Was there specific evidence that Dune's house of Atreides was related to Ancient Greeks?

Question

Goran Jovic in Are Jews in Chapterhouse: Dune the same cultural group as in our universe/timeline? states:

... a book which features direct descendants of Ancient Greeks in far future as main characters.

Is that really the case?

I thought that the Agamemnon was merely the alias that the Titan Formerly Known as Andrew Skouros took because he admired the historical figure.

Wikia seems to disagree, but provides no actual evidence:

Skouros in some way could trace his lineage back past the Time of the Old Empire, thousands of years to the House of Atreus and a famous ancient King Agamemmon.

Is there some specific in-universe evidence to back up this biological link?

Answer 1

From God Emperor of Dune: (Leto II speaking, in one of his journals)

My paternal grandfather was The Atreides, descendant of the House of Atreus and tracing his ancestry directly back to the Greek original.

And from Children of Dune: (of Alia)

Other voices wove around her mind: "I, Agamemnon, your ancestor, demand audience!"

And from Heretics of Dune:

Even on Gammu, few admitted to either Harkonnen or Atreides ancestry, although the genotypes were visible here—especially the dominant Atreides: those long, sharp noses, the high foreheads and sensual mouths. Often, the pieces were scattered—the mouth on one face, those piercing eyes on another and countless mixtures. Sometimes, though, one person carried it all and then you saw the pride, that inner knowledge:

“I am one of them!”

Gammu’s natives recognized it and gave it walkway room but few labeled it.

Underlying all of this was what the Harkonnens had left behind—genetic lines tracing far away into the dawn times of Greek and Pathan and Mameluke, shadows of ancient history that few outside of professional historians or those trained by the Bene Gesserit could even name.

So, just within the Frank Herbert books, it is clear that the ancestry is supposed to be directly linked to the Greek house of Atreus, whose two sons Agamemnon and Menelaus were the Atreides.

Answer 2

I don't know anything about any "Titans" or "Andrew Skouros" - I suspect those are things from the prequels, which have nothing to do with the actual Dune books.

However, in Children of Dune, we clearly hear a snippet of Alia's "Other Memory":

"I, Agamemnon, your ancestor, demand audience!"

Absent any canonical evidence to the contrary, it's clear that Alia really is descended from the Ancient Greek Agamemnon.

Answer 3

Almost everybody can trace their lineage back to almost everybody.

Putting Dune 20,000 years in the future means there were about 500 generations between the Greeks and then. The number of potential ancestors from that time is 2^500, or about 10^150. This dwarfs the number of particles in the universe which is about 10^80. Even allowing for ancestors who appear many times, even millions of times, in someone's ancestral tree, it is vanishing unlikely that any random person in Ancient Greek times, including Agamemnon, is not related in some way to any random person at the time of Dune, including the Atreides family. (Unless the ancient person had no descendants, which is not the case for Agamemnon.)

Every single person in the Dune universe is descended in some way from Agamemnon and virtually every other person in the Greek era.

Of course actually tracing a real lineage would be a supreme feat of research, but it's a statistical certainty that one exists.

(With the exception of any non-humans - I haven't read all the books so I don't know if they exist.)

Answer 4

Children of Dune - Other voices wove around her mind: "I, Agamemnon, your ancestor, demand audience!"

Children of Dune - Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon and we know what's in our blood."

God Emperor - My paternal grandfather was The Atreides, descendant of the House of Atreus and tracing his ancestry directly back to the Greek original.

God Emperor - And I have traversed the far wanderings of the Fremen. Through my father’s line and the others, I have gone right back to the House of Atreus.

From Homer's The Iliad

the Greek word for 'Son of Atreus' is *Ἀτρεΐδης *

• pronounced - /a.tre.í.dεːs/ (pitch) or /atreˈidεːs/ (stress)

Atreides

A direct pull from the Homeric tale in his work, a straight forward connection considering all the included quotes.

(line 7 word 1)