Literature Essay on Sophocles and Euripides Treatement of Orestei

VARIATIONS ON A THEME: SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES' TREATMENT OF AESCHYLUS' "ORESTEIA"

The trilogy, the Oresteia, of the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus still inspires playwrights today. Aeschylus' two most famous tragic contemporaries, Sophocles and Euripides, wrote versions of the story that still survive.

Sophocles wrote one play, Electra, while Euripides wrote two, Electra (420 BC) and Orestes (408 BC) shortly before his death. Both probably used Aeschylus as their main source; the three versions are similar in plot, incident and characterisation.

While they used the same material, the three playwrights did not cover it all in the same way. Significant differences of treatment appear in the themes of: justice (dike), the nature of revenge and counter revenge, religion (including the role of fate and destiny in the character's actions), family rivalry, political issues, and gender relations.

This paper will look at these differences and how they reflect Sophocles' and Euripides' treatments of the source material, their philosophies and concerns, and the unique problems the material presented to them.

The "Oresteia"

The story of the house of Atreus comes mainly from Homer's cycle of poems about the Trojan War, but the Oresteia of Aeschylus expands considerably upon that myth of fratricidal and matricidal strife for three generations.

In the first play, Agamemnon, the Greek general Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War to Argos. His wife, Clytemnestra, conceived a burning hatred against him for sacrificing their daughter at the beginning of the War. In revenge, she took his cousin, Aegisthus, as her lover.

At first, she seems to welcome Agamemnon home, but it is only so that she can lure him to his death. She stabs him in his bath then kills his concubine, the Trojan prophetess Cassandra, as well. The end of the play sees Clytemnestra standing triumphant with Aegisthus over the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, while the chorus of old men rails at them and prophesies more blood.

The Libation Bearers centres about the efforts of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's adult children, Electra and Orestes, to avenge their father's death. Electra appears at the beginning of the play with the chorus of Trojan slave women.

Her mother has sent her to Agamemnon's tomb with offerings and supplications, after having nightmares in which she suckles a poisonous serpent that turns on her. This serpent both Clytemnestra and Orestes will identify as her son, making the dream prophetic.

When Electra reaches the tomb, she finds that someone has been there before her, leaving a lock of hair and a footprint that seem strangely familiar. Orestes and his friend, Pylades, then step out of hiding; brother and sister are reunited.

Orestes has gone to the Oracle in Delphi, where Apollo ordered him to avenge his father's death or be cursed himself. Orestes sends Electra back to the palace, where she will spy for him and keep her counsel, whereupon she disappears from the play.

Meanwhile, Orestes goes to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, pretending to be a messenger bringing news of his death. After Clytemnestra invites him inside the palace, the chorus persuades an old nurse not to warn Aegisthus' bodyguard.

Orestes and Pylades thus catch Aegisthus away from his bodyguard and kill him. Clytemnestra, alerted by a panicked servant, calls for an axe, but when Orestes appears, she relies on his feelings for her as his mother instead. Orestes hesitates but, goaded on by Pylades, kills her anyway.

At the end of the play, Orestes appears over the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in a clear s. Apollo helps Orestes escape to Athens while the Furies sleep, but the ghost of Clytemnestra rouses them in imitation of the ending of Agamemnon.

But The Libation Bearers does not end in the same way. While Orestes is holding up the robe that Clytemnestra used to entrap Agamemnon when she killed him, he suddenly sees the Furies, vengeance goddesses born of her blood, and flees Argos screaming in fear.
The Furies begins in Delphi, where Orestes has been absolved by Apollo but is still pursued by the Furiepursuit. In Athens, Orestes undergoes a trial of Athenian citizens, led by the goddess Athena.

The Furies press the case of matricide while Apollo defends Orestes. When the vote ends in a tie, Athena casts her vote in Orestes' favour. Orestes then leaves the play, which ends in a dialogue of reconciliation between Athena and the Furies.

Aeschylus focused strongly on the nature of justice or dike--specifically, the conflict between personal, clan revenge and universal justice. To drive home his point, he pushed the comparison to its absurd, but logical, end where Orestes finds himself condemned if he does not avenge his father's death, then condemned even more harshly for killing his father's murderer--his own mother.

No one's hands are clean and everyone has a legitimate grievance that demands blood satisfaction to a repugnant degree. Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter to appease a goddess whose shrine he violated.

Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon for fear of her daughter's supernatural anger. Orestes murders his mother in fear of Apollo's edict, is punished by the Furies and eventually is acquitted by another god altogether.

The characters, driven by the dictates of family justice and a fear of the gods, do terrible things to each other, raising the troubling question of whether the gods represent universal justice or only their own petty ends. Only the intervention of Athena, the goddess of divine, impartial wisdom, can end the cycle of violence.

However, the cycle is not only perpetuated by fear of divine anger or desire for justice, but also by lesser motivations--pride, lust, anger, jealousy, envy and misogyny--that create problems Aeschylus only partially resolves.

Agamemnon commits human sacrifice so that he can wage an ultimately unpopular war. He cares more about his reputation as a warrior and a rash promise that he once made to his brother than about the welfare of his kingdom.

Clytemnestra murders her husband and lord out of revenge, but her motives are clouded when she takes Aegisthus as a lover and kills Cassandra, and even further when she neglects her children, something which is emphasised against her in Sophocles' play.[

As well as fear of the gods or love of a child, there is pride, lust and jealousy here and an unhealthy rivalry within their marriage. Electra and Orestes plot against their mother out of devotion to their father, but they are also bitter over Clytemnestra's neglect of them.

Also, Orestes feels that his mother, by murdering her husband and taking another, has robbed him of his birthright, the kingdom of Argos. She is the receptacle of royal power, but she corrupted her role by taking the power for herself.

Both Orestes and Electra feel that Clytemnestra has no right to the same prerogatives that Agamemnon had--to take another lover and rule Argos as she wishes. There are specific roles for men and women and Clytemnestra's crime lies as much in transgressing these roles as in murder.

Sophocles' "Electra"

Sophocles only deals with the myth in a single play, Electra, while Euripides deals with it in two plays, Electra and Orestes, to Aeschylus' three. This brings about the immediate problem of how to deal with the plot, characters and issues raised in the story in fewer words.

Sophocles does this by concentrating on the climactic conflict of The Libation Bearers and simplifying the overall storyline, bringing in elements from the other two plays as he needs them.

He focuses on different characters, eliminating many while building up, even creating, others. Rather than balance out the play between Electra and Orestes, as Aeschylus does, he gives it completely to Electra.

Finally, instead of dealing with both Aegisthus' and Clytemnestra's murders, he encompasses Clytemnestra's murder and ends the play with Aegisthus being driven off to his death.
Sophocles' treatment of the question of justice is also much simpler than Aeschylus'. In his play, personal revenge is the same as institutional and universal justice. By reducing the temporal scope to the events of a single play, he sidesteps the dilemma of the generational, never-ending cycle of violence that convulses Aeschylus' much longer work. In Electra, the deaths of the murderers of Agamemnon end the cycle of bloodletting. [8]
The play begins with Orestes with his friend Pylades and his old teacher, Paedagogus, arriving in Mycenae (Argos). They hide when Electra appears onstage, bemoaning the state of Mycenae, as reflected in her own bereft, unkempt state, to a chorus of Mycenaean women. She cannot marry; Aegisthus fears she will sire a son who will avenge Agamemnon. Also, she has just heard that when Aegisthus returns from his voyage, he will put her away in an underground prison, effectively burying her alive and silencing her. The only thing that she still lives for is the return of her brother, Orestes, whom she sent to safety with Paedagogus many years before. Electra's sister, Chrysothemis, appears onstage to berate her for her stubbornness. Chrysothemis, like their other sister, Iphianassa (who is mentioned but never appears), cooperated with the new regime. She allied herself with her mother and stepfather because it makes life easier, but also out of family duty. Electra sees her as a collaborator. Chrysothemis calls Electra mad.[9] Though her estate is considerably better than Electra's she, too, is unmarried. Neither of Electra's sisters appears in Aeschylus' cycle, though Electra mentions Chrysothemis at the beginning of Euripides' Electra. Sophocles' purpose in bringing Chrysothemis into his play seems to be to emphasise and test Electra's noble devotion to her father's cause.[10] This is unnecessary in The Libation Bearers, where Electra does not participate in her mother's murder, and in Euripides' version, where Electra's and Orestes' actions are not noble but appear "sordid" and extreme. [11]
Chrysothemis brings gifts for Agamemnon's tomb from Clytemnestra, who has been suffering from bad dreams and seeks to appease Agamemnon's restless spirit. Sophocles makes the nature of these dreams vague, relying possibly on Herodotus instead of Aeschylus and leaving out Aeschylus' vivid, ambiguous image of the nursing serpent.[12] Electra and Chrysothemis reconcile enough that Chrysothemis agrees to go to the tomb for their father's sake rather than their mother's and Chrysothemis leaves. Electra's small victory, however, is soured by her mother's arrival, the continuation of a lifelong war of words that will end only with Clytemnestra's death. Clytemnestra tries to persuade Electra to be more malleable, through cajoling and threats. She justifies murdering Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter, though this is mitigated by the clear neglect (sacrifice) of Electra in favour of her second husband.[13] Electra's stern admonition that the gods demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon, who had no choice, and that Clytemnestra should have obeyed her lord cuts across Clytemnestra's argument without quite refuting it. One cannot prevail over the other; only Orestes' sword can break the deadlock.
Paedagogus interrupts the argument between mother and rebellious daughter, pretending to be a messenger reporting Orestes' death. In Aeschylus, it was Orestes, himself, who gained entry to the palace and his victim's hospitality under false pretenses. By giving the deception to the Paedagogus, Sophocles softens Orestes' guilt for his mother's death (though it also makes him look more passive). Since neither Clytemnestra nor Electra recognise the much-aged Paedogogus, they both take him at his word. Electra is devastated. Clytemnestra is relieved, yet expresses regret that her happiness must be tied up in something that hurts her. She seems to still love her son, though she fears him. Clytemnestra invites the Paedogogus into the palace, assuring him hospitality even though he has brought bad news. Electra is left alone, railing against Clytemnestra, whose mixed feelings condemn her in her daughter's eyes.
Chrysothemis arrives back from the tomb, excited by news that she has seen signs of someone's devotions there, the lock of hair as mentioned in Aeschylus. She believes (rightly) that it must be Orestes. Electra rails at her that Orestes is dead, and that someone else must have left the token. Chrysothemis is devastated, but rather than resolving on revenge (which she acknowledges is the just course)[14] , she urges Electra even more to reconcile with Aegisthus and their mother, since all hope of vengeance is gone. Electra refuses and they part bitterly, each calling the other mad and a traitor. Sophocles' opinion of collaboration is clear. Yet neither Electra nor Chrysothemis, however they feel, may take the vengeance that only Orestes can bring. [15]As women, they can only take a helping role. This becomes an indissoluble dilemma for all three playwrights--the only way that Electra can revenge herself on her mother and stepfather is through a man, either her brother or a son that she might bear.[16] She cannot do it herself. To even suggest it divides her family even more.[17] Even though Sophocles' Electra, thinking Orestes is dead, then decides to kill her mother and stepfather herself, this resolve is cut short by Orestes' arrival, leaving open the question of whether she would have taken such a radical step on her own. [18]
Bereft, Electra embarks on a long dialogue with the chorus. The chorus, by being changed from the bitter Trojan slaves of The Libation Bearers to rather jolly free Greek women, loses much of its emotional investment in the situation. While sympathetic to Electra's plight, it frequently grows impatient with her extreme behaviour.[19] However, it does bring up an interesting image, by referring to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus as "the twin Erinyes [Furies]" [20], the chorus gives a negative image to these goddesses of archaic justice and a political twist to the play. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are not only murderers but bad rulers as well, tyrants who use the wealth of the lawful ruler of Mycenae to stay in power while disinheriting his true heir.[21] Orestes makes other references to the Furies in the play, when he expresses fear that his father's Furies will pursue him if he fails to kill his mother. Since Orestes' trial and absolution was a traditional Athenian story, it was probably unnecessary for Sophocles to spell out the nature of the Furies and how they hounded Orestes after the end of the play. Here, the true Furies are already present, though completely invisible and apparently metaphorical, but they are the Furies of Agamemnon. They are both symbols of a fearful sense of justice that can only be appeased, not fought, and of extreme vengeance which masquerades as eternal justice.
Orestes comes onstage at this point, carrying his own urn to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. But he cannot persist in his lie in the face of Electra's extreme grief. He reveals himself to her, to their mutual joy, and they plot the destruction of their mother and Aegisthus. Electra goes back to the palace, just as in The Libation Bearers, but this time the audience follows her. She waits outside and comments on the action while Orestes and Pylades go inside, bearing the false urn to Clytemnestra. We see Electra's joy as she hears her mother's dying screams and she participates in the cruel charade at the end when Orestes shows Clytemnestra's shrouded body to Aegisthus, claiming it is Orestes. Only when Aegisthus uncovers his wife's face does he see the truth, too late. Orestes and Pylades then drive him into the palace to be slaughtered in the place where Agamemnon died, while Electra rejoices. Aegisthus' death can be seen either Homerically, as the true moment of the transfer of royal power (with Clytemnestra being only his accomplice, rather than the queen whom a man must marry to become king) or in Aeschylan terms as an afterthought following the important death of Clytemnestra, the king-maker. [22]
Electra epitomises the tragic "self-absorption" of Sophoclean heroes that blinds them to all compromises and sets in motion the bloody end of the play[23]. Electra's actions may be just, but they do not mitigate the tragedy of her self-imposed estrangement from everyone in her family, including, until the very end, her brother Orestes. She is isolated by her own choice. This contributes to her inability to act, for she is so separated from others, as a woman and a would-be avenger, that she cannot influence them. [24]
But even her limited participation in Orestes' deeds requires a transmutation of sorts. Electra, with her mother and sister, already shows herself contemptuous of other women. So, it is little surprise when she declares to Orestes (who is afraid of being discovered during their reunion) that she is afraid of no woman. Electra no longer really sees herself as a woman.[25] This makes it appropriate to help Orestes kill their mother. It is men's work, but in helping her brother avenge their father against her mother, she has so allied herself with the male cause against her mother and sisters that she has made herself masculine, choosing Agamemnon over Clytemnestra and Orestes over Chrysothemis. [26]
Sophocles' worldview in Electra is much more straightforward than Aeschylus' or Euripides', more like Homer's view of divine justice divinely administered.[27] According to him, Electra and Orestes' vengeance is just in both the personal and the universal sense. After Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are killed, the cosmic balance is righted and the play ends with Agamemnon's faithful children triumphant over his murderers. For Sophocles, nothing more need be said.[28] Further, it is a masculine justice, as Clytemnestra and Aegisthus' unjust rule was female-based and all of the women are collaborators save for Electra, who must make herself masculine before she can participate in the vengeance against her mother.[29] In fact, Electra is more masculine than Orestes, who is fearful of being discovered too early. But in the end, she is not quite masculine enough, for it is Orestes, the male heir, who must complete the deed.

Euripides' "Electra"
Euripides' plays Electra and Orestes are more morally complex than Sophocles' one play and much darker than even Aeschylus in tone. They reflect Aeschylus' worldview of endless feud more than Sophocles' work. Electra ends as disastrously for Agamemnon's children as The Libation Bearers, but Orestes lacks the sense of the eventual righting of the scales that comes in The Furies. Its ending is so disconcertingly upbeat that it leaves the audience with an uneasy, subversive sense that no justice has been done at all. This must have been an uncomfortable message for Euripides' contemporaries. [30]
Euripides' first play differs in some significant plot points from both Aeschylus' and Sophocles' versions. Electra is no longer a maiden, but is married to a peasant (actually, a rustic and poor nobleman). The peasant has nobly refrained from forcing himself on her, so she is still a virgin, but only the two of them know this. This makes Electra's social status even lower than in Sophocles' version, where Electra still lives in the palace. The chorus in Euripides' version is, like Electra, lower in status than in Sophocles' version, consisting of Argive countrywomen, but these women are still free. It is not especially intelligent, being easily duped by Electra and Orestes. It is also somewhat more sympathetic than Sophocles' chorus, as Electra is not, initially, as frenetic as Sophocles' version of her. On the other hand, in some respects, she seems angrier. She dresses in rags and mourns day and night, though she also works hard to make a good home for her husband, whom she pities. Yet, even that is a deliberate bit of self-punishment since she does not love him or particularly respect him. [31]
When, Orestes and Pylades first appear, she is frightened, thinking they are robbers. Orestes reassures her, but waits to reveal himself. Orestes' initial deceit with Electra exists in all three versions of this story. Though there is some justification for it, since he has not seen Electra in so long that he would not recognise her either, there is an aspect of cruelty about it. Even when it is clear that Electra is on his side and not likely to betray him, Orestes draws out the deception, making the audience question his motives. On the other hand, it also gives Electra a chance, in her own blindness to Orestes' identity, to explain the situation to both him and the audience. Perhaps Orestes hesitates because he is both appalled at his sister's condition and her anger. Perhaps he is simply trying to get the entire story before he acts. [32]
Electra is not easily convinced, at first, of Orestes' return. She is sceptical when an old man arrives and declares that the man before her is her brother. She is equally sceptical of the proofs of hair and footprint that easily persuaded Aeschylus' Electra. Here, Euripides seems to be having fun with the gullibility of Aeschylus' characters in accepting these proofs. [33]
Once she is convinced of her brother's identity, however, Electra changes, throwing off her despair for a darker, dangerous and more masculine identity. As with Sophocles' and Aeschylus' versions, this Electra cannot kill her mother and stepfather on her own. Her problem, however, is not that she is a woman and cannot act at all, but that she is one of two children who must act together to make the vengeance complete, even to make it just. When Orestes asks how they can kill both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus at once, Electra says calmly that she will kill her mother herself, brushing aside Orestes' uncertainty.[34] Even more so than in the other plays Orestes is appalled by the Oracle's commands. In both of Euripides' plays, he even wonders if he hallucinated the command to kill his mother, since it seems so little like justice as he sees it[35]. In Euripides, Orestes is frightened by the demands of vengeance and questions the dictates of the gods, though in the end, he still commits the act that will drive him mad.
Electra pretends that she has just given birth to a child and come out of confinement. She invites Clytemnestra to visit her and her mother comes eagerly. While in the other plays, Electra's virginity prevents her from bearing an avenger for her father, here it is her bearing a lowborn child that would neutralise her as a threat. Her virginity is the quality that makes her worthy to avenge her father's death. It makes her masculine.[36] On the other hand, by sending to her mother that she has borne a boy, she makes a different kind of threat that much be neutralised directly. She has borne a possible avenger. She believes that her mother will come, motivated not by love but by dynastic and personal fear, despite the fact that it was her mother who saved her from Aegisthus' murderous plans by marrying her off.[37] Orestes and Pylades go first to slay Aegisthus, while Electra waits behind at her hut. When Electra hears a death cry, she becomes frightened and considers killing herself, but the chorus stays her hand. When a messenger arrives, he relates a wondrous story to her.[38] Orestes and Pylades came upon Aegisthus, who offered them hospitality. Later, they slew him while he sacrificed to Zeus. One might see this as sacrilege, like slaying one who has sought sanctuary at an altar. However, it seems more likely that Euripides is saying that by allowing this misfortune to happen, the god signified his disapproval of Aegisthus' crimes. It is a sign of divine justice, if not necessarily direct approval of Orestes' action. In none of the plays is Aegisthus' death ever presented as anything but just. As a regicide and seducer of his cousin's wife, he fully deserves his death.[39] Orestes returns with Aegisthus' corpse, which Electra reviles. The chorus enthusiastically praises Electra and Orestes, but there is already an underlying unease that will soon grow.
Upon seeing his mother approach, Orestes hesitates. Electra goads him on, certain that their vengeance is just. When Clytemnestra arrives, Electra lures her to the hut to see her nonexistent baby. Clytemnestra goes in, ostensibly to give sacrifice to the gods for the baby, but possibly to kill it under the cover of piety.[40] There, Electra and Orestes slaughter her. Afterwards, however, Electra, Orestes and the chorus are horrified by the deed. While they stand confused, covered with blood, the Dioscuri--Castor and Polydeuces, Clytemnestra's apotheosised twin brothers--arrive in a deus ex machina ending.[41] Blaming the Oracle of Apollo for the deed, they tell Orestes to give Electra to Pylades as his wife (completely ignoring Electra's still-breathing peasant spouse) and flee to Athens for absolution from his crime. Brother and sister part, convinced that they will never see each other again.
But this is not what happens in Euripides' sequel Orestes. Despite the title, Orestes still shares the stage with his sister. The play begins six days after Clytemnestra's funeral, with Electra watching over Orestes while he sleeps in the palace at Argos. The Furies have driven Orestes mad for murdering his mother. Electra gives a synopsis of the Atreid saga, a litany of divine punishment for unspeakable crimes. The chorus related the same story just before Aegisthus' death in Electra. This vicious family fable is Electra's excuse for her and her brother's deeds; they are merely instruments of divine justice, just as they were in the Oresteia. Euripides seems to be questioning this traditional view, following contemporary Sophistic critiques of divine justice.[42] It is no longer enough to say that the gods ordered something. Now, there is a justice that is even above the gods, and that they perhaps do not represent. Even Electra seems to realise the responsibility she and her brother bear for their actions, for she then explains that she and Orestes await trial by the city for their crimes. If they are convicted, as they likely will be, the citizens will either stone them to death or force them to kill themselves by the sword. For the first time in the saga, we hear the voice of the Mycenaean citizens outside of the mostly ineffectual chorus. The old royal power is being replaced by democracy.
Helen arrives onstage. Having come to Mycenae to see her sister, Clytemnestra, she is horrified to see that her sister's children have murdered her instead. Electra bitterly blames her woes on Helen's betrayal of her uncle, Menelaus, when Helen ran off to Troy. Helen asks Electra to lay an offering on her mother's grave, but sends her own daughter, Hermione, to do it instead when Electra insists on remaining with Orestes. After Helen leaves, the chorus of Argive women creeps in to comfort Electra, but accidentally wakes Orestes while trying to see if he is still alive. Awake, Orestes proves mentally and emotionally disturbed, though Electra comforts him. He is in despair, convinced that his father would never have wanted him to kill Clytemnestra[43]. When first Menelaus and then Tyndareos (Clytemnestra and Helen's father) come onstage, it becomes clear that Orestes is probably right. However, by this time, Orestes has become defensive, claiming that he did Argos a favour by freeing it from the tyrannical rule of a woman. The conversation turns decidedly misogynistic, with Orestes railing against both his mother and Helen. Not even Electra is spared, as Tyndareos blames her for goading Orestes into the murder. After Menelaus and Tyndareos leave, Pylades arrives and whips the already agitated Orestes into a fury, just before he is due to go to trial before the citizens of Argos. In this attitude, he of course loses his and Electra's case and when Electra becomes terrified after hearing the news, he snaps at her. Not even equally mad Electra is immune from his madness, being, in the end, a woman. [44]
Orestes, Pylades and Electra then plot an escape from their situation--they decide to go and murder Helen, who is unpopular in Argos for having instigated the Trojan War. The chorus, now completely against Helen, helps them, watching out for any interference. They appear to kill Helen, Electra exhorting Orestes and Pylades offstage, just before Hermione returns from Clytemnestra's grave. Electra, now frenzied, lures Hermione into the palace, where Orestes and Pylades take her hostage.
There is a tragicomic interlude between Orestes and a Phrygian slave (Trojan) who witnessed the attack on Helen. From here on, the play descends into farce. First, the slave claims to the audience that Helen miraculously disappeared rather than was murdered. Orestes chases after him, extracting an accolade for Helen's murder from the cringing slave before letting him go. Then, Orestes, Pylades and Electra take Hermione up to the roof of the now burning building, where Orestes demands complete absolution and the throne of Argos from a horrified Menelaus. By now, Orestes is raving, completely out of his mind. It seems impossible that the situation could end in anything but complete tragedy. Instead, the play ends happily. Apollo appears above the burning building with Helen in another deus ex machina ending that reflects the end of Electra. Instead of dying, Helen has become a goddess and will now live on Olympus. Meanwhile, Apollo grants Orestes the absolution and the throne he looks for, as well as Hermione's hand in marriage, and again promises Electra to Pylades. The god makes all right in a way that must have seemed as absurd to late 5th century Athenian audiences as it does to Modern watchers.
What is one to make of this play? Classicists seem as divided as Euripides' contemporaries. Some sympathise with Electra and Orestes, seeing Helen and Menelaus as shallow, vain and disloyal to their siblings' children, criminally so.[45] Others see Helen as a soft-voiced and gentle soul and Menelaus as a peacemaker while the Atreid children are maddened murderers.[46] There is evidence in the play for both positions. Electra and Orestes are certainly mad. Though they begin the play in a pitiable state, their actions soon make them extremely unsympathetic. Pylades is a clear instigator in their crimes, goading them on to greater rages. Helen and Menelaus, in their relatively good fortune and their insipid platitudes, their excuses for past behaviour and their lack of solutions to their nephew and niece's problems seem shallow and condescending. The family rivalries in Orestes are, if possible, more savage than in either The Libation Bearers or both versions of Electra. No one is acting nobly, here. Euripides spares no one's feelings in the play. Even Hermione, who is completely innocent, seems almost smug, or at least blind and stupid. As a counterpart to the damaged Electra, she does not present a compelling view of Greek maidenhood.
The idea of justice, furthermore, is completely turned on its head. In Electra, there is a definite sense of punishment and retribution. The cycle may not end on the hopeful note of Aeschylus or the triumphant note of Sophocles, but it will end. Eventually, Electra and Orestes' sterile lives will naturally draw to a close, for there is no one left to avenge Clytemnestra and Aegisthus against them. They are the final generation.
In Orestes, however, Orestes and Electra's reactions to their plight are completely irrational and ignoble, yet they are rewarded with the god's blessing at the end. Orestes will marry Hermione, whose mother he has murdered and whom he holds hostage at sword's point. Helen, who has caused a destructive war, becomes a goddess. The manic Electra marries the sinister Pylades. Finally, most absurd of all, Orestes will rule Argos. There is no justice here. What was Euripides trying to say? This last play seems to have been an antiwar message, since it came out during the Peloponnesian War.[47] The theory is that Euripides was trying to say that only divine intervention would save the Athenians from themselves and only complete disaster would save them from their war fever.[48] Some historians even see the play as a comedy or satire that emphasises the tragedy of the events, Euripides experimenting with merging forms together, on the cusp of creating new stories altogether. [49]
Conclusion
Sophocles and Euripides approached the story of the house of Atreus from different angles, for different ends. In his Electra, Sophocles presented a world where personal and universal justice were not at odds, but the goals and needs of family members were, where women were expected to keep the memory of old grievances alive, to fan the flames of justice, but could not, themselves, act. In Sophocles, the cycle of violence is stopped. The balance of justice that was disrupted by vengeance is eventually restored by counter-vengeance, but at the cost of estrangement between the paternal and maternal lines. Electra and Chrysothemis each make their choices, and Electra does triumph, but in the end, they are not reconciled.
The characters in Electra all claim divine justification for their actions, but only Electra and Orestes are proved right in the end. Also, while their fates are determined to a certain extent, there is never any question that both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus destroy themselves through their own actions--Clytemnestra, especially, chooses to ignore the warning of her dream, going blindly to her own destruction. The example of Electra and Chrysothemis, also, shows that though they are sisters, under the same obligation to find justice, they make different decisions, which are each, in their own way, good, but Electra's is more divinely favoured in the end. Sophocles intensifies the justifications for avenging Agamemnon by strengthening Electra's character, but at the risk of making Electra inappropriately masculine in her actions. This further isolates her from her mother and sisters. He sidesteps the problem of continuing the cycle of violence by ending the play just before Aegisthus' death, before the Furies come for Orestes. For Sophocles the story ends in that climactic moment and the house of Atreus is effectively absolved. It is difficult to say what political situations he might have been alluding to, due to the undated nature of the play, but he could have been referring to the oligarchic revolution of 411 BC. He could also have written the play in response to Euripides' Electra and the perceived Sophist arguments therein.[50] Unlike Euripides and Aeschylus, Sophocles implies that personal vengeance eventually does prevail and turns out to be true justice.
In Electra, Euripides seems to be operating in a universe where no one knows what true justice is anymore, but one thing they do know is that personal vengeance is not it. The characters are soiled and confused, not ennobled, by murdering their mother. Electra is an extreme personality. Still hobbled by Athenian notions of female inaction, she does not act until her brother returns. However, this seems to be more because sister and brother are acting as two halves of a whole. During their mother's murder, both Orestes' and Electra's hands wield the killing sword.
In the play, Orestes is hesitant about his duty, worried that the Oracle advised him wrongly, or that what he heard was not even a god. He is ripe to come under the persecution of the Furies. When he runs mad in Orestes, however, his insanity turns decidedly misogynistic as he convinces himself that Helen will deserve dying as much as her sister Clytemnestra did. While he still loves Electra, who has stood by him, he no longer sees the maternal side of his nature as positive or influential in any way. This becomes part of his madness. Euripides' attitude towards the war of the sexes is thus problematic and historians cannot agree whether he is a misogynist or a protofeminist. Likely, the answer is neither and both. Euripides questions both the nature of personal justice and divine law, if it allows such crimes as matricide to flourish. Fate is given the same treatment, as the characters commit increasingly desperate acts with the excuse that it was their destiny. Being faithful to the gods is not necessarily a protection either, as Aegisthus is struck down while sacrificing to Zeus, who disapproves of his crimes.
The family dynamics of both Electra and Orestes are extremely dysfunctional. Electra and Orestes celebrate their sibling bond even as they destroy their own mother in Electra. Their incestuous closeness grows deadlier in Orestes when their bitter envy of their more fortunate uncle, Menelaus, and aunt, Helen, boils over. They even lash out at their innocent cousin, Hermione. Nor are Menelaus and Helen particularly willing to help their distressed nephew and niece, despite having some responsibility for their woes.
Finally, Euripides seems to be making two political comments, particularly in Orestes. First, there is the example of royalty gone mad--the people of Argos finally revolt when it seems likely that Orestes, a polluted matricide, will become their king. Second seems to be an antiwar message aimed at the Peloponnesian War, which was going badly when the second play came out. Just as his deus ex machina restores the chaotic action of his play at the end to the traditional storyline of myth, Euripides seems to be saying that only an act of God, or something equally disastrous, will bring the Athenians to their senses. It is a message of anger, but perhaps also one of despair, and it still resonates today.