ABSTRACT
The novelty of viewing Sophocles as the conscious antagonist of Aeschylus might make more sense if we began with an analysis of some key elements of the Electra, which by common consent is a difficult play to reconcile with the Oresteia. In this play Sophocles handles the material of the Libation Bearers as if it were self-contained: Electra and Orestes avenge themselves successfully on Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra, and no Furies arrive to prolong the issue. Classicists have never been able to decide whether the Furies are missing because Sophocles does not believe in their necessity, or because they are so obviously due to burst onstage that we must mentally supply them (the Sophoclean 'irony'). But in other ways, too, Sophocles shows that a single play cannot do the work of a trilogy - and perhaps that he has a quite different aim in mind from his predecessor.
