The _Choephorœ_, the _Electra_ of Sophocles, and the _Electra_ of Euripides supply the only surviving instance in which the three tragedians handled the same story; at present it is enough to note the differences between the method of Sophocles and that of the _Choephorœ_. For Æschylus the slaying of Clytæmnestra is a question of religion and ethics, for Sophocles it is a matter of psychology, the emotional history of Electra. He is content to take the religious facts for granted, and then to proceed with no misgivings to a purely human drama. The play begins amid the bright, cheerful surroundings of dawn and ends with happiness. When Orestes comes forth, his sword wet with his mother’s blood, he is entirely satisfied and untouched by any misgivings, simply because the question of matricide has been settled for him by Heaven. He is a personified theory of Olympian religion. His words to Electra after the queen is dead: “In the house all is well, if Apollo’s oracle spoke well,”[315] are the summary of Sophocles’ religious point of view. Carefully and confidently referring the question of this matricide to a higher judge than Man, he proceeds to his actual business. Equally marked is the difference between the closing sentence of the _Choephorœ_, “Where then will end the fatal fury, when pass into closing calm?”[316] and that of the later work: “O house of Atreus, through how many sufferings hast thou come forth at last in freedom, crowned with good by this day’s enterprise!”[317] For Sophocles the deed is done and behind us; for Æschylus it lives to beget new sorrows.