In Greek mythology, Pylades (Ancient Greek: Πυλάδης) was a Phocian prince, son of King Strophius and Anaxibia (sister of Agamemnon and Menelaus). He is remembered above all as the lifelong companion of his cousin Orestes: raised with him in Phocis, he joins the revenge at Mycenae, the Taurian voyage for Artemis' image, and later marries Electra.
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I.Family and the Oresteia
When Clytemnestra's affair with Aegisthus endangered the house, Orestes was sent to Phocis and raised beside Pylades. As adults they return to avenge Agamemnon. In Aeschylus' Libation Bearers Pylades speaks only once — at the moment Orestes falters before killing his mother — and those lines tip him into the matricide. In Sophocles' and Euripides' Electra plays he accompanies Orestes with little or no speech; Pausanias adds that he killed two sons of Nauplius who had come to aid Aegisthus.
He married Electra and, in standard genealogies, fathered Strophius and Medon. Euripides' Orestes shows him helping plot against Helen and Menelaus after exile from Phocis, until Apollo settles the crisis and commands the marriage.
II.Iphigenia among the Taurians
Ordered by Apollo to fetch the fallen statue of Artemis from Tauris, Orestes sails with Pylades; both are seized for sacrifice. The priestess is Iphigenia, unrecognized at first. When she offers to spare one bearer of a letter home, each friend tries to die for the other; recognition follows, and the three escape with the image. Lucian and later readers treat their devotion as the type of loyal — and for some Roman-era authors, romantic — friendship.