Elektra (Mycenae)
( Red figure Pelike of Choephoren painter to 380/70 v. Chr., Louvre , Paris, K 544)
Elektra ( ancient Greek Ἠλέκτρα , "the radiant one") is in Greek mythology the daughter of the king of Mycenae , Agamemnon , and Klytaimnestra and the sister of Iphigenia , Orestes and Chrysothemis . She helped her brother Orestes to plan and finally carry out the blood revenge on her mother and her stepfather. In Homer she was still called Laodike , the name Elektra was first given by the tragedy writers .
myth
Homer narrates that Elektra was not in Mycenae when her father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War . Agamemnon was then murdered by Aigisthos , the lover of Clytaimnestra, or by Clytaimnestra herself. On this occasion, the two also killed Priam 's daughter Kassandra , who had stolen from Troy by Agamemnon . Eight years later, Orestes returned from Phocis , where he found refuge after the death of his father. In order to deceive his mother and her lover, he sent a messenger ahead, who reported his supposed death. The inconsolable Elektra then tried to persuade her younger sister Chrysothemis to jointly murder her mother and the hated stepfather, but she refused.
Orestes has been asked by the oracle of Delphi to return home and avenge the death of his father. According to Aeschylus, he met Elektra at Agamemnon's tomb, where both had gone to perform the death ceremony. Orestes carried out the blood revenge on his mother and Aigisthus with the help of Elektra; The Erinyes rose from the shed blood and pursued him, but not Elektra.
Elektra later married Pylades , her cousin, a close friend of Orestes, son of King Strophios of Phocis and his wife Anaxibia , a sister of Agamemnon, who had looked after Orestes while he was hiding from his mother and her lover. Elektra and Pylades had two sons, Medon and Strophios .
Representation in art
The story of Elektra was already dramatized in antiquity by Sophocles as Elektra (around 410 BC), by Aeschylus as The Grave Donors and by Euripides as Elektra . In modern times Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote a new version of the material of the same name, which he later reworked into a libretto for Richard Strauss ' opera Elektra . Even Gerhart Hauptmann wrote a Elektra . Later, Jean-Paul Sartre (in the drama The Flies ) and Jean Giraudoux ( Électre ) used the myth.
In 1931, the American playwright and later Nobel Prize winner for literature Eugene O'Neill published the trilogy Mourning Must Carry Electra (English original title Mourning becomes Electra ), in which the ancient Atrid saga is relocated to New England . Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis served as an explanation for the cruel family conflicts .
The Mount Electra in Antarctica is named after her.
See also
literature
- Johannes Göbel: Elektra. In: Maria Moog-Grünewald (Ed.): Mythenrezeption. The ancient mythology in literature, music and art from the beginnings to the present (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 5). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02032-1 , pp. 247-252.
