Marriage of Pylades and Electra

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/164-pylades-electra-marriage

Cycle: Heroes — Atreid / Oresteia aftermath (also Trojan nostoi close)

Version line: Euripidean / Apollodorean handbook

Sources: Euripides, *Orestes* 1658–1659 (Apollo’s closing command); Apollodorus, *Epitome* 6.28; Euripides, *Electra* 1249–1250; *Iphigenia in Tauris* 915–923 (friendship frame)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/164-pylades-electra-marriage.md

Characters

Anaxibia — mother of Pylades; sister of Agamemnon (usual stemma)
Electra — daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; wife of Pylades
Hermione — Orestes’ bride in the paired settlement
Menoeceus — sons in later notices (optional handbook)
Orestes — cousin and friend; parallel marriage to Hermione
People of Crisa — in *Orestes*, divine arranger of both marriages
Pylades — son of Strophius; Orestes’ companion; husband of Electra
Strophius — king of Phocis; father of Pylades; shelterer of young Orestes

Places

Mycenae — Electra’s home and scene of the revenge
Panopeus — Pylades’ homeland; Electra’s marital destination
Pytho — Apolline authority behind the settlement (*Orestes*)

Themes

Narrative

Pylades, son of Strophius of Phocis and Anaxibia (Agamemnon’s sister in the common tree), is Orestes’ cousin and sworn companion through exile, the murder of Clytemnestra, and the pursuit of the Erinyes. In Euripides’ *Orestes*, when Apollo appears to resolve the Argive crisis, he pairs the houses: Orestes is to marry Hermione; Pylades is to take Electra as wife. The same pairing is assumed or stated in handbook mythography (Apollodorus) and prepared in *Electra* and *Iphigenia in Tauris*, where Pylades’ loyalty is already the fixed bond of the plot. The marriage settles Electra’s fate after years of waiting and complicity in vengeance: she leaves the polluted Argive palace for Phocis as wife of the friend who shared the deed. Later notices give them children (Medon and Strophius the younger in some scholia and handbooks). The union is less a romance than a structural close—Apollo’s (or the tradition’s) way of knitting the surviving Atreid daughter to the Phocian line that sheltered Orestes.