Ahira's Hangar

Avatar brought up that the Atreides family in Dune is descended from the Atreides family of classical Greece (when Leto II communes with his male ancestors in Children of Dune one of them was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, king of ancient Greece).

Now, the Atreides family in Greek mythology is certainly a tragic one, marked with many murders of immediate family members by other family members, adultery, human sacrifice, and even cannibalism!

Here are a few links to descriptions of some of the things that occurred to this often cursed family:

www.pantheon.org/articles/a/atreus.html

ancienthistory.about.com/od/houseofatreus/a/houseofatreus.htm

www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/aeschylus/HouseofAtreus.htm
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Thanks for the links Duchess. I look forward to checking them out.

I wonder what other classical allusions there might be here...the Atreides and the Harkonnen were all related to each other and the Emporer in some fashion...is this a recreation of earlier empire-type behaviour?

--A ____________________________________

"We have become a society in which the Artist is regarded as
A self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares
Is an essential part of the economy. Something is Wrong" -Pam Brown.
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While I would have no evidence, I would think it is probable that all of the Great Houses are probably related to each other, either knowingly or not (most of them probably had traits desired by the Bene Gesserit for hundreds/thousands of years and had been bred and inbred for these traits).

The murder of male relatives by Shaddam was something that was certainly done by some of the madder Roman emperors. Nero was killing off Claudian relatives up to the fourth and fifth generation removed from Augustus. With Nero's death the family was pretty much extinct.

And the siezure of the Imperial throne by an intelligent and gifted and mostly moral man trying to protect his family and society in general from chaos and unending civil war also happened (that might have been one of Leto's long term goals in trying to make alliance with the Fremen to get an army to match the Sardauker). One example of this in Roman times would have been Vespasian. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Very interesting. I had no idea that the themes were so closely parralled by our own history.

(I started my re-read yesterday. )

--A ____________________________________

"We have become a society in which the Artist is regarded as
A self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares
Is an essential part of the economy. Something is Wrong" -Pam Brown.
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