Orestes Book

Orestes and his sister Electra are outcasts for murdering their mother, Clytemnestra. Electra is nursing Orestes who is terrorised by the Furies. He is paying for avenging his father, Agamemnon's, murder by his mother and her lover's hand. Their maternal grandfather, Tyndareus, demands justice, he wants them executed. In a desperate attempt to save themselves they decide to murder Helen of Troy (their maternal aunt) and to hold their cousin and Helen's daughter, Hermione, hostage. They are ready to kill her if that's what it takes to save their lives.

Orestes tells a story which sits between Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. In The Iliad, Agamemnon is the head of the Greek army who will defeat Troy. In The Odyssey Telemachus, Odysseus's son, fed up of the suitors living off his estate aspires to be like Orestes. In Book 1 of The Odyssey Athena disguised as Mentor tells Telemachus:
" Have you not been told what fame Prince Orestes has won throughout the world after slaying his father's murderer, that treacherous Aegisthus who slew majestic Agamemnon? You too, whom I see so tall and handsome, you too, my friend, must show your courage and win fair fame among future men.

Homer. The Odyssey (Oxford World's Classics) (p. 8). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition." This is one of the themes of The Odyssey, its heroic description of Orestes is counteracted by Euripides's portrayal of a scared young man who is and wrecked with guilt.

The new translation by Peck & Nisetich and published by Oxford is a page turner, the action is driven by Orestes's fear and a need to live. Unlike Aeschylus's Orestia this includes cameo roles of Menelaus and Helen of Troy, who drop in after their wandering from Troy. Having read both of Homer's work it was interesting to see these characters recast, I find looking at the same story from different angles helps me to understand these myths and its context better. The introduction also explains this play was written in a time when society was becoming weary of educated young men who were destabilising the status quo, here the town have made Orestes and Electra outcasts not accepting their motives for avenging their father's death. Comparing this translation and Euripides's Electra to a modern retelling of Aeschylus's Orestia I found Euripides' plays have more tension and movements in their plot in how we relate to stories today.