Electra

Clytemnestra enters the scene and tells Electra that she is tired of her public lectures. She attempts to justify Agamemnon’s death: “It was Justice who took him, not I alone. / And you should have helped if you had any conscious. / For this father of yours, / this one you bewail, / this unique Greek, / had the heart to sacrifice your own sister to the gods” (705-710). She argues that Agamemnon had no share in the pain of childbirth, and therefore, had no right to kill what was hers (the late princess Iphigenia). Electra accuses her mother of killing Agamemnon out of love for Aegisthus. She recalls the story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice, presenting it as the only possible way to appease the titan-goddess Leto who had become angry with Agamemnon and his soldiers after the king shot a stag. Electra also exposes a flaw in Clytemnestra’s argument—that if one commits murder, then they deserve to die—as this cycle of murder would continue forever and would have begun with Clytemnestra herself. Mother and daughter banter until the former decides she has had enough. She prays to the god Apollo (son of Leto), asking that he preserve her current state of safety and wealth.