But this admirable passage follows upon a very satirical drawing of the vanity and selfishness of Helen, with spiteful comments by the bitter Electra. Menelaus, when he arrives, is no better. But when old Tyndareus comes to urge the execution of Orestes, he speaks with great power and wisdom on the majesty of the law, and the necessity of submitting men's passions to its calm decrees. He will not in any way palliate the shocking crime of his daughter Clytemnestra; but still it was Orestes' duty to bring a legal action against her, and to have ejected her thus formally from his palace, instead of propagating violence from generation to generation. This argument, which was very common and popular with the Athenian democracy, is now hardly yet re-established in our modern culture, and may well be noted as one of the most modern traits in Euripides. The entry of Pylades, who comes to support the tottering Orestes to the assembly where his case is tried, is very affecting, and full of dramatic force, but in the vivid description of the debate, there is a good deal of satire, and it is not unlikely that the poet was drawing pictures of leading Athenians in describing his speakers.
43. The Electra.—The same leading characters appear in the Electra, or matricide of Orestes to avenge his father's death, a play intended as a critique of the corresponding Choephoræ of Æschylus, and perhaps of the Electra of Sophocles. For the expedients of the conspirators to entice Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus within their power are all carefully altered; Electra is relegated to an obscure cottage, where she lives the pretended wife of an honest farmer, or the same type as the country-speaker in the Orestes; there are idyllic scenes of great charm, when the two young men appear, as strangers coming from Phocis. Ægisthus is surprised, not in the palace, which (as we are critically informed) is sure to be well guarded, but at a sacrifice in the country, and Clytemnestra is induced to come to Electra's humble cottage, where
