Orestes

Not to be confused with Euripides’ tragedy Orestes.

Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. As a grown man he avenged his father by killing his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, and the Erinyes, the Furies of a murdered mother, then hunted him until he was acquitted at Athens. His story is the subject of Aeschylus’ Oresteia and of plays by Sophocles and Euripides.

Family and Childhood

Orestes was the son of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and Clytemnestra, and the brother of Electra and Iphigenia. After the Trojan War, Agamemnon returned to Mycenae with his prize, the Trojan princess Cassandra, and was murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Homer says Aegisthus killed him (Odyssey 3.303–310), while Aeschylus makes Clytemnestra the killer. The two ruled Mycenae for seven years (Odyssey 3.304–305).

Orestes was not at the palace, and the sources disagree about where he was sent. In Homer he came back to Mycenae from Athens in the eighth year (Odyssey 3.306–307). In the tragedians and Pindar he grew up in Phocis, in the care of Strophius, who lived at the foot of Mount Parnassus, together with Strophius’ son Pylades (Pindar, Pythian 11.15–37; Aeschylus, Agamemnon 877–881; Apollodorus, Epitome 6.24). Pindar says that his nurse Arsinoe took him away from Clytemnestra; Apollodorus says that Electra smuggled him out and gave him to Strophius (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.24).

The Murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

When Orestes grew up, he consulted Apollo at Delphi, and the god told him to take vengeance on his father’s killers (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.24–25). In Aeschylus, Apollo threatens him with terrible punishments if he does not avenge Agamemnon (Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 269–305). He returned to Mycenae in secret with Pylades and met his sister Electra at their father’s tomb. The two young men entered the palace as strangers from Phocis, and Orestes killed Aegisthus and then his mother (Libation Bearers 560–930; Apollodorus, Epitome 6.25). Homer mentions the death of Aegisthus at Orestes’ hand and a funeral feast for him and for Orestes’ “hateful mother” (Odyssey 1.29–30; 3.306–310), but he does not describe the matricide.

Pursuit by the Erinyes

Killing his mother brought the anger of the Erinyes upon him. In the Libation Bearers, as the deed is done, Orestes begins to lose his wits and sees the Erinyes of his mother, whom the chorus cannot see (Libation Bearers 1048–1062). He fled to Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi, where he was purified at the god’s hearth with the blood of a slaughtered pig (Aeschylus, Eumenides 282–283). Apollo could not drive the Erinyes away for good, so he sent him on to Athens with Hermes as guide, to clasp the ancient image of Athena and seek her help (Aeschylus, Eumenides 64–93).

The Arcadians told their own story of the madness of Orestes. Near Megalopolis stood a sanctuary of the goddesses called the Maniae (Madnesses), where Orestes bit off one of his fingers. The goddesses had appeared to him black, but after he bit off his finger they seemed white, and he recovered his mind; he then made an offering to the black goddesses to avert their anger and a thank-offering to the white ones (Pausanias 8.34.1–3).

The Trial at Athens

At Athens, as Apollo had told him, Orestes took his place at the ancient image of Athena and waited for judgment (Eumenides 79–80, 235–243). Athena said the case was too great for a mortal to judge and that she herself had no right to decide a case of murder, so she chose the best of her citizens as jurors and swore them to give a just verdict (Eumenides 470–489). The Erinyes accused Orestes, and Apollo spoke in his defense: he had ordered the deed, and, in his argument, the mother is not the true parent of her child, only the nurse of the seed that the father plants (Eumenides 657–661).

The votes were equal. Athena had already declared that she would add her vote for Orestes, because she had no mother who bore her, and so Orestes was acquitted (Eumenides 734–753). Apollodorus gives the same result and notes that some said Tyndareus or Erigone brought the charge instead of the Erinyes (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.25). The Arcadian historians said that the accuser was Perilaus, a cousin of Clytemnestra (Pausanias 8.34.4). After his acquittal, the Athenians said, Orestes dedicated an altar to Athena Areia on the Hill of Ares (Pausanias 1.28.5). Athena then persuaded the angry Erinyes to accept a home and honors at Athens, and they were escorted to it in procession as the Revered Ones (Eumenides 804–807, 1027–1047).

Orestes among the Taurians

In Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians, Orestes still suffers after the trial, because those Erinyes who did not accept the verdict kept pursuing him (Euripides, Iphigenia among the Taurians 961–978), and Apollo tells him to bring the image of Artemis, which fell from heaven, from the land of the Taurians to Athens (Euripides, Iphigenia among the Taurians 77–91). Orestes and Pylades were seized by the Taurians and brought to the priestess of Artemis, who sacrificed strangers. She was his sister Iphigenia, whom the Greeks had thought sacrificed at Aulis. She offered to save one of the two if he would carry a letter to Argos, and each friend insisted that the other should live; Orestes made Pylades take the letter (Iphigenia among the Taurians 578–724). When the letter was read, brother and sister recognized one another, and all three escaped with the image (Iphigenia among the Taurians 725–826; Apollodorus, Epitome 6.27).

Later Life and Death

Back in Greece, Orestes took the throne of Mycenae. Apollodorus says that he gave his sister Electra to Pylades in marriage, married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus (or, in another version, Erigone), and had a son, Tisamenus (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.28). Pausanias adds that Orestes also ruled much of Arcadia and became king of Sparta, and that Tisamenus, his son by Hermione, succeeded him; the epic poet Cinaethon gave him a further son, Penthilus, by Erigone, the daughter of Aegisthus (Pausanias 2.18.5–6). In Euripides’ play Orestes, the Argives vote to put him to death after the murder (Euripides, Orestes 46–51, 946–949); Apollo then tells him to spend a year in Parrhasia in Arcadia, stand trial at Athens, and marry Hermione, and to give Electra to Pylades (Orestes 1643–1660).

According to Apollodorus, Orestes was killed by the bite of a snake at Oresteum in Arcadia (Epitome 6.28). His bones were later found at Tegea, in a coffin of enormous length, and the Spartans carried them home to Sparta in obedience to an oracle (Herodotus 1.67–68).

Orestes Sources

Homer, Odyssey 1.29–43 and 3.303–312; Pindar, Pythian 11.15–37; Aeschylus, Agamemnon 877–881, Libation Bearers 269–305, 560–930, 1048–1062, and Eumenides 64–93, 235–243, 282–283, 470–489, 657–661, 734–753, 804–807, 1027–1047; Euripides, Iphigenia among the Taurians 77–91, 578–826 and 961–978, and Orestes 46–51, 946–949 and 1643–1660; Apollodorus, Epitome 6.24–28; Pausanias 1.28.5, 2.18.5–6 and 8.34.1–4; Herodotus 1.67–68.

See Also: Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Electra, Pylades, Athena, Apollo, Eumenides, Iphigenia, Hermione