Electra

Abstract FARMER Age-old valley of my shining land, how yciur rivers gleamed as they saw war launched in a thousand ships when Lord Agamemnon sailed against Troy. And after he’d killed Troy’s ruler, Priam, and burnt and leveled that famous city, he came back to Argos to hang many spoils seized from those barbarians high on our temple walls. Away from home he found good luck, but in his own house he was killed by Clytemnestra’s treachery and the hand of Thyestes’ son Aigisthos. A long line of kingship was broken when he died. Now Aigisthos wears the country’s crown and holds both Agamemnon’s scepter and his wife. When the king sailed for Troy, he left at home the baby Orestes and his little girl, Electra. Orestes would have died by Aigisthos’ hand, but his father’s old tutor smuggled him away and gave him to Strophios in the north for protection. Electra stayed in her father’s house. When her youth reached its flower, the foremost young men of Greece came courting. But, terrified that she’d bear princely sons to avenge Agamemnon, he held her under house arrest, Aigisthos did, and denied her any marriage. Yet, when he planned to kill her out of great fear that she might take a highborn lover in secret and bear him sons, her mother-a savage woman did save her from Aigisthos’ hand. Reason is, Clytemnestra had excuses for her husband’s death but dreaded blame for murdering her children.