Classical Mythology

THE MYCENAEAN SAGA^429

This is a disgrace that the woman and not the man controls the household,

and I hate it when in the city children are designated not as the offspring of the

male, the father, but of the mother. When a husband has married a conspicu-

ously superior wife, the woman receives all the attention but no account is taken

of the man. But this is what deceived you, what you did not understand. You

boasted that you were somebody relying upon wealth for your importance. But

money is nothing. It is our consort for only a little while. Nature is what remains

steadfast, a good character, not money; it stays with us always and lifts away

evils. But wealth, dishonest associate of the foolish, flourishes for a short time

and then flies out the door.

As for your affairs with women, I remain silent. Since it is not proper for a

virgin to speak out about them, I will only offer discreet hints. You behaved out-

rageously, possessed as you were of a royal palace and endowed with physical

beauty. As for me, may I get a husband who does not look like a girl but is

manly, whose children would be like Ares. Good looks alone are merely a pretty

adornment for devotees of the dance.

Away with you, completely ignorant that you have paid the penalty for

your crimes that have in time been found out. Let no one as wicked as you think

that, if he has run the first phase of the course well, he is triumphing over Jus-

tice, before he approaches the final turn and the end of his life.

CHORUS: He has done terrible things and he has paid a terrible retribution to

you and Orestes because of the power of Justice.

ELECTRA: So be it. Servants, you must carry the body inside and hide it in

the darkness so that when my mother arrives she may not see the corpse before

she is slaughtered.

At this point Clytemnestra arrives upon the scene. She had been summoned

with the false announcement that Electra had recently borne a son, just as Elec-

tra had planned, and, as it was with Aegisthus, her entrapment appears partic-

ularly sordid. The confrontation between mother and daughter raises similar is-

sues that had been argued in Sophocles' version, but Euripides provides crucial

additions with disturbing differences in motivation; so much of their conflict is

steeped in sexual rivalry and jealousy and psychological perversity. Clytemnes-

tra is even very much aware of the nature of Electra's complex when she ob-

serves that it is ingrained in her daughter's nature to love her father more than

her mother.

Here is a much weaker Orestes than we have ever seen, who must be goaded

and driven by his sister to murder their mother, and Electra herself, obsessed

with a passionate hatred, actually participates in the killing.

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ORESTES: Hold on now, another decision is thrust upon us.

ELECTRA: What is it? Do I see an armed force coming from Mycenae?

ORESTES: No, but the mother who gave birth to me.

ELECTRA: Good! She is stepping right into the trap. How splendid she looks

in her fine chariot and robes.

ORESTES: What are we to do now? Will we murder our mother?

ELECTRA: Are you overcome with pity at the sight of your mother in person?