A Classical Primer: Ancient Knowledge for Modern Minds by Dan Crompton

Author:Dan Crompton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Ancient, History, Reference, General
ISBN: 9781843178804
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Published: 2012-06-01T07:36:50+00:00

EURIPIDES: ELECTRA

Euripides was a contemporary of Sophocles, and certainly would also have learnt from Aeschylus. Both he and Sophocles wrote plays called Electra at about the same time, based on basically the same plot as Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers. Euripides takes a more light-hearted approach to this, and openly parodies the absurd recognition scene between Electra and her brother Orestes from Aeschylus’s play – which would have been familiar to the audience.

Euripides’ play tells the same story but from Electra’s viewpoint. The play begins with her living a peasant’s life outside of the palace walls. Following the murder of her father Agamemnon by her mother Clytemnestra, Electra is forced to live a miserable and very unroyal life so that she poses no threat to her mother’s new husband, Aegisthus. Her brother Orestes rocks up after many years and, after his identity is revealed, they both plot the murders of the king and queen.

Clytemnestra is summoned to Electra’s house on the pretext that her daughter is pregnant. Orestes and his mate Pylades meanwhile get into the palace and kill Aegisthus. Later, the brother and sister kill their mother and are racked with intense guilt. It is Orestes who strikes the fatal blow, but he has been encouraged by his sister, who even holds the sword with him. Their repentance and their realization that their actions can never be undone make the emotion of the play all the more poignant – and heightened even more by the fact that Orestes and Electra are forced to go their separate ways at the end of the play, and so can be of no comfort to one another in their guilt.

You can still walk around the ruins of the palace at Mycenae in Greece today, and it is quite some experience to walk through the very stone gateway that all of these characters are said to have passed through. Probably best to leave the family at home, though.

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