We left the history of the House of Tantalus with a reference to Helen,
as we find her in the translated play which is among those which here
complete the collection of the extant works of Euripides.
Menelaus sent ambassadors to Troy to demand back Helen, his wife, whom
Paris had carried off. The counsels of Antenor were set aside at Troy,
by the persuasions of Paris that gave occasion to the Siege of Troy.
Agamemnon, on the throne of the deposed Thyestes, had extended his
dominion. Homer gave him command over a hundred ships in the expedition
against Troy. Some were from Mycene, which although but six or seven
miles from Argos had been capital of a separate kingdom until it was
reunited to Argos after the defeat and death of Eurystheus; and when
Agamemnon succeeded his father Atreus, he enlarged and beautified Mycene.
Twenty-eight unsuccessful suitors of Helen were summoned by Menelaus to
contribute aid, and under command of the strongest of the confederates,
Agamemnon—who was the brother of Menelaus, and who then had by his wife
Clytemnestra three daughters, Iphigenia, Chrysothemis, and Electra, also
one son, Orestes, then an infant—the expedition sailed for Troy.
But first, when the confederate fleets met as agreed, in the haven of
Aulis they were stayed by a dead calm. Guidance was sought from the
Oracle, and the soothsayer Calchas reminded Agamemnon of a vow made in
the year of Iphigenia’s birth that he would sacrifice to Diana the most
beautiful production of the year. That was his daughter, Iphigenia,
whom now Diana claimed. The fleet would remain bound in Aulis until
the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The story of the sacrifice, of the anger
of the maiden’s mother Clytemnestra, and her lover Achilles, is told
by Euripides in his “Iphigenia in Aulis.” The Goddess in the act of
sacrifice miraculously substituted a hind for the daughter, whom she
wafted in a cloud to her temple among the Scythians at Tauris, where she
became a Priestess, and where it was the custom of the barbarous people
to sacrifice every Greek who landed on their shores.
In the siege of Troy, Paris was slain by the arrows of Philoctetes. Helen
then married his brother Deiphobus, whom she betrayed to the Greeks. When
she came again into the hands of Menelaus, he was soon reconciled to her.
In returning from the ten years’ siege of Troy, many of the companions
of Agamemnon were lost by wreck on the coast of Eubœa, where the father
of Palamedes, to avenge the unjust killing of his son in the camp of the
Greeks, had set up false lights. Agamemnon came safely to Argos with the
captive prophetess Cassandra, whom he intended for himself. This was
a new affront to Clytemnestra; who remembered the murder of her first
husband Tantalus and her first infant, who remembered also the sacrifice
of Iphigenia, and who had found a paramour in Ægisthus, son of Thyestes.
Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon with an axe as he was coming out of the
bath, and then married Ægisthus, who took Agamemnon’s throne.
The young Orestes was saved from his stepfather by a faithful servant,
who carried him to Phocis, and there put him under the protection of
Strophius. Electra remained at Argos and was married to a peasant, lest a
husband powerful in the State should help to restore to their birthrights
the children of Agamemnon.
When Orestes had passed out of childhood, he went for guidance to the
Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, and was directed to avenge the murder of his
father. He went then, with his inseparable friend Pylades, in disguise to
Argos, and was received in a cottage on the boundary of Argos, by Electra
and her peasant husband. He learnt that the peasant, strongly attached to
the family of Agamemnon, had cancelled the wrong intended by Ægisthus,
and had never claimed rights of a husband. Electra was still a maiden
princess. Brother and sister then devised and carried out a plan for the
killing of their mother Clytemnestra and Ægisthus.
But when the hands of Orestes were stained with his mother’s blood, the
Furies rose from Hell, and drove him to distraction. Six days after the
murder of Clytemnestra, the citizens of Argos met to pass sentence on
Orestes and Electra. Menelaus after a voyage from Troy of seven years’
long delays, then landed at Nauplia near Argos, and would have helped
his nephew Orestes; but he gave up Orestes and Electra to the people of
Argos upon being told by Tyndarus that if he interfered he should never
return to Sparta. The Council of Argos gave leave to Orestes and Electra
to carry out upon themselves its sentence of death. After consulting with
Pylades they resolved to kill Helen and seize their uncle’s one daughter,
Hermione, as hostage. Helen had vanished; Menelaus breathed revenge;
Apollo descended to save Orestes from his uncle, and from the people, by
declaring that Orestes had done what the gods required. But Apollo bade
him cleanse away pollution of his mother’s blood by a year’s banishment,
after which he was to submit himself to the judgment of the Areopagus at
Athens.
Before the Areopagus one of the Furies was his accuser, Apollo witnessed
in his favour. The votes of the Court were equal, and Athené gave the
casting vote for his acquittal. But still the Furies were implacable,
and Orestes, again appealing to Apollo’s Oracle, was ordered to bring
the statue of Diana from Tauris to Athens. Orestes sailed upon this
mission with Pylades, whom he had affianced to his sister Electra. When
the friends landed on the coast of Tauris, the barbarous people seized
them and they were carried to Iphigenia to be sacrificed according to
the custom of the land. When on the point of being sacrificed, discovery
was made, and, with help of Minerva, not only the image of the goddess
Diana, but also Iphigenia her priestess, was conveyed to Athens, in whose
territories, at Brauronia, Iphigenia remained priestess until her death.
Meanwhile Menelaus had married his only daughter, Hermione, to
Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. Neoptolemus, who had offended Apollo
by making the god answerable for the death of Achilles, went to Delphi
to appease his wrath. Orestes, who sought Hermione for wife, went also
to Delphi and persuaded the people there that Neoptolemus sought plunder
of the temple. Neoptolemus was, therefore, murdered by the people of
Delphi, as he was going unarmed to the temple to propitiate the god. Then
Orestes carried off Hermione, and married her, at the same time when his
sister Electra was married to Pylades. The plays of Euripides here leave
Orestes; ruler on the throne of Agamemnon, reconciled to Menelaus, and
married to Hermione, through whom, by right of her mother Helen and her
father Menelaus, he may hope to bring also under his rule the dominions
of Sparta.
Here ends an abstract of an abstract of the History of the House of
Tantalus, as given by Michael Wodhull, Esq., to show the relations to
each other of the stories upon which Euripides based many of his plays.
This volume completes our set of English versions of all extant plays of
Euripides.