ABSTRACT
Phocis. When he returned as a grown man with his cousin Pylades, Strophius’ son, Electra, still hostile to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, encountered them, recognised her brother, joined him and Pylades in a ceremony at the tomb of Agamemnon, and gave them advice and encouragement. According to Euripides, however, Electra was married to a poor but honourable peasant, who out of compunction for her royal blood and the injustice of her position, respected her virginity. On the return of Orestes, she recognised him by certain tokens and joined him in the slaying of their father’s murderers. But then she was overtaken by remorse, while Orestes was tor mented by Furies who, according to Euripides, are simply the spectres of his own guilt-ridden mind. In his play Orestes, the same playwright took the story further by making Menelaus appear just as the people of Mycenae were about to stone Orestes and Electra to death for matricide. Since, however, Menelaus would not persuade the people to accept Orestes as their king, Orestes and Electra, having captured his wife Helen, tried to put her to death as an act of vengeance for all the suffering her adultery with Paris had caused their house. Helen, however, as a daughter of Zeus, was immortal and escaped their vengeance; whereupon Orestes and Electra seized her daughter Hermione and held her to ransom until Apollo, who had originally insisted that Orestes should kill Clytemnestra, offered to deliver him from the madness the Furies had inflicted on him, if he would release Hermione. Electra, by Apollo’s command, married her cousin Pylades, to whom she bore two sons, Strophius and Medon.
