Friendship in Euripides’s Orestes: Pylades & Orestes
Euripides’s (480-406 BC) Orestes follows his play Electra. These plays both tell the story of Orestes, whose claim to fame is his vengeful matricide after his mother Clytemnestra murders his father Agamemnon. Electra tells this story of revenge. First, fearing the retribution of her children for their father’s murder, Clytemnestra marries off Electra and sends Orestes to the king of Phocis to be raised. Orestes there befriends Pylades, the son of the king, and together they plot against Clytemnestra. Together with Orestes’ sister Eletra and at the willing of Apollo, they conspire to murder Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Electra then ends with the murder of Clytemnestra and most of the aftermath is left to Orestes.
Bust of Euripides, Roman Copy after a Greek original from ca. 330 BCE at the Vatican Museums
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The play Orestes is most well known for its deus ex machna ending in which the god Apollo comes down from Olympus to end a bloody battle before it begins. The phrase deus ex machina has come to refer to the sometimes distasteful plot device of resolving conflicts in a sudden, spectacular manner. The phrase, however, is a translation of the Ancient Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός and involved a mechanism. The ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός entailed a majestic entrance of god through either a trapdoor or lifted up behind the σκηνή, the stage building which would rest behind the theatre. This ending was used frequently by Euripides and is thought to have been invented by either Aeschylus or Euripides himself.
In this particular deus ex machina Apollo then assures us of a happy ending, but something is off. Apollo prophecies that, although we have seen the true criminal nature of each of our characters, Electra, Orestes, Menelaus, and Pylades, they are assured a happy life. And even while Orestes is holding a sword to Menelaus’s daughter, his cousin Hermione, Apollo tells us that after a year in exile, Orestes will come back and marry her. This ending is one of Euripides’ least believable endings and many a classicist have written about the intent behind such a seemingly unsatisfactory resolution.
All this is well known, but that Orestes provides us with a finds himself tormented by the Furies for his matricide and is awaiting execution for his murder. While he is in this desperate situation, he seeks out help from his friends and family. His leftover family (besides Electra), however, is not on his side. Tyndareus, Orestes’ maternal grandfather, scorns Orestes for his matricide, and Menelaus, Orestes’ uncle and the brother of Agamemnon, listens to Orestes but ultimately sides with Tyndreus. After even Menelaus leaves him, Orestes laments his family’s betrayal of Agamemnon, saying in line 721, “ἄφιλος ἦσθ᾽ ἄρ᾽, ὦ πάτερ, πράσσων κακῶς.” “Friendless you were, father, in adversity.” Here we see one of the core values of friendship in the ideal, that, as Euripides puts it in Orestes’ asking for Menelaus’ help on lines 655-656, “τοὺς φίλους ἐν τοῖς κακοῖς χρὴ τοῖς φίλοισιν ὠφελεῖν.” “Friends must help friends in need.”[1]
Roman fresco of Pylades (left,) Orestes (center), and Iphigeneia (right) in Pompeii
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
After this betrayal, and in the dark hours awaiting death, Orestes has yet some joy. For he sees his true friend Pylades coming to help him. In the scene from lines 729 to 806, Pylades and Orestes discuss their plight. Pylades, in his salutation, addresses Orestes as “φίλταθ᾽ ἡλίκων ἐμοὶ καὶ φίλων καὶ συγγενείας,” “Best of comrades, friends, and kin to me,”[2] and throughout the scene, it is very apparent that Pylades and Oreses know each other very well, as they continually finish each other’s sentences. When Pylades hears of Orestes’ ruin, he responds with “συγκατασκάπτοις ἂν ἡμᾶς: κοινὰ γὰρ τὰ τῶν φίλων.” “Then we fall together: for all things of friends are shared.” This points to another Greek ideal of friendship, that all troubles must be borne together. Later in the play, when Orestes and Electra decide to commit suicide, Orestes tells Pylades to be off and enjoy his life, but Pylades does not leave. Instead, insisting they share the same fate, he convinces Orestes to live another day and they then plot vengeance against Menlaus for his unwillingness to help his brother’s avenger. They eventually decide to win back their honor by murdering Helen, the wife of Menelaus whom many Greeks now hate for causing the Trojan War, and by taing hostage his daughter Hermione. Orestes responds to this plan with much exuberance, exclaiming,
Original Latin
οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν κρεῖσσον ἢ φίλος σαφής,
οὐ πλοῦτος, οὐ τυραννίς: ἀλόγιστον δέ τι
τὸ πλῆθος ἀντάλλαγμα γενναίου φίλου.
English Translation
There is nothing better than a sure friend,
Not treasure, not kingship; But not to be accounted
Is a crowd in trade for a noble friend.
So together the three friends, Electra, Orestes, and Pylades, set out towards the palace. Then, with the palace burning, and Helen about to be murdered, we have the ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός. Apollo intervenes, saving Helen, Hermione as well as the three friends, who without a doubt go on to lead happy lives, full of friendship, and now without the plotting and murder.
We’ll leave off with a saying that was old when Euripides wrote this play, quoted by Orestes around line 800:
English Translation
Ah! the old saying again, “get friends, not relations only.” For a man who fuses into your ways, though he is an outsider, is better for a man to possess as a friend than a whole host of relations.
Original Latin
τοῦτ᾽ ἐκεῖνο, κτᾶσθ᾽ ἑταίρους, μὴ τὸ συγγενὲς μόνον: ὡς ἀνὴρ ὅστις τρόποισι συντακῇ, θυραῖος ὢν μυρίων κρείσσων ὁμαίμων ἀνδρὶ κεκτῆσθαι φίλος.
Notes
[1] http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg016.perseus-eng1
[2] http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg016.perseus-eng1:640-681
Bibliography
Euripides. Orestes. Translated by Richmond Lattimore and David Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Euripides. Orestes. Translated by A. S. Way. London: Heinemann, 1912.
"Perseus Digital Library." Perseus Digital Library. Accessed April 26, 2018. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/.