Agamemnon died at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. After he had founded the city of Lavinium, precursor of Rome, Aeneas was deified as Jupiter Indiges. Meanwhile the last years of Odysseus were described in the final epic of Troy, the Telogony, now sadly almost completely lost.
Odysseus had been told during the Odyssey by Tiresias, prophet of Apollo, that he would be killed by his son. After he had dealt with his wife Penelope’s many suitors, Odysseus decided to address that threat. Assuming that the prophecy referred to Telemachus, his son by Penelope, Odysseus banished him to a nearby island. The Telogony concerns itself with two journeys made by Odysseus, first to Elis to make sacrifices, then to Thesprotia, where he married its queen Kallidike and took part in her war against their neighbours. Eventually Odysseus returned to his own kingdom Ithaca, where he resumed a more peaceful life.
Circe the sorceress had sent Telogonus, youngest of the three sons she had borne Odysseus, to find his father. When his ship was wrecked on an island, Telogonus mistakenly believed that it was Corcyra (modern Corfu), although it was in fact Ithaca. To stave off hunger, he started plundering cattle there, and tried to approach the house in which his father was living. Guards outside prevented him from entering, though, and Odysseus assumed this was an attack by Telemachus, so rushed out to respond. During the ensuing fight, Odysseus was wounded in the scalp by the venomous spine of a stingray, fell ill and died as a result.
There are two accounts as to how Odysseus was wounded. One claims that the stingray spine was mounted at the tip of a lance wielded by Telogonus, who injured his father before he realised who he was. The other is that the droppings of a passing heron, containing the stingray spine, landed on Odysseus’ scalp, and the infected wound eventually caused the old man’s death in a literal fulfilment of the prophecy of Tiresias. If that seems far-fetched, remember that it was Aeschylus whose death was accepted to be the result of a passing eagle dropping a tortoise on his head.
Following the death of Odysseus, Telemachus married Circe, the mother of his half-brother Telogonus, who in turn married Penelope, widow of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus.
I have been unable to discover any paintings referring to the Telogony or the death of Odysseus, except this illustration by William Blake, showing Odysseus in Dante’s Inferno. As Dante had no access to the fragmentary remains of the Telogony, only later accounts in Latin, he told a different story in which Odysseus dies in a storm in the western sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules. For the schemes and conspiracies that he used to win the war with Troy, Odysseus is then wrapped in flame in the eighth ring for Counsellors of Fraud as punishment for his sins.
Blake shows Odysseus wrapped in flame, which is brought to a beak-like tip at the top of the painting, giving it the appearance of a bird like a heron. Perhaps that was the same bird that dropped the poisonous spine on the head of Odysseus?
That concludes the epics of the city of Troy, its destruction, and what became of those who survived.