#electra and Orestes

[pelideswhore]

i support clytemnestra killing agamemnon and i also support orestes/electra killing clytemnestra. yes those things can and do coexist.

[mai-marybel]

Thinking about how Euripides mentions that when they were little, Electra and Orestes chased a deer in the palace. A deer. The animal that was used to replace Iphigenia at her sacrifice...Orestes got a scar from chasing the deer...

Something something Electra and Orestes chasing the shadow of their dead sister something something It's 2 am here I'm not thinking well

[antigonesgrave]

I know Antigone and Electra are my babygirls. Honestly though I feel like they are not very similar to each other. Total opposites. You know who is similar to each other? Antigone and Orestes.

Both are extremely loyal to their siblings, to a fault. Orestes was always cautious of the plan to kill Clytemnestra, but he did so because his sister encouraged him. He would’ve done anything Electra told him to, because he was so loyal to her. Same with Antigone. She would do anything for her brother, no matter the cost.

They’re both so pious, too. Orestes had no idea what he was getting himself into when he came back to Mycenae, but he believed the Oracle and did was Apollo told him to. Whatever his lawful consequences were didn’t matter to him. Antigone defied the law of the land to uphold the law of the gods. It got her killed, but she didn’t care. She died with honor. They put their gods above their rulers.

Finally, they left behind their sisters. Electra and Ismene are the last man standing in their respective stories. Nothing but collateral damage. Forced to live a life without those most dear to them. Forced to navigate an unfamiliar land, a new way of life. All that’s left of their siblings is the memories they hold so dear. Nobody thinks of them until it’s too late. They are the sole heirs to a cursed throne.

[notacluedo]

Electra ‼️‼️

ref : courage anxiety and despair: watching the battle (James Sant 1850)

[tangoboheme]

The Mycenaean Royal Family

[two-bees-poetry]

a house tour from electra

[nikoisme]

I lumped them together now

[mt-isnothere12]

ah yes iliad new gen: neopronouns, electricity, orator, telephone, piss, and hermeneutics.

[likethexan]

Clytemnestra loved her firstborn so much there was no space of love left for her remaining children after her death. No space for Electra, no space for Chrysothemis, no space for Orestes.

Electra building contempt and depression living in a house where her father was killed.

Chrysothemis clutching hard to keep the fragile glass of what remains of her family from breaking,

Orestes who was spared, Orestes who his mother wanted dead, Orestes who shoulders the burden of avenging the father he never knew— by killing the mother he never knew.

[rubynrut]

Inspired by this post and this video

I made this abomination

the most difficult fight for the Achaeans, dealing with the children they abandoned .

[pelideswhore]

i’ve already talked about baths in greek mythology but HAIR

[mai-marybel]

I saw this image of Electra and Orestes and Electra is very big or Orestes is very small

I really like to think Electra is just very tall, but I also think its probably a way to show the power dynamic between the two, after all, Electra is not only his older sister, but whenever Orestes had doubts she was the one to insist and push him to do it (she literally held the blade while he was doing it) That or this is supposed to represent a younger Electra and Orestes lol. I love this regardless, specially bc it validates the short haired Electra agenda, but also because they just look very cute <3

[antigonesgrave]

Electra was forced to send her little brother Orestes into exile to protect him from their vicious mother. She hasn’t seen him in a decade. Not even once. She couldn’t recognize him when he came back. But the entire time he was in exile, she had hope he would come back to her. She had no proof, but she always had hope.

[antigoners]

guys from greek plays/mythology being represented by some of my favourite posts <3 peace and love on the earth

[hlblng]

“I shall teach you old men the lesson you failed to learn when you were children” Clytemnestra in Aeschylus' Agamemnon (trans. Ted Hughes)

Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon, the king of Atreus and commander of the Greek army that assails the walls of Troy. In order to placate the goddess Artemis, he sacrifices his oldest daughter Iphigenia on the goddess’ altar, spilling her blood and breaking the heart of his wife in the process. Clytemenestra, consumed by hatred and the desire for revenge after the murder of her daughter, invites Agamemmnon’s cousin and enemy Aigisthos into the palace and into her bed, while Agamemnon is away at Troy. Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Agamemmnon returns triumphant to his city, palace and wife. Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Clytemnestra gets her revenge and murders her husband in the bath. Through fear and intimidation tactics, she and her lover Aigisthos assume the throne and live happily - for a while. Years later, her now grown son Orestes, who grew up far away, and her daughter Electra conspire to kill their own mother as revenge for the murder of their father. She dies screaming, kicking, cursing and Orestes falls mad with the blood guilt of murdering your own mother. Only after the intervention of a god or two, order is restored in the house of Atreus. For now, at least.

To me, Clytemnestra is a character transcending boundaries. The adulterous wife, the villainess that kills her husband, the wronged mother revenging her daughter, the cold queen disowning her grieving children, “a man’s heart in a woman’s body”, as Aischylos puts it. She’s all that and more. In Euripides’ Electra she even is a doubting woman looking back on her life and her choices, maybe not regretting but perhaps questioning what it was all for. She’s all of these things, yet none of them wholly. You look at her and you feel for her because how could he, how could her beloved husband murder their perfect innocent daughter, all for the promise of Troy. You look at her and you revel in her bloodlust as she swings the axe at Agamemnon and gives the perfect villain speech at the steps of his, well now her, palace. You look at her and you’re repelled by the ice cold indifference towards her remaining children, abandoned like a toy no longer worth playing with. Was there only enough love for the one daughter in her? When she kills Agamemmnon does she feel relief, satisfaction, finally she has had her triumph over the one who wronged her more than any other? Or is there also a tinge of sadness, of grief, for the life she used to know, before the day her daughter’s blood got spilled in the name of a war she doesn’t care about? 

She certainly doesn’t tell us. None of the characters do.

[tangoboheme]