Orestes

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 409

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Lines 1-716

Lines 717-1245

Lines 1246-1694

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Lines 1-716Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Lines 1-315 Summary

The play opens with Electra sitting beside her brother Orestes, who lies sleeping. She explains their cursed family history, beginning with their ancestor Tantalus and ending with Orestes’s recent murder of their mother, Clytemnestra, in revenge for Clytemnestra’s murder of their father, Trojan War hero Agamemnon. Saying that she will allow others to speculate about her mother’s motive, Electra notes that her brother killed Clytemnestra on Apollo’s command, something that “not everyone approved” (141). Since the murder, Orestes has been tormented by the Furies, unable to eat, drink, or wash.

The Argives have declared Orestes and Electra matricides and forbidden anyone from giving them food or shelter. The city’s assembly is preparing to vote on whether to stone the siblings to death. The siblings believe their only hope lies with Menelaus, who has recently returned from Troy, having sent his wife Helen back ahead of him in the night, to avoid her being stoned by angry relatives of men killed at Troy. Their daughter Hermione, who spent the war in Argos being raised by Clytemnestra, is now with her.

Helen enters. She asks Electra how they could have killed their mother, though she does not blame them but Apollo, similarly referring to her own flight to Troy as the product of “god-sent ecstasy” (286). Though she misses her sister, Helen pities her niece and nephew. She asks Electra to bring an offering to Clytemnestra’s grave, but Electra cannot go and suggests Helen send Hermione. Helen calls for her daughter and gives her instructions. After they both depart, Electra claims that when cutting her hair for a grave offering, Helen only took off the tips. She wonders how it is possible not to hate her for the ruin she brought to Electra and Orestes “and all Hellas” (144).

The Chorus of Argive women enters. In a lyric exchange between the Chorus and Electra, the Chorus tiptoes while Electra shushes them, revealing Orestes’s devastated condition and warning them not to wake him. The Chorus expresses pity for Orestes’s suffering at the command of a god and sings for night and sleep to come to the palace. They ask Electra how Orestes’s suffering will end, and Electra says, “In death” (291). The Chorus calls Clytemnestra’s murder “just” to which Electra replies that it was “terrible” (146).

When Orestes stirs, Electra fusses over him, revealing that Menelaus has returned. Orestes is hopeful, but Electra feels that Helen’s presence is a sign of trouble to come and laments that Tyndareus’s daughters—Clytemnestra and Helen—“disgraced him in the eyes of Hellas” (148). Orestes tells Electra she can be different from the previous generation, then descends into wild behavior, speaking to the invisible Furies who are hounding him. His senses return as abruptly as they left him, and he sees his sister weeping. He laments that his sister suffers for the murder he committed, laments that Apollo commanded it, and believes that his father would not have wanted him to do it. Orestes instructs Electra to go back into the house and rest since she is his only comfort. She consents and beseeches him to rest too, since without him she is “alone and helpless” (149).

Lines 316-716 Summary

The Chorus sings to the Furies, asking them to release Orestes “from madness of murder” and asking Zeus what mercy there can be for Orestes, mourning for him and for how brief happiness is (150). As they sing, Menelaus enters looking for Orestes. He heard of his brother’s murder on his travels and is dismayed to find that his sister-in-law too is dead. Orestes presents himself as a suppliant, and Menelaus is shocked by his appearance. Orestes replies that he is “sick with remorse” and madness because of the crime he committed (152). His only recourse now is Apollo, who is slow to act despite having commanded the murder, which Menelaus agrees is “callous, unjust, and immoral” (153). Orestes notes the gods must be obeyed. He explains that his enemies in Argos want revenge against his father for their kinsmen dying at Troy, that no one will speak to him, and the council is voting on whether he and Electra will be allowed to live. Escape being impossible, Orestes begs Menelaus for help. Just then, Tyndareus enters, in mourning for his daughter Clytemnestra and seeking Menelaus.

Orestes feels shame before the grandfather who treated him “so tenderly” when he was a child (155). Tyndareus is disgusted that Menelaus consents to speak with Orestes. Menelaus replies that he honors his brother by honoring his brother’s son, who was bound by necessity to do what he did, since “no man’s free” (155). Tyndareus disagrees. Orestes’s assessment of his mother’s crime was correct, but rather than murdering her, he should have sought recourse through the law. He would then have “gained much fame for moderation” and “remain[ed] pious” (156). By killing his mother, he committed a crime worse than hers. Murder for murder creates a destructive cycle of corruption and ruin.

Tyndareus is disgusted that Orestes had no pity for his mother and declares that his madness is the price he pays for murder. He warns Menelaus that helping Orestes is going against the “will of heaven” (157). Affirming his respect for his grandfather, Orestes insists that he was caught between opposing duties, to his father and to his mother. Revealing Clytemnestra’s infidelity to Tyndareus, Orestes asserts that killing his mother performed a service for Hellas, since it serves as a warning to women who would do likewise. She killed her husband to cover her own crime against him. Apollo himself warranted and commanded Orestes’s murder of Clytemnestra. Orestes’s act came with a cost, he admits, but it should not be called wrong.

Orestes’s speech infuriates Tyndareus, who declares his commitment to seeing both Orestes and Electra dead. Warning Menelaus not to help Orestes, Tyndareus exits. Menelaus is conflicted, and Orestes appeals to him for help on behalf of all that Agamemnon did to recover Helen from Troy, including the sacrifice of his own daughter, Iphigenia. Menelaus expresses his wish to honor and help Orestes but says that he can only do so through “diplomacy and tact,” as he does not have allies or the ability to use force (162). It is folly to engage with mobs—better to let their anger run its course. He pledges to try to “smooth matters over with Tyndareus and the city” (162). Menelaus exits.

Lines 1-716 Analysis

To interpret Euripides’s portrayal of the gods in Orestes, it is helpful to consider the performance context of Athenian tragedy and the sociohistorical circumstances of late fifth-century Athens. Tragedies were performed at religious festivals held to honor the gods of the city. To not participate in these honors would be considered harmful to the city and its people. An individual citizen’s private belief could not, and cannot, be definitively known, but participation in religious rights was a matter of social good and, thus, public necessity. If the gods were mocked or questioned, it would have been in the context of honoring the gods’ power to invoke their benevolent protection.

By 408 BC, Athens was in a precarious situation. It was 23 years into war with neighboring power Sparta. Why it was necessary to continue the war may no longer have been clear to those fighting it, yet Athens seemed unwilling or unable to settle for peace, despite offers from Sparta. In 415 BC, Athens launched an expedition to Sicily to expand its empire, with disastrous consequences. Shortly before the ships were set to depart, hermai—protective statues placed around the city—were vandalized and defaced, an act of impiety that was interpreted as a bad omen. The expedition indeed failed spectacularly in 413 BC, with the destruction of the Athenian fleet and the loss of tens of thousands of men.

In Orestes, there is a similar sense of chaos and destruction, of bad omens and violence. The times are mirrored in Euripides’s work. Electra, Orestes, and Helen all attribute their wrongdoing to the will of the gods. Apollo commanded Orestes to avenge his father by murdering his mother, and love compelled Helen to abandon her home and family. In both instances, their behavior could be considered a violation of divine laws. The problem, as all are aware, is that divine laws can seem contradictory to mortals. Apollo commands Orestes to commit a crime (kin murder) that the Furies exist to punish. How humans can reconcile these contradictions is not clear, hence the repeated refrain that only the gods can save Orestes and Electra, which is indeed what happens. Aeschylus’s Oresteia highlights the same contradiction. Orestes kills his mother at Apollo’s insistence and the Furies punish him.

In Euripides’s Orestes, Tyndareus argues for legal procedure. He believes that Orestes’s mistake was taking matters into his own hands, seeking vengeance rather than justice. Yet Tyndareus calls for Orestes and Electra’s death. This is Euripides’s way of calling justice into question, implicitly asking how justice and vengeance are any different.

Helen and Menelaus are both portrayed as gentle. A historical view of them might mirror Orestes’s accusation that they are cowards, but both show pity for all victims of suffering, those who commit crimes and those who are victimized by them. Perhaps Euripides is suggesting that the opposite of vengeance is not justice but pity.