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Concept
Orestes
Summary
In Greek mythology, Orestes or Orestis (ɒˈrɛstiːz; Ὀρέστης oréstɛːs) was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, and the brother of Electra. He is the subject of several Ancient Greek plays and of various myths connected with his madness and purification, which retain obscure threads of much older ones.
The Greek name Ὀρέστης, having become "Orestēs" in Latin and its descendants, is derived from Greek ὄρος (óros, “mountain”) and ἵστημι (hístēmi, “to stand”), and so can be thought to have the meaning "stands on a mountain".
In the Homeric telling of the story, Orestes is a member of the doomed house of Atreus, which is descended from Tantalus and Niobe. He is absent from Mycenae when his father, Agamemnon, returns from the Trojan War with the Trojan princess Cassandra as his concubine, and thus not present for Agamemnon's murder by Aegisthus, the lover of his wife, Clytemnestra. Seven years later, Orestes returns from Athens and avenges his father's death by slaying both Aegisthus and his own mother Clytemnestra.
In the Odyssey, Orestes is held up as a favorable example to Telemachus, whose mother Penelope is plagued by suitors.
According to Pindar, the young Orestes was saved by his nurse Arsinoe (Laodamia) 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 first cousin Pylades, son of Anaxibia (sister to Agamemnon) and Strophius.
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, Iphigenia at Aulis and Orestes, all of Euripides.
In Aeschylus's Eumenides, Orestes goes mad after killing his mother and is pursued by the Erinyes (Furies), whose duty it is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety.
Official source
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