Electra

Electra is a tragedy by Euripides, probably written in the mid-410s BC, before 413 BC. It belongs to the myth of the house of Atreus, the same story that Aeschylus staged in his Oresteia and that Sophocles treated in his own Electra. Scholars still debate whether Sophocles or Euripides wrote first, but Euripides' play is usually dated between 417 and 413 BC and was conceived as part of a trilogy.

The story begins after Clytemnestra has murdered Agamemnon with the help of her lover Aegisthus. Fearing that Electra might bear a noble heir able to avenge her father, Aegisthus marries her off to a poor farmer from Mycenae. He treats her with courtesy, honours her royal descent and never touches her, so Electra lives in a humble country cottage, doing household work and mourning her father and her lost status.

Orestes returns from exile with his friend Pylades. Electra does not recognise him at first, and he tests whether she is willing to help avenge their father. Once the siblings recognise each other, they plan the deaths of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Euripides departs from Aeschylus here: the recognition scene mocks the tokens Aeschylus used, such as a lock of hair, a footprint and a garment, and Orestes is identified by a scar, a parodic allusion to the Odyssey. The climax has Aegisthus killed offstage and Clytemnestra killed inside the cottage, with Electra playing a decisive role.

The play does not end with vengeance. Afterwards the siblings are overwhelmed by guilt at having killed their own mother. At the close, the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, appear to explain that Clytemnestra deserved punishment, yet matricide remains a shameful act that must be atoned for. Euripides thus presents a tragedy of suffering and moral conflict, in which justice and crime are tangled together and the gods stand at a more distant and troubling remove than in Aeschylus.