Orestes

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Wikipedia.

Orestes

recognized by Iphigenia at the moment of his sacrifice. [Gk. Lit.: Iphigenia in Tauris, Kitto, 327–347]

See: Identification

Orestes

spurned suitor of Hermione. [Fr. Lit.: Andromache]

See: Love, Spurned

Orestes

commits matricide to avenge father’s honor. [Gk. Lit.: Electra]

See: Murder

Orestes

persecuted and tormented by Furies. [Gk. Myth.: Wheeler, 271; Gk. Lit.: The Eumenides]

See: Suffering

Orestes

killed his mother and her lover for having murdered his father. [Gk. Myth.: Benét, 741]

See: Vengeance

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Orestes

in ancient Greek mythology, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

Agamemnon was treacherously murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Orestes, urged on by his sister Electra, avenged his father by slaying Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. According to one version of the myth, Orestes, pursued by the Furies, goddesses of revenge, appeared in Athens for judgment. Aided by the god Apollo and the goddess Athena, he was acquitted.

The Swiss historian of law J. J. Bachofen was the first, as F. Engels observed, to interpret this myth of Orestes as “a dramatic depiction of the struggle between declining mother right and rising and victorious father right in the Heroic Age” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Sock, 2nd ed., vol. 22, p. 216).

According to another version of the myth, Orestes and his friend Pylades went to the Taurians in Scythia to obtain a sacred image of Artemis and bring it to Athens. They were taken captive by the Taurians, but Orestes’ sister Iphigenia rescued them and then fled with them to Greece, taking the image of Artemis with her.

The Orestes myth was the subject of a number of tragedies, among them Aeschylus’ trilogy the Oresteia, Sophocles’ Electra, Euripides’ Electra, Orestes, and Iphigenia in Tauris, and tragedies by Racine and Voltaire. It was also a theme of several musical compositions, among them S. I. Taneev’s Oresteia and works by R. Kreutzer. Orestes and Pylades have become proverbial as a pair of inseparable friends.

References in periodicals archive ?

Orestes faces an impossible choice here: in order to avenge his father,

Know Thyself: Patterns of Anagnorisis in the Dramatic Expression of Euripides, Shakespeare and Wole Soyinka

Clytemnestra tells Orestes, "We are always at war" (203).

We've Seen This Before

In turn, the king, fearful of Orestes's return, put a price on his head (32-33).

When the King Suffers What the Tyrant Fears: The Disruption of Political Order in Euripides's Electra and Orestes

(4.) Orestes Brownson, "Civil and Religious Freedom," in The Works of Orestes Brownson, (Detroit: H.

Orestes Brownson's Freedom of the Church: Introducing Orestes A. Brownson's Essay "Civil and Religious Freedom"

(3.82.4-6) Along these lines, Orestes's mention of hetairoi has been interpreted as an allusion to the hetaireiai, that is, primarily aristocratic political factions that emerged in Athens in the latter part of the Peloponnesian War, and were active, it would appear, in promoting the oppressive oligarchy that came to power in 411.

Loyalty: the missing virtue in classical thought

Male cast merribers include Russian bass Mikhail Petrenko (an excellent Orestes, who has some of the opera's most poignant music), American tenor Tom Randle as the pitiful Aegisth and Franz Mazura as Orestes' tutor.

Elektra

The casting, too, is problematic: Orestes, played by Alfred Muff, looks like 'Electra's grandfather, not her brother; and Johansson is far too hale and stout to be fully convincing as the fragile, ill, deprived young woman--ha blackened corpse among the living"--called for in the libretto.