FRANCISCUS PORTUS OF CRETE

ON THE ELECTRA OF SOPHOCLES

Prolegomena introductory remarks.

Electra is the title of the play, named after Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who plays the leading role and stands out among the other actors.

ARGUMENT OF THE ELECTRA OF SOPHOCLES.

At the time when Clytemnestra killed her husband through treachery, Electra, fearing for her brother Orestes, snatched him away and handed him to a tutor pedagogue to be carried off in secret. He indeed carried the infant into the territory of Phocis, to Strophius, a guest-friend of Agamemnon. Orestes was raised there, and twenty years later, for the sake of both avenging his father and recovering the kingdom, he returned in secret with Pylades and the tutor. He sent the tutor ahead to Clytemnestra for the purpose of scouting, arranging for him to bring a false report to her regarding the death of her son. Meanwhile, he himself approached his father’s monument with Pylades and performed funeral rites for him. He then heard from the tutor that Clytemnestra was alone at home. He therefore arrived with Pylades, bringing with him a small casket in which he feigned the ashes of Orestes to be. She, rejoicing, brought them inside to receive them with hospitality, and thus, unsuspecting, she was overwhelmed. A little later, Aegisthus, having returned home from the countryside, was himself also received by Orestes and Pylades and killed. The play is quite tragic and full of magnificent gravity, for it contains the death of royalty and the greatest reversal of affairs from a most flourishing state to a most afflicted and miserable one. It is also quite pleasant, if any other is. In the prologue, the tutor is introduced, who, while teaching Orestes where they have arrived, simultaneously teaches the spectators in what place the matter is taking place—namely, at Argos. This part is missing in the Choephori Bearers of Libations of Aeschylus. It is, however...