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Orestês, in Greek legend, was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
According to the Homeric story he was absent from Mycenae when his father returned from the Trojan War and was
murdered by Aegisthus, Clytemnestra's lover, and/or by Clytemnestra herself.
Along with Agamemnon, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra,
Agamemnon's lover. Eight years later he returned from Athens and avenged his father's
death by slaying his mother, and her paramour (Odyssey, iii. 306; X. 542). According to Pindar (Pythia, xi. 25) he was saved by his nurse (Arsinoe) or his sister, Electra, who conveyed him out of
the country when Clytemnestra wished to kill him. He escaped to Phanote on Mount Parnassus, where King Strophius took charge of him.
In his twentieth year he was ordered by the Delphic oracle to return home and avenge his father's death. He returned home along with his friend Pylades, Strophius's son. According to Aeschylus, he met his
sister Electra before the tomb of Agamemnon, where both had gone to perform rites to the dead; a recognition takes place, and
they arrange how Orestes shall accomplish his revenge. The same basic story is told differently by Sophocles and Euripides in their Electra plays.
In Aeschylus's Eumenides, Orestes, after the deed (sometimes with
Electra helping), goes mad, and is pursued by the Erinyes (Electra is not hounded by
the Erinyes), whose duty it is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety. He takes refuge in the temple at Delphi; but, even though Apollo had
ordered him to do the deed, he is powerless to protect Orestes from the consequences. At last Athena receives him on the acropolis of Athens and
arranges a formal trial of the case before twelve Attic judges. The
Erinyes demand their victim; he pleads the orders of Apollo; the votes of the judges are equally divided, and Athena gives her
casting vote for acquittal. The Erinyes are propitiated by a new ritual, in which they are worshipped as Eumenides, and Orestes dedicates an altar to Athena Areia.
With Aeschylus the punishment ends here, but, according to Euripides, in order to escape the persecutions of the Erinyes, he
was ordered by Apollo to go to Tauris, carry
off the statue of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, and bring it to Athens. He repairs to Tauris with Pylades, and the pair
are at once imprisoned by the people, among whom the custom is to sacrifice all strangers to Artemis. The priestess of Artemis,
whose duty it is to perform the sacrifice, is his sister Iphigenia. She offers to
release Orestes if he will carry home a letter from her to Greece; he refuses to go, but bids Pylades take the letter while he
himself will stay and be slain. After a conflict of mutual affection, Pylades at last yields, but the letter brings about a
recognition between brother and sister, and all three escape together, carrying with them the image of Artemis. After his return
to Greece, Orestes took possession of his father's kingdom of Mycenae (killing Aegisthus' son, Alete), to which were added Argos and Laconia. He is said to have died of the bite of a snake in
Arcadia. His body was conveyed to Sparta for burial (where he was the object of a
cult), or, according to an Italian legend, to Aricia, whence it was removed to Rome
(Servius on Aeneid, ii. 116)
Before the Trojan War, Orestes had been engaged to his cousin through
Menelaus, Hermione. Afterwards,
Menelaus wanted her to marry Neoptolemus. Orestes and Neoptolemus fought, and
Neoptolemus was killed. Marrying Hermione and seizing Argos and Arcadia after their thrones had become vacant, Orestes became ruler of all the Peloponnesus. His son, Tisamenus, was later killed by
the Heracleidae.
The story of Orestes was the subject of the Oresteia of Aeschylus (Agamemnon, Choephori, Eumenides), of the Electra of Sophocles, of the Electra, Iphigeneia in Tauris, and Orestes, of Euripides. There is
extant a Latin epic poem,
consisting of about 1000 hexameters, called Orestes Tragoedia, which has
been ascribed to Dracontius of
Carthage.
Orestes appears also as a central figure in various legends connected with his madness and purification, both in Greece and
Asia. In these Orestes is the guilt-laden mortal who is purified from his sin by the grace of the gods, whose merciful justice is
shown to all persons whose crime is mitigated by extenuating circumstances. These legends belong to an age when higher ideas of
law and of social duty were being established; the implacable blood-feud of primitive society gives place to a fair trial, and in
Athens, when the votes of the judges are evenly divided, mercy prevails.
In one version of the story of Telephus, Orestes was held captive by King
Telephus, demanding that Achilles heal him.
According to some sources, Orestes fathered Penthilus by his half-sister,
Erigone.
This entry was originally from the 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica.
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