Oresteia - The Issue of Justice in Aeschylus' Eumenides Essay

A cycle of murder and death spurs from the curse on the House of Atreus in Aeschylus’ The Oresteia but transforms from justice as vengeance to justice as fairness and forgiveness through the wisdom of Athena, establishing a new cycle of growth and life. The curse upon the House of Atreus was brought forth through the event of Zeus’ eagles devouring a pregnant hare which angered Artemis for she is the goddess of young animals and creatures. The big black bird swoops down and “plunged their claws in a hare, a mother bursting with unborn young—the babies spilling, quick spurts of blood-cut off the race just dashing into life!” and instantly this brings forth the curse (A 122-124). The death of the hare’s

In Aeschylus' trilogy, the Greeks' justice system went through a transformation from old to new ways. In the beginning of the trilogy, the characters settle their matters, both personal and professional, with vengeance. Vengeance is when someone is harmed or killed, and either the victim, or someone close to them takes revenge on the criminal. This matter is proven in the trilogy numerous times.

Ancient expectations for women include always putting the responsibilities of being a mother above all else, as shown in Euripides’ Medea and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, as well as Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. Both Clytemnestra and Medea exhibit motherly love and tend to those responsibilities, but commit atrocious, unladylike acts, which jeopardize the sympathy felt for them by an audience. The respective playwrights of each story use their character’s motivations and how they align with their roles as mothers first and women second to ultimately characterize each in either a negative or positive light. The motherly motivation that Clytemnestra and Medea exhibit excuses their vengeful and deceitful actions, however Medea’s final action,

The pursuit of justice is an endeavor that many find to be challenging and a quest itself, as one will come across various trials and complications that may stop them in their pursuit or may mislead them. As humans, we find moral correctness and righteousness a very appealing state to be in, as justice will act as a platform to satisfy the desire for this correctness. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, we meet our miserable anti-hero, Oedipus, in his pursuit for truth and righting the wrong of the plague that is affecting his people of Thebes. As he makes efforts to solve this problem, he comes to find out that he is the source of the issue, thus exposing the tragic flaw of Oedipus and effectively making this play a very effective Greek tragedy. This pursuit of righteousness ends up being the downfall of Oedipus. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus pursues justice through his realization of his past, his interactions with various characters in the play, and comes to understand more of justice in his situation through his reactions to adversity in this play, in order to portray a questionably successful pursuit of justice.

Orestes is the first person who is trying to change the system and realizes it must be changed for the gods and the Furies to spare his life. Revenge as justice has one major problem,

Have you ever acted out in retribution for something done to you? Some examples could be if you punched someone for intentionally kicking you, or if someone deliberately hurt the feelings of someone you love and you retaliated in kind. You probably thought the punishment you received for your actions was too harsh or lenient. Many factors went into the decision of what discipline you received for this act and some were fair while others probably were not. This is true for the actions of many people in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. In each of the three plays, someone is seeking vengeance for a wrong done unto them, someone they know/love, or both. For this paper, I will be focusing on the vengeance enacted by Clytemnestra, Orestes, and the Fates. The vengeance that each person enacted was deemed just or unjust depending on many factors including the people who were doing the judging. Vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is viewed through the social lens of the society that it was enacted in. This lens is made up of the popular values, beliefs, and social conventions of the period as well as the judge’s personal views and/or experiences. These factors (such as gender and relation to the victim, as well as the presence or absence of transgressions on the characters part) lead to different opinions about the guilt of the accused individual and the individual themselves. The view of vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is very subjective.

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.

Everyone is going to die. This is no secret to the audience of the Greek play Agamemnon. Rather than surprising us with the murders that befall at the hands of vengeance, the Greek playwright uses this common story to display the underlying theme that one must first suffer before they can reach the truth. To understand the significance behind the story of Agamemnon, one must understand the passions and how they relate to the human person, Zeus’s law of suffering into truth, and Aeschylus’s motives for writing Agamemnon and how he reflects Catholic teaching.

Orestes’ father, Agamemnon, is suffered for the truth of the prophecy, the child is the price: if he kills his child, his country will win the war. Due to this prophecy, Agamemnon is tortured and agonizing between his two important roles: father of his family and father of the country. If he chooses his family and doesn’t kill his child, they will lose the war. All people in the country will be tortured as slaves and colonists. However, if he chooses the win, the peace and the pleasant from a family will not exist anymore. His family will be demolished. Eventually, in the middle of the story, he decides to kill Iphigenia. Agamemnon chooses his country, his subjects, and the win, not his family’s peace. He makes Iphigenia drink three solutions including the pills which make her die. “I feel like I’ve done something so wrong that my whole life, my family, nothing will be able to- the worst mistake. I got it wrong. It was wrong. It was wrong” (Aeschylus, 56.) This demonstrates how he is suffered by the truth that he killed his daughter. His choice, even

In ancient Greece law of retaliation was similar to the eye for an eye concept. Because Clytemnestra killed their father, it was only fair for Orestes to kill her. This is idea is imposed in the final play of the trilogy

All three plays in the Oresteia, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides, revolve around a central theme of justice. This theme reflects the socio-historical context in which Aeschylus wrote his plays; the beginning of a new age in Athens following its war with Persia marked the political shift to a society built on democracy and morality-governing laws. Now justice was institutionalized— a major shift from the personalized, blood-to-blood form of exacting justice that preceded it. Aeschylus depicts this new form of justice as a step forward in implementing an orderly society; however, the new justice system finds itself unable to overcome the sexism that tainted the old one, and male superiority continues to pervade decisions of justice.

Justice is essential, for with a lack of justice, chaos would be brought about in society. In The Eumenides, the Furies value justice without truly being just. Throughout the play, the Furies, protectors of the law, pursue Orestes because of the crime he has committed. They yearn to "trace him by his

The three plays that compose Aeschylus’s Oresteia contains what seems like and ancestry of violence. The violence starts with Atreus, Agamemnon’s father, which puts a curse on the family. Then Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes all commit murder which in their mind, is justified. Ironically, this play addresses their “justified” acts of murder when Athena states, “You wish to be righteous rather than act right…”; here, Athena is addressing the Fury, but this statement applies to all of the characters that committed murder throughout this trilogy (Aeschylus line 430). This statement questions real justice versus the idea of justice. Throughout these plays, the reader is forced to decided whether or not murder can be justifiable. For example,

“If you want peace, work for justice.” – Pope Paul VI. The Oresteia trilogy, which contains the plays Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Furies, uses justice as its dominant theme. Aeschylus wrote these plays sometime after the end of the Persian wars, around 449 BC, when the star of Athens was on its superiority. It was the commencement of a new era, marked by the establishment of a new social and political order built on democracy and the rule of law. The rule of law designed the institutionalization of justice. Justice was not a personal responsibility to be handed out according to the rule of family dispute of blood for blood anymore. It was now a state responsibility representing the community as a whole that the law was set down. It was an advancement in the direction of realizing a more peaceful and orderly existence. Though, this institutionalization of justice was also an advancement in the

The play termed the Oresteia is actually a trilogy that is built around the family of Agamemnon. Traditionally, one of the primary themes of the three plays is a movement from a traditional belief in revenge for wrongs to one of justice and the rule of law. The purpose of this paper is to discuss all three of the plays and look at how justice is conceived in each.