The Orestes[695] (Ὀρέστης) was produced in 408 B.C. and again in 341.[696] It was extremely popular, and formed with the Phœnissæ and the Hecuba the final selection of Euripides’ work made in Byzantine times; but the later interpolations are probably few. The scene is laid before the palace at Argos. Orestes and Electra, having slain Clytæmnestra and Ægisthus, are imprisoned in their own house by the Argive state, which will to-day decide whether they are to be stoned to death. Orestes has been tormented by madness and is now seen asleep, watched by Electra; she hopes that they may yet be saved by Menelaus, who has come home with Helen. The latter enters and requests Electra to go for her to Clytæmnestra’s tomb with drink-offerings; she is persuaded to send her daughter Hermione instead. The chorus of Argive ladies now enter, and their voices awaken Orestes. Then follows a wonderful scene of affectionate tendance and a sudden paroxysm of the sufferer; the chorus sing of the Furies and the agony through which the house is passing. Menelaus enters and Orestes passionately implores his aid. Tyndareus (father of Helen and Clytæmnestra) arrives and denounces the cowering Orestes: why did he not invoke the law against his mother? The youth’s long speech of exculpation further incenses Tyndareus. When he has departed, Orestes again appeals to Menelaus, who points out that the only hope lies in the Argive Assembly. Orestes watches him go with contempt, but is cheered by the arrival of Pylades, who throws in his lot with his friend, and the two walk off to the Assembly. The chorus sing the story of the house and lament the matricide. A messenger brings to Electra an account of the debate, which ended with permission to the criminals to die by their own hand. Electra pours forth a lyric of painful beauty until the two youths return. Pylades declares that he too will die, but suggests vengeance on Menelaus: let them slay Helen. Electra proposes that Hermione be held as a hostage whereby Menelaus may be induced to save them. The two men go within to despatch Helen, whose shrieks are soon heard. Meanwhile Electra receives Hermione, who is dragged within. A Phrygian slave flings himself in terror from a hole high up in the house-front; in a strange lyric narrative, he tells how amid the confusion Helen has vanished. Orestes rushes forth in pursuit, but he is now insane and the slave contrives to escape. Orestes goes back, and in a moment the house is on fire. Menelaus rushes in distraught, and sees Orestes on the battlements with his sword at Hermione’s throat. A frantic altercation arises, until Menelaus cries to the citizens for a rescue. Apollo appears and bids the quarrel cease. Helen is to become a sea-goddess; Electra shall marry Pylades, and Hermione Orestes, who is to stand his trial at Athens; Apollo will reconcile him to the Argive state.
To appreciate this masterpiece, we must realize that Euripides, who so often insists on considering tradition in the light of his own day, has here insisted on that principle even more definitely than elsewhere. Certain legendary data are, to be sure, retained. Troy has fallen but a few years ago; Iphigenia was offered by her father as a sacrifice at Aulis. Otherwise the events described might have occurred in the fifth century. Agamemnon, though a noble of great eminence, was not a king[697]; Argos is ruled by an Assembly not distinguishable from the Athenian Ecclesia. The youth who exacts vengeance with his own hand is told in language which might have been employed by Pericles, that the vendetta is an outrage upon law and society; punishment for crime rests with the State alone.[698] The behest of Apollo, all-important in the Choephorœ, is not even mentioned in the discussion which decides the fate of Orestes. The oracle is indeed treated with scant courtesy even by those most concerned to uphold it; Electra complains of the god’s “wickedness,”[699] and her brother “blames Loxias” for urging him to a villainous deed and then giving no aid.[700] The atmosphere is one in which the slaughter of Clytæmnestra must be regarded with horror and the traditional defence of Orestes as unthinkable. This is not a theological study, but a dramatic essay in criminal psychology.
In Orestes the playwright has given us one of his most terrible portraits. Highly sensitive, weak-minded, over-educated in a bad school, he is unbalanced by the horror of his father’s death and by the oracular command which has blasted his life. In the magnificent sick-bed scene he, like his sister, fills us with nothing but pity. But the calmer he becomes the more are we filled with loathing for this pedant of eighteen, with his syllogisms justifying murder, his parade of rhetoric, his hopeless inability to grasp a situation. Rich as is the world’s drama in villains, Orestes occupies a place conspicuous. He has little heart and no sense. Both failings are common. But that both heart and brain should be replaced by a factitious perverse cleverness, an incredibly superficial passion for scoring logical points against opponents who have in hand urgent interests of real life—this grips us irresistibly. He is an example of the wreck produced by a highly specialized mental training which has ignored character. His first address to Menelaus strikes the note:—
Freely will I divulge my woes to thee.
But as the first-fruits of my plight, I touch
Thy knees, a suppliant, tying prayer the while
To thy unleafèd lips....[701]
This affected and obscure exordium is followed by verbal subtleties at every opportunity: “through my sorrows I live not, yet see the light”[702]—“my deeds, not my appearance, ravage me”[703]—“my body’s gone, my name alone remains”.[704] But all this is nothing to the detestable exhibition wherewith he answers the aged Tyndareus. To the vital point—that Clytæmnestra should have been brought before a legal tribunal—he makes no reply whatever. His only difficulties are that Tyndareus is wounded to the soul by his daughter’s death, and that he is far older than Orestes. What is to be done? Simply to “contract out of” natural feelings so that the way may be clear for pure logic:—
True, matricide doth taint me, yet again
Pure am I, for my sire I did avenge.