Electra

/i lek"treuh/, n.

1. Also, Elektra. Class. Myth. the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra who incited her brother Orestes to kill Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.

2. Astron. one of the six visible stars in the Pleiades.

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In Greek legend, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.

When Agamemnon was murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, Electra saved her young brother Orestes from the same fate by sending him away. Orestes later returned, and Electra helped him kill their mother and Aegisthus. She then married her brother's friend Pylades. The story is treated in plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

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▪ Greek mythology

Greek“Bright One”

 in Greek legend, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who saved the life of her young brother Orestes by sending him away when their father was murdered. When he later returned, she helped him to slay their mother and their mother's lover, Aegisthus. Electra then married Orestes' friend Pylades. The plays of the same name written by Sophocles and Euripides and the Choephoroi by Aeschylus vary the theme in detail. Many later artistic interpretations of her life exist, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play Elektra (1903), later made into an opera by Richard Strauss (1906–08), and Eugene O'Neill's play Mourning Becomes Electra (1931).

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