Reconstructing Orestes: Three Faces of a Greek Character

Abstract

Orestes, Agamemnon’s son and the murderer of his mother, Clytemnestra, has in Greek literature several faces. Three of those faces will receive special treatment in this paper: revenge, friendship, and education. Orestes is the author of a most terrible revenge, he is united to Pylades by an unbreakable friendship, and he represents the educational paradeigma that Athena shows to Telemachus at the beginning of the Odyssey. All these faces are permanently changing from text to text and that makes of Orestes a character elusive and difficult to define, even if we are just talking about Greek epic and drama. When we read some of the contemporary rewritings of Orestes’ myth, it is interesting to verify in what way they assimilate that prismatic drawing – here presented in a brief journey through the work of three Portuguese authors: Ruben A., Hélia Correia, and David Mourão Ferreira.