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Electra

Written by the Greek poet of tragedy, Euripides, Electra was produced somewhere in the mid 410s BC.

In the play, Electra has been married to a farmer and is displeased with this very much for she has been cast from her home and her mother's unfaithfulness. She had a brother known as Orestes, who had long been gone, given to the king of Phocis to be taken care of.

Almost at the beginning of the play, upon Electra's first appearance, Nyx is spoken of as she narrates what she is doing right then and why.

"O black night (Nyx), nurse of the golden stars (Astra), in which I go to the river's streams, bearing this pitcher resting on my head--not because I have come to such a point of necessity, but so that I may show to the gods Aegisthus' insolence--and send forth laments into the wide sky, to my father."

Book sources:
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. Vol. 2. Electra. Translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.

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