Orestes

“The son of Tantalus in turn was Pelops,

father of Atreus for whom the weaving Fates

wove the threads of strife, a war with his own brother,

Thyestes.”

In this excerpt from Electra’s opening speech, she recounts the curse on her ancestral line, which is again attributed to divine forces, in this case the work of the Fates. In Greek mythology, they are depicted as weavers who shape the course of each human life. By this logic, suffering comes from the will of gods.

“All of us his children

by that one mother, wickedest of women,

who snared her husband in the meshes of a net

and murdered him.

I leave it to the world

to consider her motive. It is not topic for a maiden like myself.”

Electra says that she will not speculate on her mother’s motives for murdering her father. Later in the play, Orestes will claim that his mother killed his father in order to cover up her own crime of infidelity. Audiences familiar with the larger body of Greek myth would likely have been aware of another possible motive for Clytemnestra, which is that Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia at the goddess Artemis’s demand. This could suggest a revenge motive for Clytemnestra, lending tacit support to the idea that seeking revenge rather than justice feeds a cycle of destruction.

“Nothing is so weak

and helpless as a fallen house.”

In these lines, Electra refers to her and Orestes’s helplessness in the face of the Argive people. Without parents to protect and guide them, shunned from participating in society, she and Orestes are doomed to die, unless Menelaus, their father’s brother, decides to help them. Scholars speculate that this line may also refer to the state of Athens in 408 BC, when the play was produced. Athens had briefly lost a massive expedition in Sicily in 413 BC and its democracy in 411 BC and was, by 408 BC, on the brink of losing the war.

“CHORUS

The revenge was just.

ELECTRA

But terrible!”

The Chorus in Orestes is made up of women of Argos. In this excerpt, the Chorus attempts to comfort Electra by justifying Orestes’s murder of Clytemnestra as just, even as Electra recognizes it was a disastrous decision. Some scholars have speculated the Chorus may represent well-meaning but uncritical Athenian citizens who are easily convinced to make bad decisions whether by rhetorical persuasion or pity. Throughout the play, the Chorus supports Electra and Orestes, to the point of helping them execute their plan to murder Helen and, if necessary, Hermione, neither of whom have harmed the siblings.

“ELECTRA

Poor Tyndareus.

What daughters he fathered!

And both disgraced him in the eyes of Hellas.

ORESTES

Take care that you act differently: you can.

I mean purity of heart as well as word.”

Euripides seems to shift perspectives continually. In this exchange, Electra blames Tyndareus’s daughters, Clytemnestra and Helen, for the ruinous Trojan War that led to so many Argive deaths. Yet she attributes Orestes’s murder of Clytemnestra to the command of Apollo, suggesting a fundamental disconnect between her standards for her mother and aunt and those for Orestes and herself. Nevertheless, Orestes’s imperative that she “take care” to “act differently” can seem poignant set against the historical moment in which the play is performed, with Athens on the brink of ruin from its leaders’ own poor decisions (147).

“There’s nothing human that can save us. No,

heaven hates us both.”

As in quote six above, Euripides portrays Electra’s confused and desperate thinking as she watches her brother suffer. Her claim that “nothing human” can save her and Orestes is proven correct at the end of the play, when Apollo appears to set things right (148). It speaks to human limits to prevent suffering. Electra’s second statement, however, introduces a mundane divine motive—hatred—that feels inconsistent with the remote and inscrutable nature of the gods as portrayed elsewhere. Perhaps Euripides is demonstrating how reasoning can fail people in times of strife, a cautionary statement under Athens’s precarious circumstances in the historical moment.

“I think now

if I had asked my dead father at the time

if I should kill her, he would have begged me,

gone down on his knees before me, and pleaded,

implored me not to take my mother’s life.

Her death could never bring him back to life

and I, by killing her, would have to suffer

as I suffer now.”

In this passage, Orestes struggles to accept what he has done. He begins the passage blaming Apollo, contrasting the god “egging” him on, “encouraging me, / all words, no action” with how he envisions his father reacting (149). As imagined by Orestes, Agamemnon’s reaction speaks more to pity and empathy than justice, if not for Clytemnestra, then for Orestes. Punishment causes suffering for both the punisher and punished, and the outcome will not change. Whether Clytemnestra is murdered, Agamemnon will remain dead.

“It is my crimes, not my looks, that disfigure me.”

Here, Orestes replies to Menelaus’s shock at “how horrible you look!” (152). Orestes has not been eating or drinking, and he has kept himself cloaked, all of which are associated with being in a state of rage in ancient Greek literature. At this early point, Orestes’s rage seems self-directed, but as the play progresses, he will increasingly project his rage outward, threatening vengeance and destruction against his perceived enemies.

“MENELAUS

What is your sickness?

ORESTES

I call it conscience,

the certainty that I’ve committed evil.

MENELAUS

You speak somewhat obscurely. What do you mean?

ORESTES.”

I mean remorse. I am sick with remorse…”

In this exchange with Menelaus, Orestes seems to be at perhaps his most vulnerable in the play, a moment in which he takes responsibility for his actions. Whether they were just or warranted falls away as Orestes confronts the personal cost of having murdered his own mother. He even sets aside the notion of divine forces—the Furies—hounding him. He is unable to characterize his “sickness” in any other terms than “evil” and feels “remorse,” a state that he seems unable to sustain as the play goes on (152).

“MENELAUS

A callous, unjust, and immoral order.

ORESTES

We obey the gods—whatever the gods may be.”

Euripides’s stance toward the gods is much debated. A literal translation of the exchange above does not do much to clarify Euripides’s meaning. Menelaus calls Apollo’s order “ignorant of what is beautiful/good and just,” and Orestes’s response is that “we are slaves to the gods, whatever the gods are.” One way to approach this passage is as an expression of power relationships and the futility of the weaker overcoming the stronger by force, something Menelaus points out later in his exchange with Orestes.

“Necessity is legislator here.

The wise say: under compulsion, no man’s free.”

Menelaus responds to Tyndareus as they discuss how to proceed regarding Orestes. Menelaus argues that it is necessary to honor one’s kin while Tyndareus wants to punish Orestes. Menelaus’s statement reflects a recurring ancient Greek perspective of “needs must.” As expressed earlier in the exchange between Menelaus and Orestes, all humans are effectively enslaved to the gods, who are more powerful. Menelaus does not discount his nephew’s crime, but he also accepts that human circumstances are fraught with conflicting responsibilities. Mortal and divine laws do not always line up.

“When his father died—

killed, I admit, by my own daughter’s hand,

an atrocious crime which I do not condone

and never shall—he should have prosecuted

his mother, charged her formally with murder,

and made her pay the penalty prescribed,

expulsion from his house.

Instead of disaster

he would have gained much fame for moderation,

sticking to the law and remaining pious.

[…]

Suppose now this man’s wife murders her husband.

Her son then follows suit by killing her,

And his son then must have his murder too

And so on.

Where can this chain of evils end?

No, our ancestors handled these matters well

by banning their murderers from public sight,

forbidding them to meet or speak to anyone.

But the point is this: they purged their guilt

by banishment, not death. And by so doing,

they stopped that endless vicious cycle of murder and revenge.”

Tyndareus expresses what he believes Orestes should have done. His reference to formal murder charges seems to bring the setting into historical Athens, since these are procedures that could have been carried out in Euripides’s day. However, Tyndareus does not follow his own advice later, when he encourages the jury to execute Orestes and Electra, against the suggestion that the siblings be offered exile instead of death. His words are correct, but his actions fall short of his own ideals.

“Or was he competent to command a murder,

but now incompetent to purge the guilt?

Then where can I go, what can I do,

if the god who ordered me to kill my mother

cannot, or will not, save me?

One more thing,

Let no man say that what we did was wrong,

but only that doing what we did, we did it

to our great cost and misery.”

Here, Orestes responds to Tyndareus’s censure, expressing that he was pulled between competing interests, with no good options. Traditionally in ancient Greek society, a son’s responsibility would be to avenge his father, but Orestes’s problem is that the person who harmed his father happens to be his mother. Kin murder is taboo and believed to invoke the Furies’ punishment. Thus, Orestes could be said to have a point here that what he did was both wrong and necessary. Euripides may be drawing attention to potential conflicting interests within traditional values.

“Again, my sister Iphigenia died at Aulis

on your account.”

This is the only reference in Orestes to Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his and Clytemnestra’s daughter Iphigenia, though two other surviving plays of Euripides engage the myth around her sacrifice. Orestes’s phrasing masks the brutality of the event as portrayed elsewhere by Euripides. However, its presence in the play acts as a sign for historical audiences familiar with the story that there is more to Clytemnestra’s potential motives for murdering her husband than has been addressed. Myth retellings within antiquity often seem to rely on audiences making connections beyond the boundaries of the actual play.

“Instead, our weapons must be

diplomacy and tact. Inadequate,

I admit, but not, perhaps, quite hopeless.

[…].

Mobs in a fury are like a fire,

it’s dangerous to try to fight their rage.

[…]

Anger, however, is only one of their moods;

pity is another—they’re precious assets both,

if you know what you’re doing.”

One of numerous interpretive challenges Orestes presents is how to interpret Menelaus’s character. Orestes accuses him of being cowardly and not offering to help because he opts out of offering violent defense. However, Menelaus does offer to advocate for Orestes, though Tyndareus threatens to hold him accountable if he does. Menelaus’s description of mobs seems to speak to political critiques circulating in Euripides’s time. Athens’s direct democracy had been likened to a kind of mob rule, in which citizens could become swept up in an idea, good or bad.

“ORESTES

In the hands of vicious men,

a mob will do anything.

PYLADES

But under good leaders

their councils are always excellent.”

The above exchange between Orestes and Menelaus extends Menelaus’s point that “mobs” (potentially a stand-in for democracy in classical Athens) could have positive or negative effects (165). Recent events in Athens could make this passage, as well as the one in quote 16 above, especially poignant. In 427 BC, the Athenian assembly voted to overturn an order to execute the male population of Mytilene after a revolt on the island. Conversely, the assembly had voted to carry out an order of execution against Melos in 416 BC, after the island insisted on remaining neutral in the Athens-Sparta war.

“Where, where are they now—

that glister of golden pride,

glory that camped at Troy

beside the Simois,

the boast of happiness

blazoned through Hellas?

Back and back they ebb,

a glory decays,

the greatness goes

from the happy house of Atreus.”

This excerpt is from a song the Chorus sings as Pylades and Orestes depart to attend the Argive council. The references to decaying glory and lost greatness seem pointedly to refer to events in Athens at the time of the play’s production. Athens had thought of itself as a leading state of Hellas, but the war years had brought plague and destruction. The implication of these lines could be that excessive pride and overconfidence has brought the city to the brink of ruin.

“King Diomedes spoke. It was his opinion

That you both should be banished, not killed,

Since this would be enough for piety’s sake.”

The is from the messenger’s report of the Argive council. The event itself could not be shown on the Athenian stage owing to the limit of three speaking roles—hence the use of messenger characters to relay events that occur offstage. Scholars have noted that the messenger’s report spends little time recounting Diomedes’s remarks, though they are the most balanced. He is concerned with observing rules of piety, which would be important to safeguard the city, but also with showing pity for Orestes and Electra and their circumstances. This may be emblematic of how “mobs” can overlook good judgments when they are angry (163).

“The passing generations go,

Changing places, changing lives.

Human life passes understanding.”

This excerpt from a Choral song following the messenger’s report speaks to a central concept in Greek life: cyclicality. It applies broadly and to all facets of life from humans and human events to nature and natural cycles. Everything that lives passes through a process of birth, flowering, decay, and death, which then initiates the cycle again. Annual festivals ritualized this natural process. While the idea of cyclicality provides a sense of order, it also demonstrates the instability of human life.

“I have to die. Very well then,

but above all else I want my death

to hurt the people I hate. They betrayed me,

they made me suffer, so let them suffer now

for what they did to me.”

Orestes and Pylades discuss their plan to kill Helen and anyone else who gets in their way. The remorse Orestes expressed earlier in the play has given way to paranoia, rage, and desire for vengeance. Orestes has lost all capacity for empathy, to the point that he is willing to kill innocents, namely the enslaved members of the household. The play focalizes Orestes and Electra’s points of view, perhaps to invite Athenians in attendance to confront what they had become through their pursuit of war and empire.

“ELECTRA

Orestes, I have the answer!

A way out for us all!

ORESTES

That would take a god.

But where is this answer?”

The “way out” Electra refers to is threatening to kill Hermione as a way to force Menelaus’s hand or, if he does not act satisfactorily, to punish him by murdering his daughter. Hermione is entirely innocent. Like the enslaved members of the household, she is caught in the struggle between the Argives and Orestes and Electra. Orestes repeats his belief that only a god can save them now, yet he continues to conspire with Pylades and Electra to increasingly cruel and brutal strategies to escape their circumstances.

“Murder!

Butcher!

Kill!

Thrust your twin swords home!

Slash, now slash again!

Run the traitress through,

Kill the whore who killed

So many brave young Greeks

By the spear beside the river,

Those for whom we mourn,

By the waters of Scamander!”

The Chorus and Electra sing together as Helen’s screams emanate from the palace. The passage holds a degree of shock value as the Chorus celebrates and encourages the brutal murder of Helen, who is not directly involved in the events at hand. The Chorus have allowed themselves to be swayed to participate in Electra and Orestes’s crimes. This evokes the Athenian assembly’s complicity in the atrocities the city committed against Melos, among others.

“Helen is here with me—

yes, that same Helen whom you tried to kill

out of hatred for Menelaus. This is she

whom you see enfolded in the gleaming air,

delivered from death. You did not kill her.

For I, so commanded by Zeus the father,

snatched her from your sword.”

At the end of the play, Menelaus and Orestes are at an impasse, with Orestes threatening to murder Hermione and burn down the palace. Apollo appears at the end to resolve everything. In Greek myth, heroic figures can be portrayed having both a divine and mortal father. This is the case with Helen, whose mortal father is Tyndareus but divine one is Zeus, which makes her eligible for immortalization (similarly to Heracles). The removal of Helen to the divine realm invites divergent interpretations. One could be that what is beautiful cannot survive in the mortal realm but properly belongs to the heavens.