Agamemnon, the murdered king of Mycenae, speaks with Odysseus in the Underworld.
In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus travels to the land of the dead on Circe’s instructions. He performs a blood sacrifice to summon the shades and first consults the prophet Tiresias. Among the dead he then encounters Agamemnon, the former commander of the Greek forces at Troy.
Agamemnon tells Odysseus that he was not killed in battle or at sea. After returning home, he was welcomed to a feast by Aegisthus, who plotted against him with Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra. The conspirators murdered the king and his companions in his own house.
Agamemnon warns Odysseus not to trust appearances at home, advice that foreshadows the danger posed by Penelope’s suitors. The scene also contrasts Agamemnon’s disastrous homecoming with Odysseus’s hoped-for return. Diomedes, Nestor, and Priam are important figures in the Trojan saga, but none is the murdered Mycenaean king who gives Odysseus this Underworld account.