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Updated: June 10, 2025
Her jealousy of Cassandra, and criminal connexion with the worthless Aegisthus, who does not appear till after the completion of the murder and towards the conclusion of the piece, are motives which she hardly touches on, and throws entirely into the background.
He it was who had offered his own daughter Iphigenia to appease the wrath of Diana before the ships could sail for Troy. An ominous leave-taking was his, and calamity was there to greet him home again. He had entrusted the cares of the state to his cousin Aegisthus, commending also to his protection Queen Clytemnestra with her two remaining children, Electra and Orestes.
They are captives from Troy, obliged to look on the deeds of Aegisthus, whether just or unjust, yet they weep for the purposeless agonies of Agamemnon's house. When asked by Electra what prayers she should offer to her dead father, they bid her pray for some avenging god or mortal to requite the murderers.
See what a good thing it is for a man to leave a son behind him to do as Orestes did, who killed false Aegisthus the murderer of his noble father. You too, then for you are a tall smart-looking fellow show your mettle and make yourself a name in story."
Then he sent his chariots and horsemen to Agamemnon, and invited him to the feast, but he meant foul play. He got him there, all unsuspicious of the doom that was awaiting him, and killed him when the banquet was over as though he were butchering an ox in the shambles; not one of Agamemnon's followers was left alive, nor yet one of Aegisthus', but they were all killed there in the cloisters.
Woman as she is, she is yet the daughter of a king she cannot submit to a usurper "she will not, add cowardice to misery." Chrysothemis informs Electra that on the return of Aegisthus it is resolved to consign her to a vault "where she may chant her woes unheard."
After the Chorus have sung an ode of triumph Orestes shows the bodies of the two who loved in sin while alive and were not separated in death. He then displays the net which Clytemnestra threw around her husband's body and the robe in which she caught his feet; he holds up the garment through which Aegisthus' dagger ran.
The Chorus remind Orestes of his duty to act, but first he inquires why oblations have been offered; on learning that they are the result of Clytemnestra's dreaming that she suckled a serpent that stung her, and that she hopes to appease the angry dead, he interprets the dream of himself. He then unfolds his plot. He and Pylades will imitate a Phocian dialect and will seek out and slay Aegisthus.
Aeschylus' stern nature did not shrink from the sight of a meeting between mother and son; Sophocles closed the doors upon the act of vengeance, though he represents Electra as encouraging her brother from outside the palace. The Aegisthus incident maintains the interest to the end in the masterly Sophoclean style of refined and searching irony.
Orestes inquires into the vision which induced Clytemnestra to offer the libation, and is informed that she dreamt that she had given her breast to a dragon in her son's cradle, and suckled it with her blood. He hereupon resolves to become this dragon, and announces his intention of stealing into the house, disguised as a stranger, and attacking both her and Aegisthus by surprise.
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