ORESTES, in Greek legend, son of Agamemnon and Cly taemestra. According to the Homeric story he was absent from Mycenae when his father returned from the Trojan War and was murdered by Aegisthus. Eight years later he returned from Athens and revenged his father's death by slaying his mother and her paramour (Odyssey, iii. 3o6; xi. 542). For later forms of the legend of his return, see ELECTRA.
In post-Homeric writers, Orestes, after the deed, is pursued by the Erinyes (q.v.). He takes refuge in the temple at Delhi. Apollo sends him to Athens to plead his cause before the Areopa gus. The Erinyes demand their victim; he pleads the orders of Apollo; the votes of the judges are equally divided, and Athena gives her casting vote for acquittal. The Erinyes are propitiated by a new ritual, in which they are worshipped as Eumenides (the Kindly), and Orestes dedicates an altar to Athena Areia. Ac cording to Euripides, some of the Erinyes were not satisfied, so Orestes was ordered by Apollo to go to Tauris, carry off the statue of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, and bring it to Athens. He repairs to Tauris with Pylades, the son of Strophius and the intimate friend of Orestes, and the pair are at once im prisoned by the people, among whom the custom is to sacrifice all strangers to Artemis. The priestess of Artemis, whose duty
it is to perform the sacrifice, is his sister Iphigeneia (q.v.). A recognition is brought about, and all three escape together, carry ing with them the image of Artemis. After his return to Greece, Orestes took possession of his father's kingdom of Mycenae, to which were added Argos and Laconia. To gain possession of Hermione, whom Neoptolemus had married, he murdered the latter at Delphi. He is said to have died of the bite of a snake. The development of the legend is the result (a) of the post Homeric horror of bloodshed (Erinyes; to Homer, Orestes does nothing which is not entirely admirable); (b) of the growing interest in cases of conscience (conflict of the duty of revenge and the sacredness of his mother's person) ; (c) of the develop ment of modern ideas of ethics and jurisprudence (the Areopa gus consider motive and mitigating circumstances, instead of merely regarding the act) ; (d) of the replacement of blood-feud by State intervention and formal trial.