Justice In Aeschylus The Oresteia

The trilogy of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia follows a bloody feud within the House of Atreus. With this feud there are many boundaries that get crossed and challenged dealing with revenge and murder. A clear shift in justice is observed over the course of the three plays and Aeschylus shows that this shift in justice as an evolution that must happen to shape a society. The Oresteia provides a message that a society must come together to define justice in order to become unified and it must protect the interests of everyone and not just a single case or person.

Aeschylus (525-455 BC) retells a story first made popular by Homer. What develops in “Oresteia”’s three tragedies – “Agamemnon”, “The Libation Bearers” and “The Eumenides” could be the plot of “Revenge! Faster, kill, kill!”, but behind all this fun stuff philosophical questions peek out.

In the Oresteia, revenge drives the characters to act. Although they call it justice, it is not. Aeschylus uses net imagery to symbolize faith and destiny. When Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon and Cassandra, the net imagery acts as a symbol of terrible fate. However, then fate reverse. Now, Orestes is caught in Apollo’s net and kills his own mother. Lastly, Athene changes the meaning of the net from one of chaos to that of order and justice. These uses of the net imagery help the reader focus on a crucial theme in the play: the superiority of a formal justice system to one based on the individual quest for revenge by progressively altering the nets meaning and its affect on those around it.

Even though Agamemnon made a success for his homecoming, what was waiting for him was her wife’s conspiracy with Aegisthus and his death (262-263). Namely, his nosmos was rather a failure and he also faced fate of his failed household. This Agamemnon’s gives a comparison with Odysseus future success for preserving his family and throne. Furthermore, Clytemnestra’s unfaithfulness and infidelity provides a foil to Penelope’s faithfulness and loyalty. Clytemnestra’s merciless and brutal actions, not sealing Agamemnon’s eyes while he was dying, adds contrasting characteristics between Odysseus and Agamemnon’s wives. Note that here, the story of successful vengeance for Agamemnon by Orestes gives a foil to Telemachus’ weakness and deficiency. Orestes here is depicted as a heroic example with murder of Aegistus after he comes of age (264). On the contrary to Orestes who saved his household and restored order in his family’s kingdom, Telemachus, as he came of age, couldn’t serve as protecting his household and repel his mother’s suitors in the absence of his father. In the light of comparing each heroic figures’ sons, the son of Achilles is also depicted as successful warrior with great strength and fame in the battlefield against Trojan, adding a foil to Telemachus’ unsuccessful position as a son (266).

In the play the libation bearers of the Oresteia trilogy comes vengeance that transfers over from the play Agamemnon. Though in the play comes a bright spot where Electra meets her long lost brother Orestes. Nevertheless, this is a story of tragedy because they have to kill their mother. In sense of Greek justice Orestes has the right to kill his mother, for the killing of his father but he will question his actions because it is his mother. The impact of vengeance in the play only ends with more anger and revenge.

Sophocles is one of the best and most well-known ancient Greek tragedians. He influenced the development of drama especially by adding a third character and thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot. Even though he wrote 123 plays, he is mostly famous for his three plays concerning Oedipus and Antigone: these are often known as the Theban plays or The Oedipus Cycle. One of these plays is “Oedipus the King”, which will be discussed throughout this essay. In Oedipus the King, Oedipus learns, as the story unfolds, that he committed both patricide and incest. Sophocles’ use of dramatic irony emphasizes how limited

The trilogy of Orestia illustrates the many tragedies that fall upon the House of Atreus and how different characters’ reactions cause further tragedies and further complications in the story. Gender is a prominent theme throughout the trilogy, as certain characters are portrayed as gender characteristics outside of their gender stereotype, and the different genders plea for different verdicts in the trial at the end. The idea of justice through the first two books of the trilogy is the “eye for an eye” model of justice. The Greeks truly thought that justice was attained by avenging victims by inflicting the same punishment on criminals that those

The tragedies of these great tragic poets not only illustrated the development of contemporary thought, but also contain some of the most memorable scenes in the history of the theater. Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) playwrights showed a deep awareness of human weakness, the dangers of power, were often violent, and bloody. His most impressive play, the Oresteia trilogy was the only complete trilogy that survived. Cunningham asserts that, “The subject of the trilogy is used to emphasize the growth of civilization, represented by the gradual transition from a primitive law of vendetta (“blood for blood”) to the rational society of civilized human beings” (Cunningham, p. 59). The play of Euripides (484-406 BCE) depicts his concern to uncover social, political, and religious injustices.

In the Greek play Oresteia, the theme of the intersection between past, present, and future can be seen in the instances of revenge and justice that occur between various characters. Also, the play can teach us many aspects about how to improve our life in the future in order to become better people, by learning and deviating from our actions and forgiving others for what they have done instead of retaliating.

A tale of sacrifice and murder based in pride and all for the sake of regaining a broken marriage. In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, the reader is witness to the aftermath of a great war and difficulties associated with a bitter house hold plagued by death. The reader is only in contact with a small amount of the King of Argos, Agamemnon, but his role in this play and in many others is easily one of the most significant. In other words, every action committed by Agamemnon creates an event in the play that must be accounted for. Without our loyal king willing to do anything for his nation, these plays would not stand cohesively.

Thanks for your insights. Through your insight and questions, I read the material again, and I concluded like that Aeschines attacked and blamed Timarchus with the point of a view of the public sphere that he mentioned what was supposed to be in the Athens for the future, and keeping the dignity of men. Therefore, “the public versus private distinction in Greek philosophy was based on a public world of politics and a private world of family and economic relations.” The public sphere was tough, and the private sphere was soft and constructive. Can we say it?

The playwright of Orestes is Euripides, who was very popular among the classic Greek culture. There are not many facts surrounding Euripides because of how long ago he was alive, but it is known that he may have been the most influential dramatists of his era, though there were many other great dramatists of that time such as Aeschylus and Sophocles. Euripides’ play Orestes is one of his more popular dramatic tragedies. Many wonder whether or not that this is a play that should be introduced into university schooling or brought to campuses to be shown. This will be revealed by going in depth about the life of Euripides and the play itself, critical interpretations of the play, and the different productions or adaptations of the play.

In the following plays, the wheel comes full circle as Agamemnon’s son comes home to avenge his death, by killing his mother Clytemnestra. Under the system in which they have labored to this point, her death should beget the death of her son and so one SP. However, having been killed by her son, in retribution for killing her husband, Clytemnestra’s death cannot be avenged. There is no one left to claim that responsibility. Aeschylus’s gods step in and create a newer, better system of justice to put an end to the vicious cycle. Justice is an imperfect proposition until a higher power steps in and sets it right. Aeschylus uses several literary devices to portray the imperfection of the old system.

The chorus supports Orestes’ revenge against his mother Clytemnestra for killing his father primarily because a successful outcome of an action against Clytemnestra and Aegisthus would eliminate some of their cause for suffering. However, Orestes’ revenge against his mother and Aegisthus also meets the justice of the law of retribution, which the chorus defines:

Since Sophocles and Euripides’s tragedies Electra and Orestes got so much success, name and received great critical acclaim they have been extensively approached and discussed in terms of characterization, themes, symbols, plot, incestuous love, demolition, betrayal and especially lamentation. For instance, Vengeance is the soul of the both plays and it is largely discussed as major themes of the play. But its connection with the tragedy of characters is far away better to be discussed. It arises towards dramatic conflict and it brings out the real sight of the characters and becomes the reason behind of tragedy in these two masterpieces of Ancient Greek drama. So vengeance is the core of these plays because of its major