Cassandra in euripides' "electra"

In Euripides’ Electra, only a passing mention is made of poor Cassandra, and even then she has no name. Clytemnestra is the only person who makes any kind of reference to her, calling her a “mad prophetess,”[1] a mention made more significant coming from the mouth of her murderer. She ultimately puts the blame on Cassandra for her own death, saying that her inclusion in Agamemnon’s household is what led to hers and Agamemnon’s death as well. . The lack of mention and loss of name are what await Cassandra in death. No one is the play mourns the loss of Cassandra at all. And who could blame them? There is no relation between her and anyone else in the play other than her concubine status. This presents a greater point of interest regarding all “survivors” of the Trojan War: there is no one left to mourn them.

In death, many Greek mythological figures that lost their lives become martyrs and gain a new level of mythos and respect. This cannot be said of Cassandra. If anything, she loses even more in death because of the loss of name and note as seen in Electra. This could be true for all of the women taken from Troy after the war and made into concubines for their captors. In this way, Cassandra’s plight could be seen as symbolic of all of these Trojan women, a point made more salient because of Euripides’ authorship of Trojan Women which details these very thoughts and struggles. This could be his way of suggesting to the audience that this kind of nameless and unmourned fate will eventually befall all of the other women taken from Troy by the Greeks.

The two main protagonists of the play, the titular Electra and her brother Orestes, echo Cassandra’s sense of loss. In “Realism and Character in Euripides’ ‘Electra’,” Michael Lloyd points out just how realistically Euripides portrays Electra and Orestes. They are not heroes, but merely people too blinded by obsessive grief to realize the extent of their actions and the moral weight that their matricide carries.[2] Before seeking revenge, Electra in particular falls into some misfortunes that seem familiar to us; a princess whose life is torn apart by murder and is left with no one is forced to live beneath her status and is powerless to fix her situation. A different reading of the text enables us to draw the lines between Electra and Cassandra and read it as an even stronger tale of revenge, with Electra and Orestes avenging not only their father, but (unknowingly) Cassandra as well. Their situation would have been all too familiar to her, making the three somewhat like kindred spirits in misfortune. The actions that the siblings take could have easily been the same that Cassandra would have taken, ironically on the same man that the siblings are trying to avenge. However, this plot for vengeance results in remorse with the siblings wondering whether or not the murders were actually justified.

[1] Euripides, Electra, line 1032

[2] Lloyd, Realism and Character in Euripides’ “Electra”, page 1