ELECTRA

THE PERSONS

An Old Man, formerly one of the retainers of Agamemnon.
ORESTES, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. 
ELECTRA, sister of Orestes. 
CHORUS of Argive Women. 
CHRYSOTHEMIS, sister of Orestes and Electra. 
CLYTEMNESTRA. 
AEGISTHUS.

PYLADES appears with ORESTES, but does not speak.

SCENE.  Mycenae:  before the palace of the Pelopidae.

Agamemnon on his return from Troy, had been murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour Aegisthus, who had usurped the Mycenean throne.  Orestes, then a child, had been rescued by his sister Electra, and sent into Phocis with the one servant who remained faithful to his old master.  The son of Agamemnon now returns, being of a full age, accompanied by this same attendant and his friend Pylades, with whom he has already concerted a plan for taking vengeance on his father’s murderers, in obedience to the command of Apollo.

Orestes had been received in Phocis by Strophius, his father’s friend. 
Another Phocian prince, named Phanoteus, was a friend of Aegisthus.

ELECTRA

ORESTES and the Old Man—­PYLADES is present.

OLD MAN.  Son of the king who led the Achaean host
Erewhile beleaguering Troy, ’tis thine to day
To see around thee what through many a year
Thy forward spirit hath sighed for.  Argolis
Lies here before us, hallowed as the scene
Of Io’s wildering pain:  yonder, the mart
Named from the wolf slaying God[1], and there, to our left,
Hera’s famed temple.  For we reach the bourn
Of far renowned Mycenae, rich in gold
And Pelops’ fatal roofs before us rise,
Haunted with many horrors, whence my hand,
Thy murdered sire then lying in his gore,
Received thee from thy sister, and removed
Where I have kept thee safe and nourished thee
To this bright manhood thou dost bear, to be
The avenger of thy father’s bloody death. 
Wherefore, Orestes, and thou, Pylades,
Dearest of friends, though from a foreign soil,
Prepare your enterprise with speed.  Dark night
Is vanished with her stars, and day’s bright orb
Hath waked the birds of morn into full song. 
Now, then, ere foot of man go forth, ye two
Knit counsels.  ’Tis no time for shy delay: 
The very moment for your act is come.

OR.  Kind faithful friend, how well thou mak’st appear
Thy constancy in service to our house! 
As some good steed, aged, but nobly bred,
Slacks not his spirit in the day of war,
But points his ears to the fray, even so dost thou
Press on and urge thy master in the van. 
Hear, then, our purpose, and if aught thy mind,
Keenly attent, discerns of weak or crude
In this I now set forth, admonish me. 
  I, when I visited the Pythian shrine