Agamemnon, on his return from Troy, was murdered in the palace at Mycenae by his wife Clytaemnestra and her paramour Aegisthus. Orestes, the victim's son and heir, then a child, was saved by his sister Electra. She gave him to a faithful retainer, who carried him to Phocis. There he grew up in the house of Strophius, King of Crisa near Delphi, the father of his friend Pylades.
Many years have passed since then. Electra has perforce continued to live under the same roof with the murderers. While her sisters, Chrysothemis and Iphianassa, have been taught by prudence to hide their feelings, she has made no concealment of her loyalty to her father's memory, or of her inconsolable grief. Every kind of hardship and of insult is her portion at the hands of her mother and the dastardly Aegisthus; no slave could fare worse than she does in the house that was her father's. Clytaemnestra's hatred has been embittered, from time to time, by some false ruinour as to the return of Orestes,—the one terror that still haunts the guilty pair. Meanwhile Electra herself worn out with misery and with waiting, has begun to falter in the one hope which has hitherto borne her up,—that the brother from whom she parted so long ago would be sent back by the gods as an avenger.
It is morning, the new-risen sun is bright and the birds are singing, as the old man, accompanied by two youths, arrives on the high ground in front of the palace at Mycenae.
