as one of the seven, in his capacity of king of Bohemia, even at the expense of the Empire, and of himself in his capacity of emperor. Powerful as they were, however, in their individual capacity, the electors showed themselves no less powerful as a corporate body. As such a corporate body, they may be considered from three different points of view, and as acting in three different capacities. They are an electoral body, choosing each successive emperor; they are one of the three colleges of the imperial diet (see Diet); and they are also an electoral union (Kurfürstenverein), acting as a separate and independent political organ even after the election, and during the reign, of the monarch. It was in this last capacity that they had met at Rense in 1338; and in the same capacity they acted repeatedly during the 15th century. According to the Golden Bull, such meetings were to be annual, and their deliberations were to concern “the safety of the Empire and the world.” Annual they never were; but occasionally they became of great importance. In 1424, during the attempt at reform occasioned by the failure of German arms against the Hussites, the Kurfürstenverein acted, or at least it claimed to act, as the predominant partner in a duumvirate, in which the unsuccessful Sigismund was relegated to a secondary position. During the long reign of Frederick III.—a reign in which the interests of Austria were cherished, and the welfare of the Empire neglected, by that apathetic yet tenacious emperor—the electors once more attempted, in the year 1453, to erect a new central government in place of the emperor, a government which, if not conducted by themselves directly in their capacity of a Kurfürstenverein, should at any rate be under their influence and control. So, they hoped, Germany might be able to make head against that papal aggression, to which Frederick had yielded, and to take a leading part in that crusade against the Turks, which he had neglected. Like the previous attempt at reform during the Hussite wars, the scheme came to nothing; the forces of disunion in Germany were too strong for any central government, whether monarchical and controlled by the emperor, or oligarchical and controlled by the electors. But a final attempt, the most strenuous of all, was made in the reign of Maximilian I., and under the influence of Bertold, elector and archbishop of Mainz. The council of 1500, in which the electors (with the exception of the king of Bohemia) were to have sat, and which would have been under their control, represents the last effective attempt at a real Reichsregiment. Inevitably, however, it shipwrecked on the opposition of Maximilian; and though the attempt was again made between 1521 and 1530, the idea of a real central government under the control of the electors perished, and the development of local administration by the circle took its place.
In the course of the 16th century a new right came to be exercised by the electors. As an electoral body (that is to say, in the first of the three capacities distinguished above), they claimed, at the election of Charles V. in 1519 and at subsequent elections, to impose conditions on the elected monarch, and to determine the terms on which he should exercise his office in the course of his reign. This Wahlcapitulation, similar to the Pacta Conventa which limited the elected kings of Poland, was left by the diet to the discretion of the electors, though after the treaty of Westphalia an attempt was made, with some little success,[1] to turn the capitulation into a matter of legislative enactment by the diet. From this time onwards the only fact of importance in the history of the electors is the change which took place in the composition of their body during the 17th and 18th centuries. From the Golden Bull to the treaty of Westphalia (1356–1648) the composition of the electoral body had remained unchanged. In 1623, however, in the course of the Thirty Years’ War, the vote of the count palatine of the Rhine had been transferred to the duke of Bavaria; and at the treaty of Westphalia the vote, with the office of imperial butler which it carried, was left to Bavaria, while an eighth vote, along with the new office of imperial treasurer, was created for the count palatine. In 1708 a ninth vote, along with the office of imperial standard-bearer, was created for Hanover; while finally, in 1778, the vote of Bavaria and the office of imperial butler returned to the counts palatine, as heirs of the duchy, on the extinction of the ducal line, while the new vote created for the Palatinate in 1648, with the office of imperial treasurer, was transferred to Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) in lieu of the one which this house already held. In 1806, on the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the electors ceased to exist.
Literature.—T. Lindner, Die deutschen Königswahlen und die Entstehung des Kurfürstentums (1893), and Der Hergang bei den deutschen Königswahlen (1899); R. Kirchhöfer, Zur Entstehung des Kurkollegiums (1893); W. Maurenbrecher, Geschichte der deutschen Königswahlen (1889); and G. Blondel, Étude sur Frédéric II, p. 27 sqq. See also J. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire (edition of 1904), c. ix.; and R. Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 471-481 and 819-820. (E. Br.)
ELECTRA (Ἠλέκτρα), “the bright one,” in Greek mythology. (1) One of the seven Pleiades, daughter of Atlas and Pleïone. She is closely connected with the old constellation worship and the religion of Samothrace, the chief seat of the Cabeiri (q.v.), where she was generally supposed to dwell. By Zeus she was the mother of Dardanus, Iasion (or Eëtion), and Harmonia; but in the Italian tradition, which represented Italy as the original home of the Trojans, Dardanus was her son by a king of Italy named Corythus. After her amour with Zeus, Electra fled to the Palladium as a suppliant, but Athena, enraged that it had been touched by one who was no longer a maiden, flung Electra and the image from heaven to earth, where it was found by Ilus, and taken by him to Ilium; according to another tradition, Electra herself took it to Ilium, and gave it to her son Dardanus (Schol. Eurip. Phoen. 1136). In her grief at the destruction of the city she plucked out her hair and was changed into a comet; in another version Electra and her six sisters had been placed among the stars as the Pleiades, and the star which she represented lost its brilliancy after the fall of Troy. Electra’s connexion with Samothrace (where she was also called Electryone and Strategis) is shown by the localization of the carrying off of her reputed daughter Harmonia by Cadmus, and by the fact that, according to Athenicon (the author of a work on Samothrace quoted by the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius i. 917), the Cabeiri were Dardanus and Iasion. The gate Electra at Thebes and the fabulous island Electris were said to have been called after her (Apollodorus iii. 10. 12; Servius on Aen. iii. 167, vii. 207, x. 272, Georg. i. 138).
(2) Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, sister of Orestes and Iphigeneia. She does not appear in Homer, although according to Xanthus (regarded by some as a fictitious personage), to whom Stesichorus was indebted for much in his Oresteia, she was identical with the Homeric Laodice, and was called Electra because she remained so long unmarried (Ἀ-λέκτρα). She was said to have played an important part in the poem of Stesichorus, and subsequently became a favourite figure in tragedy. After the murder of her father on his return from Troy by her mother and Aegisthus, she saved the life of her brother Orestes by sending him out of the country to Strophius, king of Phanote in Phocis, who had him brought up with his own son Pylades. Electra, cruelly ill-treated by Clytaemnestra and her paramour, never loses hope that her brother will return to avenge his father. When grown up, Orestes, in response to frequent messages from his sister, secretly repairs with Pylades to Argos, where he pretends to be a messenger from Strophius bringing the news of the death of Orestes. Being admitted to the palace, he slays both Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra. According to another story (Hyginus, Fab. 122), Electra, having received a false report that Orestes and Pylades had been sacrificed to Artemis in Tauris, went to consult the oracle at Delphi. In the meantime Aletes, the son of Aegisthus, seized the throne of Mycenae. Her arrival at Delphi coincided with that of Orestes and Iphigeneia. The same messenger, who had already communicated the false report of the death of Orestes, informed her that he had been slain by Iphigeneia. Electra in her rage seized a burning brand from the altar, intending to blind her sister; but at the critical moment Orestes appeared, recognition took place, and the brother and sister returned to Mycenae. Aletes was slain by Orestes, and
- ↑ See Schröder’s Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, p. 820.
