0763ANCIENTOrestes

0763ANCIENTOrestes_Euripides

Apollo (deus ex machina):
Stop, Menelaus. Calm your anger. It is I,
a god, Phoebus Apollo, son of Leto,
who speak. You too, Orestes, standing there
with drawn sword over that girl, hear
what I say. ...
Let each one [Pylades, Orestes, Menelaus) go his way.
Go and honor Peace, loveliest of goddesses.
Helen I now lead to the halls of Zeus,
upon the road that turns among the blazing stars.
There with Hera she shall sit, with Heracles and Hebe throned,
a godess forever, forever adored—
there between her brothers, the sons of Zeus,
reigning on the seas, a light to sailors.
—— Eur. Or. 1625ff. Arrowsmith, trans.

Euripides contrives a dramatic extension to the plight of the Atreidai, beyond the matricide and murder of Aegisthus. Orestes (408 B.C.) fills the position of the Choephori and hastens to at breakneck speed to resolve the problems of Orestes’ expiation. The denouement is utterly implausible, as Apollo descends ex machina in the play’s final lines and blithely pronounces everything resolved.
Electra is to marry Pylades, Hermione shall marry Orestes who at the dramatic moment is holding a knife to her throat. Helen, whom the audience and Menelaus heard being murdered moments before by Pylades and Orestes, has been metamorphosed in the twinkling of an eye into a new star to guide mariners alongside her brothers, the Dioscuri. Apollo’s resolution is as blithe as it is implausible. Orestes and Pylades were just moments before hell-bent brigands in the process of murdering Orestes’ cousin and aunt, threatening to undo his own uncle Menelaus.

Apollo had instructed Orestes to avenge Agamemnon’s death by matricide. There Euripides agrees with Aeschylus and the tradition. Where Euripides’ plot goes crazy, though, is in Orestes’ murderous inclination to take down everybody with him. Far from the divinely sanctioned parriah, this Orestes is a capital felon manifesting every intention to go down with all guns blazing.