Orestes, freed from the guilt of blood, is enabled to take possession of the throne of his father. This is the Delphic Oresteia. But a new idea is introduced by the Attic Oresteia. The claim that Apollo can in every case purify from sin is met by Athens with a counterclaim on behalf of the state. It is the community of which murdered and murderer were members which has the right to exact revenge and retribution, an idea which found expression in the foundation of the Areopagus. If the accused is acquitted, the state undertakes to appease the soul of the murdered person or its judicial representative, the Erinys.
Others attach chief importance to the slaying of Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) by Orestes at Delphi; according to Radermacher (Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen, 1903), Orestes is an hypostasis of Apollo, Pyrrhus the principle of evil, which is overcome by the god; on the other hand, Usener (Archiv für Religionswesen, vii., 1899, 334) takes Orestes for a god of winter and the underworld, a double of the Phocian Dionysus the “mountain” god (among the Ionians a summer-god, but in this case corresponding to Dionysus μελαναιγίς), who subdues Pyrrhus “the light,” the double of Apollo, the whole being a form of the well-known myths of the expulsion of summer by winter. S. Reinach (reviewing P. Mazan’s L’Orestie d’Eschyle, 1902) defends the theory of Bachofen, who finds in the legend of Orestes an indication of the decay of matriarchal ideas.
See article by Hofer in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; A. Olivieri, “Sul mito di Oreste nella letteratura classica” (with a section on modern literature) in Rivista di Filologia, xxvi. (1898), and Jebb’s edition of the Electra of Sophocles.
ORFILA, MATHIEU JOSEPH BONAVENTURE (1787–1853),
French toxicologist and chemist, was by birth a Spaniard,
having been born at Mahon in Minorca on the 24th of April
1787. An island merchant’s son, he looked naturally first to the
sea for a profession; but a voyage at the age of fifteen to Sardinia,
Sicily and Egypt did not prove satisfactory. He next took to
medicine, which he studied at the universities of Valencia and
Barcelona with such success that the local authorities of the
latter city made him a grant to enable him to follow his studies
at Madrid and Paris, preparatory to appointing him professor.
He had scarcely settled for that purpose in Paris when the outbreak
of the Spanish war, in 1807, threatened destruction to
his prospects. But he had the good fortune to find a patron in
the chemist L. N. Vauquelin, who claimed him as his pupil,
guaranteed his conduct, and saved him from expulsion from
Paris. Four years afterwards he graduated, and immediately
became a private lecturer on chemistry in the French capital.
In 1819 he was appointed professor of medical jurisprudence,
and four years later he succeeded Vauquelin as professor of
chemistry in the faculty of medicine at Paris. In 1830 he was
nominated dean of that faculty, a high medical honour in France.
Under the Orleans dynasty, honours were lavishly showered upon
him; he became successively member of the council of education
of France, member of the general council of the department
of the Seine, and commander of the Legion of Honour. But
by the republic of 1848 he was held in less favour, and chagrin
at the treatment he experienced at the hands of the governments
which succeeded that of Louis Philippe is supposed to have
shortened his life. He died, after a short illness, in Paris on the
12th of March 1853.
Orfila’s chief publications are Traité des poisons, or Toxicologie générale (1813); Éléments de chimie médicale (1817); Leçons de médecine légale (1823); Traité des exhumations juridiques (1830); and Recherches sur l’empoisonnement par l’acide arsénieux (1841). He also wrote many valuable papers, chiefly on subjects connected with medical jurisprudence. His fame rests mainly on the first-named work, published when he was only in his twenty-seventh year. It is a vast mine of experimental observation on the symptoms of poisoning of all kinds, on the appearances which poisons leave in the dead body, on their physiological action, and on the means of detecting them. Few branches of science, so important on their bearings on every-day life and so difficult of investigation, can be said to have been created and raised at once to a state of high advancement by the labours of a single man.
ORFORD, EDWARD RUSSELL, Earl of (1653–1727), British
admiral, was born in 1653, the son of Edward Russell, a younger
brother of the 1st duke of Bedford. He was one of the first
gentleman officers of the navy regularly bred to the sea. In
1671 he was named lieutenant of the “Advice” at the age of
eighteen, captain in the following year. He continued in active
service against the Dutch in the North Sea in 1672–73, and in
the Mediterranean in the operations against the Barbary Pirates
with Sir John Narborough and Arthur Herbert, afterwards earl
of Torrington, from 1676 to 1682. In 1683 he ceased to be
employed, and the reason must no doubt be looked for in the
fact that all members of the Russell family had fallen into disfavour
with the king, after the discovery of William, Lord
Russell’s connexion with the Rye House Plot. The family had
a private revenge to take which sharpened their sense of the
danger run by British liberties from the tyranny of King James II.
Throughout the negotiations preceding the revolution of
1688 Edward Russell appears acting on behalf and in the name
of the head of this great Whig house, which did so much to bring
it about, and profited by it so enormously in purse and power.
He signed the invitation which William of Orange insisted on
having in writing in order to commit the chiefs of the opposition
to give him open help. Edward Russell’s prominence at this
crisis was of itself enough to account for his importance after the
Revolution. When the war began with France in 1689, he served
at first under the earl of Torrington. But during 1690, when that
admiral avowed his intention of retiring to the Gunfleet, and of
leaving the French in command of the Channel, Russell was one
of those who condemned him most fiercely. In December 1690
he succeeded Torrington, and during 1691 he cruised without
meeting the French under Tourville (q.v.), who made no attempt
to meet him. At this time Russell, like some of the other extreme
Whigs, was discontented with the moderation of William of Orange
and had entered into negotiations with the exiled court, partly
out of spite, and partly to make themselves safe in case of a
restoration. But he was always ready to fight the French, and
in 1692 he defeated Tourville in the battle called La Hogue,
or Barfleur. Russell had Dutch allies with him, and they were
greatly superior in number, but the chief difficulty encountered
was in the pursuit, which Russell conducted with great resolution.
His utter inability to work with the Tories, with whom William III.
would not quarrel altogether, made his retirement imperative
for a short time. But in 1694 he was appointed to the command
of the fleet which, taking advantage of the inability of the king
of France to maintain a great fleet in the Channel from want of
money, followed the French into the Mediterranean, confined
them to Toulon for the rest of the war, and co-operated with the
Spanish armies in Catalonia. He returned in 1695, and in 1697
was created earl of Orford. For the rest of his life he filled posts
of easy dignity and emolument, and died on the 26th of November
1727. He married his cousin, Mary Russell; but his title became
extinct on his death without issue.
See Charnock, Biog. Nav. i. 354; Campbell’s Lives of the Admirals, ii. 317. (D. H.)
ORFORD, ROBERT WALPOLE, 1st Earl of (1676–1745),
generally known as Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister of
England from 1721 to 1742, was the third but eldest surviving son of Robert Walpole, M.P., of Houghton in Norfolk, by Mary, only daughter and heiress of Sir Jeffery Burwell, of Rougham, in Suffolk. The father, a jolly old squire of Whig politics who revelled in outdoor sport and the pleasures of the table, transmitted
to his son the chief traits in his own character. The future statesman was born at Houghton on the 26th of August 1676, was an Eton colleger from 1690 to 1695 and was admitted at King’s College, Cambridge, as scholar on the 22nd of April 1696. At this time he was destined, as a younger son, for the church, but his two elder brothers died young and he became the heir to an estate producing about £2000 a year, whereupon on the 25th of May 1698 he resigned his scholarship, and was soon afterwards withdrawn by his father from the university. In classical attainments he was excelled by Pulteney, Carteret, and many others of his contemporaries in politics.
On his father’s death in November 1700 the electors of the family borough of Castle Rising returned him (January 1701) to the House of Commons as their representative, but after two short-lived parliaments he sought the suffrage’s of the more important constituency of King’s Lynn (July 23, 1702), and was elected as its member at every subsequent dissolution until he left the Lower House. From the first his shrewdness in counsel and his zeal for the interests of the Whigs were generally
