The Dioscuri
Kastor and Klytemnestra, Polydeukes and Helen, are pairs of twins,
officially the offspring of the Spartan king Tyndareos and his consort Leda
but, in reality, the illegitimate children of a liaison between Leda and Zeus.
The two brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes, the Dioskouroi, wed the daughters
of Leukippos, named Hilaera and Phoebe.
At a festival in Sparta, organized in honour of Aeneas and Paris, one of
Tyndareos’s brothers, Aphareos, drunkenly accuses Kastor and Polydeukes
of not having paid the proper dowry for their brides. The insult cannot go
unanswered and a brawl ensues with Aphareos’s sons, Lynkeos and Idas,
during which Kastor is slain.
Zeus intervenes and dispatches the murderer, Lynkeos, with a thunderbolt,
taking back the surviving Dioskouroi twin Polydeukes to Mount Olympus.
Various alternative versions of the cause and effect of the fight exist, but the
outcome remains essentially the same. Hesiod, for example has the brothers
stealing cattle belonging to Lynkeos and Was which causes the fatal fight.
Polydeukes is reluctant to accept the boon of immortality without his slain
brother who now resides in the underworld. A compromise is reached
whereby Zeus grants Kastor one day out of every two in the company of the
gods.