416 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS
TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE LEGEND
The legend of the Oresteia has inspired many works of literature. Especially memo-
rable in the twentieth century were Eugene O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra
(1931), a saga set in nineteenth-century New England, and T. S. Eliot's The Family Re-
union (1939), where the setting is the house of an English family. John Barton has writ-
ten a monumental cycle of ten plays entitled Tantalus: An Ancient Myth for a New Mil-
lenium (2000, an extension of an earlier work The Greeks), which embraces the sagas of
Mycenae and of the Trojan War. In French there is, for example, Jean Giraudoux's
Electra (1937), and Jean-Paul Sartre in his play The Flies transforms Orestes into a par-
adigm of existentialism. The Prodigal (1960), by the American playwright Jack Richard-
son, might also be mentioned.
In the ingenious novel Angel of Light, by the American Joyce Carol Oates, Orestes
and Electra have become students in Washington, D.C., descendants of the abolition-
ist martyr John Brown, who are convinced that their father, a director in the Ministry
of Justice, has been murdered by their mother.tells the story of his death, each time without mentioning the name of Orestes
(Nemean Ode 7. 33-47: cf. Paean 6. 98-120):f
Neoptolemus came as a defender to the great navel of the broad-bosomed earth,
when he had sacked the city of Priam, where the Danaans had labored. He sailed
from Troy past Scyros, and wandering they came to Ephyra [Corinth]. And for
a short time he ruled over Molossia, and his descendants always have this honor.
But he went to the god [Apollo], bringing the first fruits of the spoils from Troy.
And there a man killed him with a dagger fighting over the [sacrificial] meat.As for Orestes, he married Hermione and came to rule over Argos and
Sparta, as well as Mycenae.^5 After his death (from a snake bite) he was buried
at Tegea, which in historical times was the rival of Sparta. According to
Herodotus, the Spartans got possession of his bones, on the advice of the Del-
phic oracle, and afterwards always were victorious over the Tegeans. Tisamenus
was the Achaean leader against the Heraclidae, at whose hands he perished.
Electra, as has already been mentioned, married Orestes' constant friend and
companion, Pylades, son of Strophius, and by him bore two sons, Strophius and
Medon. Thereafter she disappears from the legend.ADDITIONAL READING
ORESTES AND THE THREE ELECTRAS
Aeschylus' Oresteia was first produced in 458 B.c. The second play of this tril-
ogy, Libation Bearers (Choephori), tells of the return of Orestes, his reunion with