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Updated: June 12, 2025
Be it so It is well said. Go thou and call the queen: Is she within? Orestes. Look not around for her She is beside thee!" Aegisthus lifts the pall, and beholds the body of Clytemnestra! He knows his fate at once. He knows that Orestes is before him. He attempts to speak.
With the pomp of an eastern monarch, always repellent to the Greek mind, the King steps across the threshold, steps, as the audience knows, to his death. The higher the reach of his power and pride the more terrible and swift is the nemesis; and Clytemnestra follows in triumph with the enigmatic cry upon her lips: "Zeus who art god of fulfilment, fulfil my prayers."
The shade of Clytemnestra in the Eumenides, however, does not prophesy. Pliny mentions the belief that the dead had prophetic powers, but declares that they could not always be relied on, as the following instance proves. During the Sicilian war, Gabienus, the bravest man in Cæsar's fleet, was captured by Sextus Pompeius, and beheaded by his orders.
These pious hopes are broken by the entry of the Queen who summons Cassandra within: when the captive prophetess answers her not a word, Clytemnestra declares she has no time to waste outside the palace: already there stands at the altar the ox ready for sacrifice, a joy she never looked to have; if Cassandra will not obey, she must be taught to foam out her spirit in blood.
Apollo replies with a charge that they are prejudiced in favour of Clytemnestra, whom, though a murderess, they had never tormented. The scene rapidly changes to Athens, where Orestes calls upon Athena; confident in the privilege of their ancient office the Chorus awaits the issue. The goddess appears and consents to try the case, the Council of the Areopagus acting as a jury.
Yet, when the master had read the letter, Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.
The relation in which Euripides stood to his two great predecessors, may be set in the clearest light by a comparison between their three pieces which we fortunately still possess, on the same subject, namely, the avenging murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes. The scene of the Choephorae of Aeschylus is laid in front of the royal palace; the tomb of Agamemnon appears on the stage.
"You pray for him, too, Clytie you love him but it's nothing to talk of." But the alarm of Clytemnestra was not to be put down by this. "Oh, Mr. Delcher " a look of horror grew big in her eyes "You don't mean to say he's gone and joined the Universalists?" The old man shook his head. "And he ain't a Unitarian?"
In contempt for the coward the Elders prepare to offer him battle; they appeal to Orestes to avenge the murder. The quarrel was stopped by Clytemnestra, who had had enough of bloodshed and was content to leave things as they were, if the gods consented thereto. Before the sustained power of this masterpiece criticism is nearly dumb.
Clytemnestra, from a dread of unpleasant remarks, has not accompanied him; and Electra undertakes to entice her mother to them by a false message of her being in child-bed. The brother and sister now join in prayers to the gods and their father's shade, for a successful issue of their designs.
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