Character guide

Orestes

major

Also known as Orestes Strophe, Orestes Listen, Orestes Ho, little Orestes, Ho

Raised in the hills of Phôkis by Strophius after being plundered and cast out in childhood, Orestes comes home a stranger to the very house he must save. He has sworn to divide his hair between the river Inachos and his murdered father's tomb, and he clings to that oath as the one thing enemies could not take. His dilemma is the play's engine: accept a blood-price and live comfortably, or, like a wild bull driven from the herd, demand a life for a life. He chooses the harder path, and the cost is written into his own mind.

Electra

major

Also known as Electra Antistrophe, Electra Children, Electra Strophe, Electra Belike, Electra Methinks

Electra moves alone among the black-robed libation bearers, her cheek ploughed red and her tresses torn, the visible wound of a house broken in two. When she finds a shorn tress on the tomb, she half-dares to believe her brother has come, yet refuses to look too closely for fear of being mocked by hope. Urged by the Chorus not to hesitate, she nerves herself to use her mother's peace-offerings as an appeal to the dead—deliberately telling her father the things that will sting him awake. She is the play's raw nerve, the sister whose refusal to be comforted keeps the vengeance honest.

Clytemnestra

major

Also known as Clytemnestra Child

Clytemnestra rules beside Aigisthos, holding a usurper's power by fear while the loyal old retainers of the House hate her in silence. Terrified by a dangerous dream, she made the fatal mistake of sending offerings to Agamemnon's tomb to appease his wrath—far too slight a thing to appease him, and enough to rouse him to help his avengers. She is the play's looming threat and its irony: a queen whose own panic sets the machinery of retribution turning against her.

Agamemnon

supporting

Also known as the Agamemnon

Agamemnon lies under a mound of earth in a desolate expanse, a lord slain whose reverence has gone from the land and whose hearthstone is wet with tears. He is absent and yet everywhere: the tress laid on his grave, the offerings poured for his peace, the oath sworn in his memory. The prophets say his anger is what drives the house's terror, and the play's central invocation scene treats his grave as a door that can be forced open. He matters because the dead king's silence is the loudest voice in the first half of the story.

Aigisthos

supporting

Aigisthos rules Argos beside Clytemnestra, and the Chorus of loyal slave women regard him as a usurper who keeps his grip through intimidation. He is the man Orestes could have bought off with a large blood-price and lived comfortably beside—the option the play keeps on the table to make the hero's refusal meaningful. His presence turns the household into occupied territory, so that every libation at the grave and every whispered oath is also a political act. He is the target the whole first half of the play quietly aims at.

Pylades

supporting

Pylades grew up alongside Orestes in Phôkis, the companion named in the same breath as the oath sworn to remember what enemies tried to make him forget. He enters in travel-stained garb, grim and armed, and withdraws with Orestes to watch the libation bearers approach—the steady second presence behind a man who has almost no one. His loyalty is the quiet counterweight to the house's betrayals, and his silence at the tomb makes Orestes's isolation bearable. He matters because the vengeance plot needs at least one witness who chose it freely.

Zeus

supporting

Also known as O Lord Zeus

Zeus presides over a world where every act of vengeance calls upon his name, yet the play quietly asks whether divine justice can sanction the very violence it condemns. The chorus and the avengers appeal to him as guarantor of the blood-feud, but his silence across the trilogy makes him less a character than a contested idea. His absence of clear answer shapes the early arc: mortals must act without certainty, and the weight of that uncertainty falls hardest on those who kill in his name.

Apollo

supporting

Also known as Lord Apollo

Apollo speaks through his oracle at Delphi, and his command to avenge Agamemnon carries the full weight of divine law. Yet the play links his name to a strange incoherence in Orestes' speech, as if the god's demand fractures the mind that receives it. He matters because he turns private grief into sacred obligation, and the early-middle arc hangs on whether his word can be trusted or must be survived.

Loxias

minor

Also known as Loxias the Seer

Epithet of Apollo as the prophetic god guiding Orestes.

Hermês

minor

Also known as Hermês Psychopompos

Messenger god and guide of souls, invoked in prayers.

Cassandra

minor

Prophetess and captive of Agamemnon, murdered with him.

Strophius

minor

King of Phocis and father of Pylades, who sheltered Orestes.

Skylla

minor

Also known as Skylla of Megara, Megara

Mythological figure referenced as a parallel to treacherous women.

Althaea

minor

Mother of Meleager, cited as an example of maternal vengeance.

Meleâger

minor

Hero whose death was caused by his mother Althaea.

Fate

minor

Personified force of destiny driving the tragic events.