Electra

“Whoever says that I am a born fool to keep

a young girl in my house and never touch her body,

I say he measures wisdom by a crooked line

of morals. He should know he’s as great a fool as I.”

Despite his relatively low social standing, the Farmer holds himself to a very high moral standard that is manifested externally in the Farmer’s humility: The farmer knows his place in the social hierarchy, showing respect to those who, like his wife Electra, are of higher birth. Indeed, the Farmer takes great pride in the fact that he has never slept with Electra, an act that wins Electra’s respect (even if this respect is tinged with undertones of sexual frustration).

“O night, black night, whose breast nurses the golden stars,

I wander through your darkness, head lifted to bear

this pot I carry to the sources of the river—

I do not need to, I chose this slavery myself

to demonstrate to the gods Aegisthus’ outrageousness—

and cry my pain to Father in the great bright air.”

Electra’s first words are a self-pitying lament, whose elevated tone contrasts with the more plainspoken tone of the Farmer’s preceding speech. The contrast makes Electra’s words feel almost like a parody of the tragic genre (an impression that scholars have detected at many other points throughout the play). Electra emphasizes that she chooses to live in this servile way—indeed, the Farmer does not ask Electra to perform menial labor—“to demonstrate to the gods Aegisthus’ outrageousness.” In other words, Electra’s suffering is performative, even metaliterary.

“Quicken the foot’s rush—time has struck—O

walk now, walk now weeping aloud,

O for my grief!

I was bred Agamemnon’s child,

formed in the flesh of Clytemnestra,

Tyndareus’ hellish daughter,

Argos’ people have named me true:

wretched Electra.”

Electra again laments her fate, this time in lyrical form, and once again her words can be interpreted as performative and self-consciously “tragic.” Electra wrestles with her parentage, speaking with reverence of her father Agamemnon but with disgust of her mother Clytemnestra, raising the notion of Familial Relationships and Obligations. There is a sexual jealousy underlying Electra’s hatred of her mother in the way she puns on her name when she says that “Argos’ people have named me true,” since the name “Electra” in ancient Greek can be etymologized as “the unmarried woman” (literally, “she who is without a marital bed”)—that is, “the virgin.”

“Mourn again for the wasted dead,

mourn for the living outlaw

somewhere prisoned in foreign lands

passing from one laborer’s hearth

to the next

though born of a glorious sire.

And I! I in a

peasant’s hut

waste my life like melting wax,

exiled and barred from my

father’s home

to a scarred mountain field,

while my mother rolls in her

bloody bed

and plays at love with another man.”

Electra picks up her lament, protesting that the gods have not heard her prayers and have allowed misfortune to befall not only her but also her murdered father Agamemnon and her exiled brother Orestes. To Electra, their suffering is all the more unjust because of their high birth, showing that despite her respect for her husband she has still internalized that the aristocracy is simply more important than those of lower social status. Here Electra’s sexual jealousy becomes more explicit, as she speaks resentfully of her mother who “rolls in her / bloody bed / and plays at love with another man.”

“Uneducated men are pitiless,

but we who are educated pity much. And we pay

a high price for being intelligent. Wisdom hurts.”

Orestes cuts a strange and rather anti-heroic figure in the play, priding himself not in his physical strength or courage but in his education, intelligence, and compassion. Indeed, this is an Orestes who is hardly able to go through with the act of murdering his defenseless mother and her lover despite his conviction in the justice of his actions. Far from being molded after Homer’s brawny heroes, hurt by nothing, Orestes is a more sensitive and genteel character, one who claims he can be “hurt” even by wisdom.

“Alas,

we try to find good men and cannot recognize them

when met, since all our human heritage runs mongrel.

At times I have seen descendants of the noblest family

quite worthless, while poor fathers had outstanding sons;

inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives

while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies.

How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use?”

Orestes’s monologue on the difficulty of identifying people who are truly good echoes debates about The Relationship Between Social Status and Honor that were so popular in fifth-century BCE Greece. Orestes observes that the well-born are often “worthless” while those of humbler social standing can be honorable. Despite his words, though, Orestes is very conscious of his own high birth and even defines himself, to a large extent, by his heritage.

“When things like this occur, my intellect reflects.

I contemplate the mighty power found in money:

money you can spend on guests; money you can pay the doctor

when you get sick. But little difference does money make

for our daily bread, and when a man has eaten that,

the rich man and the poor one hold just the same amount.”

The Farmer’s simple folk wisdom on the “mighty power found in money” serves as another reminder of the contrast between him and the more class-conscious Orestes and Electra. The Farmer has little interest in money, just as he has little interest in the accoutrements of class or nobility. To him, the basic necessities of life—such as one’s “daily bread”—ultimately all amount to the same thing, and as long as somebody can feed themselves it makes little difference whether their cuisine is sophisticated or simple.

“OLD MAN. Is there a chance your brother has arrived in secret

and paused to wonder at his father’s shabby tomb?

Look at the lock of hair, match it to your own head,

see if it is not exactly twin to yours in color.

Often a father’s blood, running in separate veins,

makes siblings’ bodies almost mirrors in their form.

ELECTRA. Old man, I always thought you were wiser than you sound

if you really think my brother, who is brave and bold,

would come to our land in hiding, frightened by Aegisthus!

Besides, how could a lock of his hair match with mine?

one from a man with rugged training in the ring

and games, one combed and girlish? It is not possible.

Besides, you could find many matching curls of many people

not bred in the same house, old man, nor matched in blood.”

This exchange between Electra and the Old Man is an extended allusion to Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers, a tragedy produced in 458 BCE that dramatized the same myth as Euripides’s play. In Aeschylus’s play, Electra recognizes Orestes by finding a lock of his hair and a footprint that exactly match her hair and foot size. Euripides’s Electra provides a kind of mocking homage to Aeschylus’s scene, exposing as ridiculous the idea that Orestes and Electra’s hair and foot size would match. Euripides’s engagement with Aeschylus here has prompted scholars to interpret Electra as a highly metaliterary play.

“OLD MAN. I said I see Orestes—here—Agamemnon’s son.

ELECTRA. How? What sign do you see? What can I know and trust?

OLD MAN. The scar above his eye where once he slipped and drew

blood as he helped you chase a fawn in your father’s court.

ELECTRA. I see the mark of a fall, but I cannot believe you.”

The Old Man recognizes Orestes by a scar he received in a childhood accident, recalling the scar by which Eurycleia recognizes Odysseus when he returns home in disguise in Homer’s Odyssey. This prompts a comparison between Orestes, who was injured while pursuing a fawn, and the Homeric Odysseus, who was injured while hunting a boar—a comparison that seems to call attention to Orestes’s shortcomings as a hero, at least when compared to the more impressive figures of the Homeric epics. This scene is another example of the metaliterary qualities of Euripides’s Electra.

“ELECTRA.   O Brother so delayed by time,

I hold you against hope…

ORESTES.   And I hold you at last.

ELECTRA. …and never thought I’d see you.

ORESTES.   I too abandoned hope.

ELECTRA. And are you he?

ORESTES.        I am, your sole defender and friend.”

The reunion scene between Electra and Orestes is formally typical of such scenes as they occurred in Greek tragedy, making use of short lines of dialogue exchanged in quick succession (stichomythia). But the reunion is very short: Almost immediately the siblings turn their thoughts to their revenge, showing where their interests really lie.

“ELECTRA. I will be the one to manage my mother’s killing.

ORESTES. Good—then fortune will arrange that business well.”

While Orestes takes care of Aegisthus, Electra eagerly steps up to “manage” the killing of Clytemnestra: She will lure Clytemnestra to her house, where Orestes can wait for her in ambush. Electra’s eagerness to kill her mother reflects the special resentment she brooks toward her even if it betrays—or at least unsettles—Family Relationships and Obligations.

“Yet terrible myths are useful,

they call men to the worship of the gods—

whom you forgot when you killed your husband,

sister of glorious brothers.”

The Chorus reflects on the value of “terrible myths” as cautionary tales on the importance of behaving piously. Clytemnestra, the Chorus urges, forgot these tales when she committed adultery with Aegisthus and murdered Agamemnon. Clytemnestra has behaved dishonorably, once more raising the issue of The Relationship Between Social Status and Honor.

“Hail maidens of Mycenae, glorious in triumph!

Orestes is victor! I proclaim it to all who love him.

The murderer of Agamemnon lies on the earth

crumpled in blood, Aegisthus. Let us thank the gods.”

The Messenger’s joyful announcement of Orestes’s success over Aegisthus belies the ugliness of the murder itself as well as that of the events that are about to ensue. Orestes is hailed “glorious” and a “victor,” but the Orestes shown here—treacherous, deceitful, and wavering—is far from the traditionally heroic figure that such terms would imply.

“I have not come

in wrath against this city nor against my servants.

I have only paid my father’s killer back in blood.

I am the much-suffering Orestes—do not kill me, men

who helped my father’s house of old.”

Orestes’s words to Aegisthus’s attendants, quoted by the Messenger, underline his own dynastic ambitions: Orestes wishes not only to avenge his father but to claim his rightful role as king of Argos. Although Orestes wins over Aegisthus’s men—his own subjects—he ultimately fails to win over the gods, raising the issue of The Difference Between Justice and Revenge.

“You ruined me, orphaned me, and him too, of a father

we loved dearly, though we had done no harm to you.

You bedded my mother in shame, and killed her husband

who captained the Greeks abroad while you skulked far from Phrygia.”

Electra raves against the dead Aegisthus, letting out all the abuse she dared not utter to his face while he was alive. What is reflected in Electra’s words is above all her own personal grievances—Aegisthus killed her father, ruined her life, shamed her mother—more so than Aegisthus’s injustices against the state or the gods, suggesting that for all their high-flown words about justice and pieta, Electra (and Orestes) are ultimately satiating a personal vendetta. Such passages once more raise questions about The Difference Between Justice and Revenge.

“Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all;

only our characters are steadfast, not our possessions,

for character stays with us to the end and faces

trouble, but unjust wealth dwells with poor fools but then

wings swiftly from their house after brief blossoming.”

Electra meditates on the transience of wealth and worldly possessions, dismissing these as worthless to somebody who does not have a good “character” as well. Electra means, of course, that Aegisthus’s wealth availed him nothing in the end because he had no character—but these very lines could also be read as a critique of Clytemnestra as well as of Orestes and Electra, all of whom are destroyed in the play because of their personal failings.

“ELECTRA. You must not play the coward now and fall to weakness.

Go in. I will bait her a trap as she once baited one

which sprang at Aegisthus’ touch and killed her lawful husband.

ORESTES. I am going in. I walk a cliff edge in a sea

of evil, and evil I will do. If the gods approve,

let it be so. This game of death is bitter, not sweet.”

Electra, set on avenging her father, urges Orestes to suppress his doubts and go through with their plan to kill their mother: Electra will force Clytemnestra into their trap just as she had previously “baited” their father Agamemnon—a reference to the myth that Clytemnestra lured Agamemnon into the house and struck him down while he was bathing. Orestes, in obedience to Electra but also to an earlier oracle he had received from Apollo (hence his reference to “if the gods approve”), goes inside to set the ambush, but already he disavows the deed he is about to commit as “evil.” These words prefigure and foreshadow the grief that will seize both Electra and Orestes after they have killed their mother.

“ELECTRA. You threw me out of home like a war captive;

and with my home destroyed, then I too was destroyed,

as they are too—left dark, lonely, and fatherless.

CLYTEMNESTRA. And dark and lonely were your father’s plots against

those he should most have loved and least conspired to kill.”

When Clytemnestra arrives, Electra lashes out at her and draws her into a debate—an agon—instead of sending her directly inside where Orestes is waiting in ambush. Clytemnestra defends herself by placing the blame with Agamemnon, who sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia in exchange for a wind to take his ships to Troy and who later came home with a foreign concubine.

“Justice is in your words but your justice is shameful.

A wife should give way to her husband in all things

if her mind is sound; if she refuses to see this truth

she cannot be fully counted in my reckoning.”

The Chorus cannot deny that there was justice in Clytemnestra’s grievances against Agamemnon, but state paradoxically that “[her] justice is shameful.” By this they seem to mean that the way in which Clytemnestra exacted her justice was inappropriate, not only because murder is wrong but also because women in the ancient Greek world were expected to be subservient to their husbands “in all things.”

“If murder judges and calls for murder, I will kill

you—and your son Orestes will kill you—for Father.

If the first death was just, the second too is just.”

Electra’s assertion that she and Orestes will kill Clytemnestra to avenge Agamemnon sheds light on her skewed understanding of The Difference Between Justice and Revenge. As Electra’s words imply, this kind of justice only engenders an endless cycle of bloodshed under the banner of justice (“if the first death was just, the second too is just”). The conclusion of the play challenges this equation of justice and revenge.

“I know you and forgive you. I am not so happy

either, child, with what I have done or with myself.

[…]

O god, how miserably my plans have all turned out.

Perhaps I drove my hate too hard against my husband.”

Clytemnestra magnanimously responds to Electra’s vow that she will kill her by declaring that she forgives her, even showing remorse by admitting that her own behavior may not have been just. Whatever Clytemnestra’s character may have been in the past (within the world of the play, we have only the biased testimony of Electra to go on), the Clytemnestra presented here is a figure who recognizes and even atones for her past misdeeds, even if she does not know how to make amends.

“Behold them coming from the house in robes of blood

newly stained by a murdered mother, walking straight,

living signs of triumph over her frightful cries.

There is no house, nor has there been, more suffering

or pitiable than this, the house of Tantalus.”

The Chorus paints a vivid verbal picture of Electra and Orestes as they come out of the house where they have just killed their mother, in whose blood they are now “newly stained.” This gory scene gives way almost immediately to lament, as Electra and Orestes speak in horror of what they have done. From Atreus and Thyestes to Agamemnon to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus to Orestes and Electra, bloodshed has always led to more bloodshed, prompting the Chorus’ observation that there has never been a house “more suffering / or pitiable than […] the house of Tantalus.”

“ORESTES. Take it! shroud my mother’s dead flesh in a cloak;

clean and close the sucking wounds.

Your own murderers were the children you bore.

ELECTRA. Behold! I wrap her close in this robe,

her whom I loved and could not love,

ending our family’s great disasters.”

The ambivalence of Orestes’s and Electra’s relationship to their mother comes to the fore in how they grieve over and handle her dead body. Orestes acknowledges their debt to her as “the children [she] bore,” while Electra speaks of Clytemnestra as the mother “whom [she] loved and could not love.” Even in her grief, Electra cannot help hoping that the murder of Clytemnestra marks the end of “[the] family’s great disasters.”