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was made one of the judges of spirits in hades, H. Oet. 1558; H. Fur. 734. See under Judges in Hades.

Aeētes, king of Colchis, son of Phoebus and Persa, and father of Medea, Med. 210; grandeur, extent, and situation of kingdom described, ibid. 209; wealth of his kingdom, ibid. 483; had received a wonderful gold-wrought robe from Phoebus as proof of fatherhood; this Medea anoints with magic poison, and sends to Creüsa, ibid. 570; he was despoiled of his realm through the theft of the golden fleece, ibid. 913.

Aegeus, see Theseus.

AEGISTHUS (Agamemnon), son of an incestuous union between Thyestes and his daughter. His birth was the result of Apollo's advice to Thyestes, that only thus could he secure vengeance upon the house of Atreus, Agam. 48, 294; at opening of play he recognizes that the fatal day is come for which he was born, ibid. 226; lived in guilty union with Clytemnestra, wife of

Agamemnon, ibid. passim.

Aegoceros, a poetic expression for the more usual Capricornus, the zodiacal constellation of the Goat, Thy. 864.

Aegyptus, see Danaïdes.

Aesculapius, son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis; he was versed in the knowledge of medicine, was deified, and had the chief seat of his worship at Epidaurus, Hip. 1022.

Aetna, a volcano in Sicily, Phoen. 314; its fires were used as a type of raging heat, Hip. 102; H. Oet. 285; considered as the seat of the forge of Vulcan, H. Fur. 106; supposed to be heaped upon the buried Titan's breast, Med. 410.

AGAMEMNON (Troades, Agamemnon), king of Mycenae, son of Atreus, brother of Menelaüs, commander of the Greek forces at Troy. He and Menelaüs used by Atreus to entrap Thyestes, Thy. 325; tamed by the power of love, Oct. 815; took captive Chryseïs, daughter of the priest of Apollo, Agam. 175; compelled to give her up, he took from Achilles by force his maiden Briseïs, ibid. 186; attempts to dissuade Pyrrhus from the sacrifice of Polyxena to Achilles' ghost, Tro. *203; inflamed by love for Cassandra, Agam. 188, 255; his power magnified as the great king who has come unscathed out of a thousand perils, ibid. 204; his homeward voyage and wreck of his fleet described, ibid. *421; returns to Mycenae and hails his native land, ibid. 782; his murder described by Cassandra who either beholds it through the palace door, or sees it by clairvoyant power, ibid. *867. See Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Pyrrhus.

Agāve, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, mother of Pentheus, king of Thebes. She, with her sisters, in a fit of Bacchic frenzy, slew Pentheus on Mt. Cithaeron, rent away his head, and bore it back to Thebes, Oed. 1006; Phoen. 15, 363; her shade appears from hades, raging still, Oed. 616. See Pentheus.

Agrippina I, daughter of M. Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, the daughter of Augustus, mother of the emperor Caligula. She died in exile at Pandataria, Oct. *932.

AGRIPPINA II (Octavia), daughter of the preceding, wife of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, and mother of Nero. She married the emperor Claudius, whom she murdered by poison, Oct. 26, 45, 165, 340; she was the stepmother of Octavia, and the cause of all her woes, ibid. 22; plotted the murder of Silanus, the betrothed lover of Octavia, and forced the latter into marriage with Nero, ibid. 150; she sought in all this her own power and world-wide sway, ibid. 155, 612; murdered by her own son, Nero, ibid. 46, 95, 165; her murder briefly