Electra

Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, several persons were named Electra (also spelled Elektra):

  1. Daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, mother of Dardanus, Iasion and Harmonia, by Zeus.
  2. A Pleiade or Oceanid, mother of Iris and the Harpies by Thaumas.
  3. (Most famous "Electra") Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Alternative: Laodice

According to the story, Electra (daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) was absent from Mycenae when her father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War and was murdered by Aegisthus, Clytemnestra's lover, and/or by Clytemnestra herself. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra, Agamemnon's war prize, a prophet priestess of Troy.

Eight years later Electra returned from Athens with her brother, Orestes. (Odyssey, iii. 306; X. 542). According to Pindar (Pythia, xi. 25), Orestes was saved by his old nurse or by Electra, and was taken to Phanote on Mount Parnassus, where King Strophius took charge of him.

In his twentieth year, Orestes was ordered by the Delphic oracle to return home and avenge his father's death. According to Aeschylus, he met Electra before the tomb of Agamemnon, where both had gone to perform rites to the dead; a recognition took place, and they arranged how Orestes should accomplish his revenge.

Orestes, after the deed (sometimes with Electra helping), goes mad, and is pursued by the Erinyes, or Furies, whose duty it is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety. Electra is not hounded by the Erinyes.

Orestes takes refuge in the temple at Delphi. Even though Apollo (to whom the Delphic temple was dedicated) had ordered him to do the deed, he is powerless to protect Orestes from the consequences of his actions.

At last Athena (also known as Areia) receives him on the Acropolis of Athens and arranges a formal trial of the case before twelve Attic judges. 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. In Iphigenia at Taurus, Euripides tells the tale somewhat differently. He claims that Orestes is led by the Furies to Taurus in ancient Egypt, where his sister Iphigenia is being held. The two meet as Orestes is led to Iphigenia to be prepared for sacrifice to the Egyptian Gods. Iphigenia helps her brother escape from Taurus, and the furies, sated by the reuniting of the family, abate their persecution.

Later, Electra married Pylades, Orestes' close friend and son of King Strophius (the same one who had cared for Orestes while he hid from his mother and her lover).

The psychological disorder Electra complex is named after her.

Aeschylus, Oresteia; Euripides, Electra; Orestes; Apollodorus, Epitome VI, 23-28.

Electra and Orestes, from an 1897 Stories from the Greek Tragedians, by Alfred Church Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Electra

Adaptations of the Electra story

  • The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus
  • Electra, play by Sophocles
  • Electra, play by Euripides
  • Electra, drama by Danilo Kiš
  • Elektra, a play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on the Sophocles play.
  • Mourning Becomes Electra, play by Eugene O'Neill, based on Aeschylus
  • Elektra, film by Michael Cacoyannis, starring Irene Papas, based on Euripides.
  • Elektra, opera by composer Richard Strauss, with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on his own play.
  • Ellie (movie), B-movie which transfers the story to a Southern U.S. locale.

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Aeschylus, Oresteia; Euripides, Electra; Orestes; Apollodorus, Epitome VI, 23-28.
. The psychological disorder Electra complex is named after her. Video of the Panthera tigris at Disney's Animal Kingdom. Later, Electra married Pylades, Orestes' close friend and son of King Strophius (the same one who had cared for Orestes while he hid from his mother and her lover). Also, Tiger has always been seen as a fierce and dangerous beast compared to Lion, which the Chinese consider as a noble creature. Iphigenia helps her brother escape from Taurus, and the furies, sated by the reuniting of the family, abate their persecution. The Tiger belongs to one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac heavenly creatures, people born in year of the Tiger tend to be independent and strong.

The two meet as Orestes is led to Iphigenia to be prepared for sacrifice to the Egyptian Gods. In reality, wild tigers, being dwellers of the jungle, have rarely been found in larger human cities in China, where the idea of a tiger on the street can act as a symbol of paranoia or unfounded fear, giving rise to such idioms as three men make a tiger. He claims that Orestes is led by the Furies to Taurus in ancient Egypt, where his sister Iphigenia is being held. In the Wu Song story he became famous when slaying a tiger with his barehands who had been terrorizing the local towns nearly a decade. In Iphigenia at Taurus, Euripides tells the tale somewhat differently. In the Chinese novel Water Margin, tigers appeared numerous times as attacking travellers. 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. Most recently, Yann Martel won the Man Booker Prize in 2002 with his novel Life of Pi about an Indian boy castaway on the Pacific Ocean with a Royal Bengal Tiger.

At last Athena (also known as Areia) receives him on the Acropolis of Athens and arranges a formal trial of the case before twelve Attic judges. Jersey Standard adopted the use of a real tiger in its advertising when it took the Exxon name company-wide in 1972, and the brand kept the tiger mascot as a part of ExxonMobil when they merged in 1999. Even though Apollo (to whom the Delphic temple was dedicated) had ordered him to do the deed, he is powerless to protect Orestes from the consequences of his actions. Humble Oil, a division of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Jersey Standard), used a stylized tiger to promote gasoline and the slogan "Put a Tiger in your Tank". Orestes takes refuge in the temple at Delphi. Major League Baseball team Detroit Tigers. Electra is not hounded by the Erinyes. A stylized tiger cub was a mascot of the 1988 Summer Olympic Games of Seoul with the name "Hodori", and the tiger is one the most chosen animals to be a mascot for sports teams, e.g.

Orestes, after the deed (sometimes with Electra helping), goes mad, and is pursued by the Erinyes, or Furies, whose duty it is to punish any violation of the ties of family piety. Rajah, a pet of the characters Aladdin and Jasmine of Disney's animated feature film Aladdin, is uncharacteristically dog-like in its behavior, but even more oddly Tony the Tiger is renowned for his Frosted Flakes and may be the only cat, real or fictional, who thrives on a vegetarian diet. According to Aeschylus, he met Electra before the tomb of Agamemnon, where both had gone to perform rites to the dead; a recognition took place, and they arranged how Orestes should accomplish his revenge. In the award winning A Tiger for Malgudi, a Yogi befriends a tiger. In his twentieth year, Orestes was ordered by the Delphic oracle to return home and avenge his father's death. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, who is always happy and never induces fear. 25), Orestes was saved by his old nurse or by Electra, and was taken to Phanote on Mount Parnassus, where King Strophius took charge of him. A.

According to Pindar (Pythia, xi. At the other end of the scale there is Tigger, the tiger from A. 542). Even in the Bill Watterson comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes the tiger sometimes escapes his role of cuddly animal. 306; X. In The Jungle Books, the tiger Shere Khan is the biggest and most dangerous enemy of Mowgli, the uncrowned king of the jungle. (Odyssey, iii. Both Rudyard Kipling in The Jungle Books and William Blake in his Songs of Experience depict him as a ferocious, fearful animal.

Eight years later Electra returned from Athens with her brother, Orestes. The tiger has certainly managed to appeal to man's imagination. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra, Agamemnon's war prize, a prophet priestess of Troy. Tiger's-eye "yellowish-brown quartz" is recorded from 1891. According to the story, Electra (daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) was absent from Mycenae when her father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War and was murdered by Aegisthus, Clytemnestra's lover, and/or by Clytemnestra herself. American English Tigress first recorded 1611. In Greek mythology, several persons were named Electra (also spelled Elektra):. The word tiger is borrowed from Greek tigris, itself borrowed from Persian ([3]).

locale. William Blake, "The Tyger", Songs of Experience. Ellie (movie), B-movie which transfers the story to a Southern U.S. Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?. Elektra, opera by composer Richard Strauss, with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on his own play. These traditional myths include:. Elektra, film by Michael Cacoyannis, starring Irene Papas, based on Euripides. Many people in Asia still believe myths surrounding tiger parts.

Mourning Becomes Electra, play by Eugene O'Neill, based on Aeschylus. Tiger parts are still used in traditional Asian medicine. Elektra, a play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on the Sophocles play. These are the surviving subspecies, in descending order of wild population:. Electra, drama by Danilo Kiš. Their historical range (severely diminished today) ran through Russia, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China and southeast Asia, including the Indonesian islands. Electra, play by Euripides. Symbol Kebanna There are nine subspecies of Kebanna, three of which are extinct and one of which is almost certain to become so in the near future.

Electra, play by Sophocles. Some tigers have even ambushed boats for the fishermen on board or their catch of fish. The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays by Aeschylus. Powerful swimmers, tigers are known to kill prey while swimming. Alternative: Laodice. Tigers overpower their prey from almost any angle, usually from ambush, and bite the neck, often breaking the prey's spinal column or windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or carotid artery, much as the domestic cat does to far smaller prey. (Most famous "Electra") Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Tigers use their strength and body size to knock their prey off balance.

A Pleiade or Oceanid, mother of Iris and the Harpies by Thaumas. The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if you shaved one, you would find that its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved. Daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, mother of Dardanus, Iasion and Harmonia, by Zeus. It seems likely that the purpose of stripes is camouflage, serving to hide these animals from their prey (few large animals have colour vision as capable as that of humans, so the colour is not as great of a problem as one might suppose). This is not, however, a preferred method of identification, due to the difficulty of recording the stripe pattern of a wild tiger. The pattern of stripes is unique to each animal, and thus could potentially be used to identify individuals, much in the same way as fingerprints are used to identify people.

The now extinct Javan Tiger may have had far more than this. The form and density of stripes differs between subspecies, but most tigers have in excess of 100 stripes. The stripes of most tigers vary from brown or grey to pure black, although white tigers have far fewer apparent stripes. There are also old texts referring to 'blue'or 'Maltese' tigers, actually a silvery-grey tone, though no reliable evidence has been found.

This form is very rare, and only a handful of golden tabby tigers are known to exist, all in captivity. Another variant, the golden tabby tiger (also called the "golden tiger" or "tabby tiger"), has a golden hue, much lighter than the colouration of normal tigers, and brown stripes. Black or melanistic tigers have been reported, but no live specimen has ever been captured or photographed. A common recessive variant is the white tiger, which may occur with the correct combination of parents; they are not albinos.

The ground of the coat may be any colour from yellow to orange-red, with white areas on the chest, neck, and the inside of the legs. Of the more common subspecies, Corbetts Tigers are the smallest, and Amur (Siberian) Tigers the largest. The males are between 2.6 and 3.3 metres (8 ft 6 in and 10 ft 9 in) in length, and the females are between 2.3 and 2.75 metres (7 ft 6 in and 9 ft) in length. Although different subspecies of tiger have different characteristics, in general male tigers weigh between 150 and 310 kg (330 lbs and 680 lbs) and females between 100 and 160 kg (220 lbs and 350 lbs).

. Poaching for fur and destruction of habitat have greatly reduced tiger populations in the wild, and it has been placed on the endangered species list. Humans are the tiger's only serious predator and often kill tigers illegally for their fur or penises, which are used as aphrodisiacs in Chinese Medicine rather than for food. However, they will also take larger or smaller prey on occasion.

Tigers hunt alone and eat primarily medium-sized herbivores such as deer, wild pigs, and buffalo. Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Most tigers live in forests and grasslands (for which their camouflage is ideally suited). When the ancient Romans set tiger against lion in the coliseum, the tiger invariably won [see PBS].

They are predatory carnivores and the largest of all living cats. A group of tigers is called an "ambush" or a "streak". Tigers (Panthera tigris) are mammals of the Felidae family and one of four "big cats" in the Panthera genus. [2].

Small bones in a tiger’s feet tied to a child’s wrists are said to be a sure cure for convulsions. The tiger’s penis is a most effective aphrodisiac. Floating ribs of a tiger should always be carried as a good luck talisman. Strength, cunning, as well as courage can be obtained by consuming a tiger’s heart.

You will posses courage and shall be protected from sudden fright if you wear a tiger’s claw as a piece of jewelry or carry one in your pocket. If whiskers are kept as a charm you will not only be protected against bullets, but also have increased courage. Rolling the eyeballs into pills is a definite remedy for convulsions. Mixing the brain of a tiger with oil and rubbing the mixture on your body is a cure for both laziness and acne.

Burnt tiger hair can drive away centipedes. Adding honey to the gallstones and applying the combination to the hands and feet is said to effectively treat abscesses. In order to use it effectively, the user must sit on the tiger’s skin, but beware if too much time is spent on the tiger’s skin the user will become a tiger. Tiger’s skin is said to cure a fever caused by ghosts.

Crushed tiger bones added to wine serves as a Taiwanese general tonic. The bones found from the tip of the tiger’s tail are said to ward off evil spirits. The tail of the tiger is sometimes ground and mixed with soap to create an ointment for use in treating skin cancer. This tiger was said to be yellow with black stripes.

It was said, such a tiger was last shot dead in the south-eastern-most Turkey in 1970. Historically it ranged through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union and Turkey. The Caspian Tiger or Persian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) appears to have become extinct in the late 1960s, with the last reliable sighting in 1968. The last specimen was sighted in 1979.

It now seems likely that this subspecies was made extinct in the 1980s, as a result of hunting and habitat destruction, but the extinction of this subspecies was extremely probable from the 1950s onwards (when it is thought that fewer than 25 tigers remained in the wild). The Javan Tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) was limited to the Indonesian island of Java. The tiger still plays an important role in Balinese Hindu religion. No Balinese Tiger was ever held in captivity.

These tigers were hunted to extinction—the last Balinese Tiger is thought to have been killed at Sumbar Kima, West Bali on 27 September 1937; this was an adult female. The Balinese Tiger (Panthera tigris balica) has always been limited to the island of Bali. The Malayan Tiger is a national icon in Malaysia, appearing on its coat of arms and in logos of Malaysian institutions, such as Maybank. Recent counts showed there are 600-800 tigers in the wild, making it the largest tiger population other than the Bengal Tiger.

The new classification came about after a study by Luo et al from the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity Study, part of the National Cancer Institute, US. The Malayan Tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni), exclusively found in the southern (Malaysian) part of the Malay Peninsula, which until 2004 wasn't considered a subspecies in its own right. However, there is a debate that there are not as many tigers in the sunderbans, but are more sparsley populated over India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Even though this is the most 'common' tiger, these tigers are under severe pressure from both habitat reduction and poaching.

It is the national animal of both Bangladesh and India. The Bengal Tiger is also found in Nepal and Bhutan. According to recent counts in a joint effort of the Bangladesh and Indian governments, there are about 800 tigers in this area. The Bengal Tiger or the Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is largely found in the Sundarbans, a national forest of Bangladesh and of West Bengal, India.

Habitat destruction is the main threat to the existing tiger population (logging continues even in the supposedly protected national parks), but 66 tigers were recorded as being shot and killed between 1998 and 2000—nearly 20% of the total population. This has led to suggestions that Sumatran Tigers should have greater priority for conservation than any other subspecies. Recent genetic testing has revealed the presence of unique genetic markers, indicating that it may develop into a separate species, if it is not made extinct. The wild population is estimated at between 400 and 500 animals, occurring predominantly in the island’s five national parks.

The Sumatran Tiger (Panthera tigris sumatran) is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Also, the tigers are seen by poor natives as a resource through which they can ease poverty. In Vietnam, almost three-quarters of the tigers killed provide stock for Chinese pharmacies. The largest current population is in Malaysia, where illegal poaching is strictly controlled, but all existing populations are at extreme risk from habitat fragmentation and inbreeding.

Estimates of its population vary between 1,200 to 1,800, but it seems likely that the number is in the lower part of the range. Indochinese Tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), also called Corbett's tiger, is found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Thus, the genetic diversity required to maintain the subspecies no longer exists, making its eventual extinction very likely. There are currently 59 known captive Chinese tigers, all within China, but these are known to be descended from only six animals.

In [[1977],] the Chinese government reversed the law, and banned the killing of wild tigers, but this appears to have been too late to save the subspecies. In 1959, Mao Zedong declared the tiger to be a pest, and numbers quickly fell from about 4,000 to approximately 200 in 1976. It seems likely that the last known wild South Chinese tiger was shot and killed in 1994, and no live tigers have been seen in their natural habitat for the last 20 years. The South China Tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis), also known as the Amoy or Xiamen tiger, is the most critically endangered subspecies of tiger and will almost certainly become extinct.

[1]. The Siberian tiger is the most powerful of all living cats. The Siberian Tiger is also noted for its thick coat, distinguished by a paler golden hue and a smaller number of stripes. The average weight of male Siberian tiger is around 225 kg (495 lbs).

Weights can vary substantially depending on whether the tiger has been fully fed or has an empty belly. Some Bengal tigers grow to the same length as Siberian tigers, but they are less stocky, and the maximum weight recorded for a wild Bengal tiger is 270 kilograms (594 pounds). Generally considered largest subspecies, the largest wild Siberian tiger on record weighed 384 kilograms (845 pounds), while a captive one weighed 423 kilograms (930 pounds). There are less than 400 of these tigers in the wild, and many populations are likely to no longer be genetically viable, subject to potentially catastrophic inbreeding.

The Siberian Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), also known as the Amur, Manchurian or North China tiger, is confined almost completely to a very restricted part of eastern Russia where it is now protected.