Duke Leto Atreides: We are House Atreides. There is no call we do not answer. There is no faith that we betray. The Emperor asks us to bring peace to Arrakis. House Atreides accepts! Dune is connected with Ancient Greece? Follow me down this rabbit hole to learn:
Duke Leto Atreides I (10140 AG – 10191 AG), frequently referred to as the Red Duke and sometimes called Leto the Just, was the twentieth and penultimate Duke of House Atreides and the father of Emperor Paul Atreides and Regent Alia Atreides with his Bene Geserit concubine, Lady Jessica.
Well known for his even-handed and compassionate leadership style, Leto ruled over Caladan, and later Arrakis, all while at war with the powerful Baron Harkonnen. After dominating and helping planet Caladan prosper, Leto was ordered by the Emperor to take over the planetary fief of Arrakis from House Harkonnen, and thus was required to move his House from Caladan to ‘Dune’.
Arrakis was a notoriously difficult planet to manage, but as the only source of the spice melange, it was also unimaginably important. Thus the role brought both jeopardy and the jealousy of Leto’s fellow noblemen among the Great Houses, which would lead to his demise.
But how is this all connected to Hellas and the Hellenic heritage of House Atreides? According to the Dune Saga, the Royal House is actually the continuation of the ancestral House of Atreus, the mythical Greek King. Atreides is a patronymic form of Atreus which refers to one of his sons—Agamemnon or Menelaus, and their descendants. The plural form Atreidae or Atreidai refers to both sons collectively. Atreides is commonly used to translate both the singular and plural forms to English.
The House of Atreus begins with Tantalus. Tantalus, the son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto, enjoyed cordial relations with the gods until he decided to slay his son Pelops and feed him to the gods as a test of their omniscience. Most of the gods, as they sat down to dinner with Tantalus, immediately understood what had happened, and, because they knew the nature of the meat they were served, were appalled and did not partake. But Demeter, who was distracted due to the abduction by Hades of her daughter Persephone, obliviously ate Pelops’s shoulder.
The gods threw Tantalus into the underworld to spend eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reaches for the fruit, the branches raise his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bends down to get a drink, the water recedes before he can drink. Thus is derived the word “tantalizing” in English. The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory with the help of Hephaestus, thus marking the family forever afterwards.
Pelops married Hippodamia and had many sons; two of them were Atreus and Thyestes. Atreus, after extreme family drama, ended up exiled in the city of Mycenae, where he later claimed the throne, becoming its king.
He married Aerope and had two sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, and a daughter Anaxibia. Agamemnon married Clytemnestra, and Menelaus married Helen, her famously attractive sister. Helen later left Sparta with Paris of Troy, and Menelaus called on all of his wife’s former suitors to help him take her back. And thus the Trojan War and the Iliad began.
This is the ancestral heritage of the Great House of Atreides and part of what makes Dune a masterpiece: mythical real lore meeting sci-fi lore at its best. That’s why Duke Leto pays so much attention to teaching young Paul about their heritage. Were you surprised of this back-story?
Source: @thewolvenhour
