"Talphibium"

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Talfibius () is a character of ancient Greek mythology, the messenger of Agamemnon, who carried out his errands during the Trojan War. After the murder of the king, according to one version of the myth, he helped save his young son Orestes. In Sparta, Talfibius was considered the patron saint of heralds and ambassadors. Ancient sources associated with the “wrath of Talfibius” a number of misfortunes that befell Athens and Sparta after the murder of Persian ambassadors during the Greco-Persian wars.

Talfibius became a secondary character in Homer’s Iliad, several tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Seneca.

Myths
Talfibius is first mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, where he is presented together as the “faithful slander and messenger” of King Mycenae Agamemnon, “in a voice similar to a god.” He was responsible for the delivery of sacrificial animals and performed various tasks of the king. In particular, it was Talphibius, together with Odysseus, who brought from Mycenae to Avlid the daughter of Agamemnon Iphigenia, intended for the sacrifice of Artemis; together with Menelaus he made a trip to Cyprus and obtained from the local king Kinir the promise to send 50 ships under Troy, and during the siege of the city took from Achilles his concubine Briseida. In the seventh song of the Iliad, Talfibius and the Trojan Ideas succeeded in stopping the duel between Hector and Ajax Telamonides, and when Troy fell, it was Talfibius who informed Andromache that her son Astianax would be killed by the decision of the Achaean army.

After the death of Agamemnon at the hands of Aegisphus and Clytemnestra, Talfibius remained faithful to the royal children. In one version of the myth, it was he who saved the young son of the murdered, Orestes, who secretly took the prince from Mycenae either to Corinth, where he handed him over to King Idomeneus of Crete, or to Phocida, whose king Strophy was married to Agamemnon's sister Anaxibia. In some versions, judging by graphic sources, Talfibius sympathized with Electra, who mourned her father, helped her meet Orestes, who returned to his homeland, and took part in the murder of Aegisf.

According to Strabo, Talfibius was considered one of the founders of the Tegeus colony in Crete.

The Memory of the Talfibia in Historical Times
In the ancient world, Talfibius was considered the patron saint of heralds and heralds, so his name even became a household name. In Sparta, the role of heralds was performed by representatives of the Talfibiad family, who considered themselves descendants of Talfibius. The name of this character is associated with the legend of the Greco-Persian Wars, told by Herodotus. When the Spartans killed the Persian ambassadors, who demanded submission to the king of kings, Sparta was struck by the “wrath of Talfibius”: all omens at sacrifices turned out to be undesirable to the gods. To appease this anger, two noble Spartians, Sperchius and Bulis, decided to sacrifice their lives. They went as ambassadors to the ruler of the Achaemenid Empire, Xerxes, and refused to prostrate before him, saying that the Spartans had no custom of worshipping anyone. They explained their arrival not by a desire to negotiate peace, but by the need to accept death for the murdered Persian ambassadors. Xerxes replied that the Persians did not violate the laws of security sacred to all peoples