An Overview of Electra Euripides' play Electra, produced in 415 BC, begins with a peasant recounting past events: Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon and took the throne of Mycenae. Agamemnon's son Orestes escaped and grew up in Phocis. The once marriageable daughter Electra was forced to marry this peasant instead of a nobleman, thus endangering Aegisthus' rule. The marriage was not consummated. “If anyone thinks me a fool, for having had / a young girl in my house and never touched her, / he measures what is right by the miserable standard / of his own mind” (107). Electra doesn't mind toiling as long as she can complain about her mother. Orestes and his friend Pilades arrive. Orestes was sent by the oracle of Apollo to avenge his father's murder. He and Elettra, who does not recognize him, exchange stories, Elettra revealing that Aegisthus "when drunk, so the people say, / Jumps on the grave, or throws stones at my father's name / Inscribed there" (116) and acts in paranoid way. about Orestes. With the help of an old servant of Agamemnon and a convenient scar, Orestes' identity is revealed to Electra. The brothers conspire. Orestes pretends to join Aegisthus in an animal sacrifice, but kills the usurper and convinces the king's guards to his side. He presents the severed head to Electra, who is elated but not satisfied. Orestes hesitates at the idea of ​​killing Clytemnestra, their mother. Electra lets it be known that she has given birth. Clytemnestra visits and does a pretty convincing job explaining her version of all the famous events, especially her anger at Agamemnon for deceiving her daughter Iphigenia into a sacrificial death before the Trojan War. She was also less than happy that Agamemnon had brought Cassandra back as his new slave toy. The chorus is characteristically idiotic: "Your words are right; yet in your 'justice' there remains / Something repellent. A wife should accept in all things / Her husband's judgment, if she is wise. Those who will not / Admit this, are beyond my scope of argument" (141). Electra aligns Clytemnestra with her sister Helena. She accuses her mother of beautifying herself in front of the mirror long before Agamemnon's crimes, obviously for someone else. And Electra claims that Clytemnestra's rationalizations do not address the persecution of Orestes and herself. Clytemnestra accepts that Electra favors her father, but what about this matter of the newborn?