Agamemnon cornutus

Description

Agamemnon cornutus is an insect of the order Phasmatodea and the family Pseudophasmatidae. The scientific name of this species was first validly published in 1838 by Burmeister. Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae, the son, or grandson, of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra and the father of Iphigenia, Electra or Laodike, Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. When Menelaus's wife, Helen, was taken to Troy by Paris, Agamemnon commanded the united Greek armed forces in the ensuing Trojan War. Upon Agamemnon's return from Troy, he was killed (according to the oldest surviving account, Odyssey 11.409–11) by Aegisthus, the lover of his wife Clytemnestra. In old versions of the story, the scene of the murder, when it is specified, is usually the house of Aegisthus, who has not taken up residence in Agamemnon's palace, and it involves an ambush and the deaths of Agamemnon's followers as well (or it seems to be an ancestral home of both Agamemnon and Aegisthus since Agamemnon's wife is stated to be there as well and Agamemnon was said to have wept and kissed the land of his birth). In some later versions Clytemnestra herself does the killing, or she and Aegisthus act together, killing Agamemnon in his own home.