35 pages • 1 hour read
EuripidesOrestes
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 409A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Chorus of Argive Women
By Euripides’s time, the Chorus featured 15 actors who sang and danced their lines. Any dialogue attributed to the Chorus is believed to have been spoken by the Chorus leader. The Chorus’s function in tragedies can be difficult to appreciate for modern audiences. Their presence creates a dynamic between what is sung (which is associated in Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet, with eternal truths) and what is spoken, but they do not necessarily represent the correct way to interpret events. Rather, they may represent the perspective of the mob or collective.
In Orestes, the Chorus may symbolize the Athenian citizenry who are swayed by persuasive rhetoric to support the city’s empire building and war effort despite the disastrous outcome. Though well-intentioned and sympathetic, the Chorus allows itself to be pulled into Orestes and Electra’s brutal schemes to murder Helen and take Hermione as a hostage. They consider whether they should call for help, suggesting that they recognize that the plan is wrong, but ultimately, they allow themselves to be convinced to support a potentially ruinous plot.
House of Atreus
In the opening stanza of the play, Electra narrates the story of her ancestral line, which begins with Tantalus, a son of Zeus who was “honored equal / at the table of the gods, but could not hold his tongue, / being sick with pride” (140). According to ancient myth retellings, Tantalus chopped up his son Pelops and served him to the gods at a banquet to test their perception. Realizing that he was trying to trick them into cannibalism—a serious taboo—they abstained and punished Tantalus harshly. The gods brought Pelops back to life, and he went on to father Thyestes and Atreus, who committed a similar atrocity as Tantalus. After the brothers quarreled over the family throne, Atreus served Thyestes his own children in a stew. Though variations on the myth exist, the curse on Electra and Orestes’s family line follows from the violations of divine law committed by Tantalus and Atreus, the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus.
In Orestes, the cursed House of Atreus may symbolize the fallen city of Athens that has been destroyed by its own pride and folly. Following their success against the Persians, Athens’s confidence soared. When Sparta became preoccupied with local troubles, Athens stepped into a larger leadership role, eventually believing they could challenge Sparta for supremacy in the Greek-speaking world. As their power increased, their need to maintain and defend their standing pushed them to make increasingly brutal decisions, which brought suffering to their own citizens.
Helen
In Greek mythology, Helen is known as the most beautiful woman in the world. Her beauty is a divine gift, but as is always the case with divine, excessive gifts, it can be dangerous. She is the sister of Clytemnestra, wife of Menelaus, and mother of Hermione. Aphrodite, goddess of love, promised Helen to Paris, Prince of Troy. Paris abducted Helen, starting the Trojan War. Depending on the source, Paris either kidnapped Helen or seduced her so she went of her own free will.
Helen is often described as a celebrated weaver. In both Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, she is depicted weaving in such a way as to highlight her importance within the mythical narrative under development. Early in the Iliad, Helen weaves the story of the Trojan War onto a cloth. In ancient literature, weaving often represents women’s agency and voice. Portraying Helen weaving shows her central importance to the events taking place on the battlefield. In the Odyssey, a poem that explores themes of hospitality (among others), Helen presents Odysseus’s son Telemachus with a wedding dress for his future bride, a garment that she has woven with her own hands. The woven garment creates a bond of friendship between herself and Telemachus’s future bride, even though she is not yet known.
Euripides also depicts Helen weaving in Orestes. After Orestes’s attempt to murder Helen, a Phrygian enslaved to her rushes out of the palace and describes Helen at her loom: “Helen’s fingers wind the flax, / Spindle turning, fingers moving, / round and round flax on the floor, / Trojan spoils for a cloth of purple, / a gift, yes, for Clytemnestra’s tomb” (186, italics in original). The moment may symbolize Helen’s central place in the Trojan War narrative that has created ripple effects into the next generation. Orestes, Electra, and the Argives suffer the consequences of Helen’s removal from Sparta. As with Orestes’s murder of his mother, Helen’s time in Troy was set in motion by a divine force, Aphrodite. Thus, Helen is in a special position to feel pity for her niece and nephew as well as her sister, as everything that happened to them followed from what happened to her. Zeus’s decision to remove Helen from Argos may represent how difficult it is for pity and empathy to thrive in the mortal realm.
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By Euripides
