When Paris abducted Helen and provoked the Trojan War, Agamemnon and Menelaus were absent from home for ten years.  Agamemnon's wife Clytaemnestra had small cause to love him: he had married her by force after killing her former husband Tantalus, and then gone away to war.  On his way he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia at Aulis in order to be able to go ahead with his enterprise in Troy.  He brought back with him King Priam's daughter Cassandra, as his lover. 

Clytaemnestra greeted her travel-worn husband, unrolling a purple carpet for him, and led him to the bathhouse.