Everything about Orestes Mythology totally explained
» For other uses, see Orestes (disambiguation).
In
Greek mythology,
Orestes (in
English /ɔ'ɹɛstiːz/, and in
Greek,
Ὀρέστης) was the son of
Clytemnestra and
Agamemnon. He is the subject of several
Ancient Greek plays and of various
legends connected with his madness and purification. The surviving Greek
myths that include Orestes are obscure, but retain threads of much older ones.
Orestes originates from the word oreivates (Greek "
ορειβάτης") which directly translates to
mountaineer. The metaphoric meaning is the person
who can conquer mountains.
In Greek literature
Homer
In the
Homeric story, Orestes, a member of the doomed house of Atreus which is directly related to
Tantalus and
Niobe, was absent from
Mycenae when his father,
Agamemnon, returned from the
Trojan War with
Cassandra, a Trojan Princess, as his concubine, and was murdered with an
axe by his wife,
Clytemnestra, in retribution for his sacrifice of his daughter
Iphigeneia to obtain favorable winds to Troy for the Greek fleet. Eight years later, Orestes returned from
Athens and with his sister
Electra avenged his father's death by slaying his mother and her lover
Aegisthus.
According to
Pindar, the young Orestes was saved by his nurse
Arsinoe or his sister Electra, who conveyed him out of the country when Clytemnestra wished to kill him. In the familiar theme of the hero's early eclipse and exile, he escaped to
Phanote on
Mount Parnassus, where King
Strophius took charge of him. In his twentieth year, he was urged by Electra to return home and avenge his father's death. He returned home along with his friend
Pylades, Strophius's son.
The same basic story is told differently by
Sophocles and
Euripides in their
Electra plays.
In the
Odyssey, Orestes is held up as a favorable example to
Telemachus, whose mother
Penelope is plagued by suitors.
In
The Greek Myths the mythographer and poet,
Robert Graves, translates and interprets the legends and myth fragments about Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Orestes, as suggesting a ritual killing of a
"king" (Agamemnon) in very early religious ceremonies that were suppressed when
patriarchy replaced the matriarchies of very ancient Greece and, that the
sacrilege for which the
Erinnyes pursued Orestes, was the killing of his mother, who represented
matriarchy. He explains that worship of
Athena was retained as a cult because it was too strong to be suppressed, but she was
recast as a child of Zeus and in new myths, even given the previously incomprehensible role of justifying what would have been a horrific crime against the old religious customs. Graves, and many other mythographers, were influenced by
The Golden Bough of
James Frazer and, since it was published many myths have been reinterpreted to reveal clues to ancient religious practices that were kept as secret rituals.
Greek drama
The story of Orestes was the subject of the
Oresteia of Aeschylus (
Agamemnon,
Choephori,
Eumenides), of the
Electra of
Sophocles, and of the
Electra,
Iphigeneia in Tauris, and
Orestes, of Euripides.
In Aeschylus's
Eumenides, Orestes goes mad after the deed and is pursued by the
Erinyes, whose duty it's 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's 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're worshipped as
Eumenides, and Orestes dedicates an altar to
Athena Areia.
As Aeschylus tells it, the punishment ended here, but according to Euripides, in order to escape the persecutions of the Erinyes, Orestes was ordered by Apollo to go to
Tauris, carry off the statue of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, and to bring it to Athens. He went to Tauris with Pylades, and the pair are at once imprisoned by the people, among whom the custom was to sacrifice all Greek strangers to Artemis. The priestess of Artemis, whose duty it was to perform the sacrifice, was Orestes' sister
Iphigenia. She offered to release him if he'd carry home a letter from her to Greece; he refused to go, but bids Pylades to take the letter while he stays to be slain. After a conflict of mutual affection, Pylades at last yielded, but the letter brought about a recognition between brother and sister, and all three escaped 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 was said to have died of a
snakebite in
Arcadia. His body was conveyed to Sparta for burial (where he was the object of a
cult), or, according to a Roman legend, to Aricia, when it was removed to Rome (
Servius on
Aeneid, ii. 116).
Other literature
Before the
Trojan War, Orestes was to marry his cousin
Hermione, daughter of
Menelaus and
Helen. Things soon changed after Orestes committed
matricide: Menelaus then gave his daughter to
Neoptolemus, son of
Achilles and
Deidamia. According to Euripides' play Andromache, Orestes slew Neoptolemus just outside a temple and took off with his cousin, Hermione. He seized Argos and
Arcadia after their thrones had become vacant, Orestes became ruler of all the
Peloponnesus. His son by Hermione,
Tisamenus, became ruler after him but was eventually killed by the
Heracleidae.
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 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.
In
The History by
Herodotus, the
Oracle of Delphi fortold that the
Spartans couldn't defeat the
Tegeans until they moved the bones of Orestes to Sparta.
Lichas discovered the body, which measured 7
cubits long.
For modern treatments see
The Oresteia#The_Oresteia_in_the_arts_and_popular_cultureFurther Information
Get more info on 'Orestes Mythology'.
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