In search of a cure for madness

Despite his acquittal, Orestes’ mind was still disturbed by all that had happened, so he and Pylades went in search of a cure for his madness. On the instructions of an oracle, they went to retrieve a sacred wooden image of Artemis from the Taurians, a savage northern people who were known to kill strangers on sight. Orestes and Pylades secretly entered the temple where the image

The Many Oresteias

Below: The story of Orestes appears on the side of the Sarcophagus of the Poet, a tomb from the third century BCE.

The story of Orestes, otherwise known as the Oresteia, is represented in virtually every period of ancient Greek literature and art. An early and influential account of the Oresteia is elaborated in the Odyssey, an epic poem attributed to Homer (c. ninth-eighth century BCE). The poem refers to the seduction of Clytemnestra by Aegisthus, implicates both in the death of Agamemnon, and praises Orestes for killing Aegisthus. The Erinyes, Electra, and Pylades do not appear in Homer, and neither do the killing of Clytemnestra nor Orestes' trial. Catalogues of Women, a fragmentary epic attributed to Hesiod (fl. c. 800 BCE), mentions the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, the affair between Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, and her murder by Orestes.

A number of lyric poets who were familiar with the work of Homer and Hesiod also refer to the Oresteia. Stesichorus (fl. 600-550 BCE) wrote a long poem on the subject that includes a recognition scene between Electra and Orestes, and his pursuit by the Erinyes. Supporting characters emerge in an ode by Pindar (c. 522-c. 438 BCE) in which Orestes is saved from Aegisthus by a nurse named Arsinoe and taken in by King Strophius. These poems emphasize Clytemnestra's role in Agamemnon's death, and Orestes' role in hers, while the Homeric account plays down these events. Stesichorus and Pindar both locate Agamemnon's kingdom in Amyclae, a town near Sparta, not Mycenae.

The Oresteia is best known, however, from plays by the major tragedians of fifth-century-BCE Athens— Aeschylus (525-456 BCE), Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE), and Euripides (c. 486-c. 406 BCE). Each develops the storyline in his own way, often by focusing on the female characters. All three set the action in Argos.

The Oresteia of Aeschylus is a trilogy consisting of Agamemnon, Choephoroe (Libation Bearers), and

Eumenides. The three plays focus on the duty of children to their fathers and justify the role of the state in settling family feuds. Aeschylus's Clytemnestra manipulates her weak husband and justifies killing him with powerful rhetoric; Aegisthus is comparatively feeble, appearing only after the killing. As in the Odyssey, Orestes' deeds are praiseworthy, but Aeschylus confronts conflicting loyalties that the epic ignores. Electra plays a small role in Aeschylus's trilogy, and Pylades appears only to steel his friend's resolve to carry through the matricide. Aeschylus develops both the role of the Furies and the trial of Orestes more than any of his predecessors.

Sophocles may have been present at the first performance of Aeschylus's Oresteia in 458 BCE. In his own surviving play on this theme, Electra, the heroine is a passionate young woman and the driving force behind the plot to avenge her father, Agamemnon. Orestes is fairly passive, relying on Electra and a servant to direct his actions; Pylades is a silent character. Sophocles' Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are wicked and tyrannical; Orestes does not hesitate to kill his mother, and no Furies appear.

At about the same time as Sophocles was writing, Euripides was creating a unique vision of the Oresteia in four plays of his own: Electra, Iphigeneia in Tauris, Orestes, and Iphigeneia at Aulis. Euripides depicts Orestes and Pylades as homicidal thugs, while Clytemnestra is sympathetic and Aegisthus a popular leader. It was Euripides who first made Electra a farmer's wife, and he who developed the reunion of Orestes and Iphigeneia. Electra and Orestes regret the killings; the Erinyes are his guilty conscience.

Above: After their murder of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra, and Pylades are pursued by the Furies (Erinyes).This engraving originally appeared in an 18th-century dictionary of mythology.

Was kept, but they were discovered and sent by the Taurian king Thoas to be sacrificed by the priestess of Artemis.

The priestess, however, turned out to be Iphigeneia. She had not after all died at Aulis, but had been spirited away to serve Artemis in Tauris. Iphigeneia helped her brother, and she, Orestes, and Pylades escaped together. They fled with the sacred image—in some versions of the story, they took it to Athens, in others to the island of Rhodes.

Pylades then married Electra, and they seem to have lived happily ever after. Orestes, however, was less fortunate. In one version of events, he was due to wed his cousin Hermione, daughter of Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus, but during one of his fits of madness she was carried off by Pyrrhus (also known as Neoptolemus), a distinguished Trojan war veteran. Orestes pursued them and killed Pyrrhus in Apollo’s temple at Delphi.