Elektra (disambiguation)

Orestes, Electra and Hermes in front of Agamemnon's tomb

Elektra (or Electra) can mean:

Elektra: several people from Greek mythology, most often the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimnestra (Clytemnestra).
- On spelling: the Greek alphabet does not have a 'C', so they spelled the name with a 'K'.

Drama

The myth was the subject of at least two Greek tragedies:

Elektra (Sophocles) c. 401 BC: When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War with his new concubine, Cassandra, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills them. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified. Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her young, twin brother Orestes from her mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis. The play begins years later when Orestes has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge, as well as to claim the throne.

Elektra (Euripides) c. 415: Years before, near the start of the Trojan War, the Greek general Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia in order to appease the goddess Artemis and allow the Greek army to set sail for Troy. His wife Clytemnestra never forgave him, and when he returned from the war ten years later, she and her lover Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon. There follows the reuniting of the brother, Orestes, and sister, Elektra, and their conspiracy to murder their mother and her lover.

The original creator of this kind of tragedy was Aeschylus with his Oresteia trilogy, 485 BC.