Electra

Paedagogus, an old servant and former tutor of Prince Orestes—the late King Agamemnon’s son—recalls the Trojan War. He describes the land—specifically, the house of Pelops—where Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, Queen Clytemnestra. Paedagogus recalls how he took Orestes from Pelops and the hands of his sister Electra so that he may avenge his father’s death: “I carried you off. Saved your life. Reared you up— / to this: manhood. To avenge your father’s death” (18-19). He urges Orestes and Orestes’s cousin Pylades to act.

Orestes relays his visit to an oracle speaking on behalf of the god Apollo. He tells Paedagogus to enter the house of Pelops and claim a family friend—Phocis of the house of Phanoteus—as his master. He is to relay Orestes’s fatal accident while riding his chariot. While Paedagogus enacts his side of the plan, Orestes will visit his father’s grave to “pour libation and crown the tomb / with locks of hair cut from (his) head” (71-72). He will collect a bronze-plated urn hidden in the bushes and present these