some accounts, Aerope was instead the mother, by Atreus, of Pleisthenes, and when Pleisthenes died young, his sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, were adopted by Atreus, or in others, Aerope was perhaps the wife of both Atreus and Pleisthenes, having married Atreus after Pleisthenes died, with Atreus adopting her children from the first marriage. Such accounts were perhaps attempts to reconcile separate traditions. According to Hyginus, Aerope was the mother by Thyestes of two sons, Tantalus and Pleisthenes, and that these were the children that Atreus famously fed to Thyestes. According to some accounts Aerope was also the mother of a daughter Anaxibia.