Essay The Cycle of Vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia

In the trilogy Oresteia, the issues concerned are the transformation from vengeance to law, from chaos to peace, from dependence to independence, and from old to new. These four significant changes all take place throughout the play and are somewhat parallel to the transformations that were going on in Ancient Greece.

Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis provides important context regarding the sacrifice of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra’s past with Agamemnon. Clytemnestra is ashamed after talking to Achilles about the wedding between him and Iphigenia that he is unaware of. After discovering Agamemnon 's true intentions, she decides that she will no longer “let shame prevent” her from seeking Achilles’ help to stop Agamemnon because “whose interests should [she] consult before [her] child’s?” (Iphigenia at Aulis 24). Her concern for Iphigenia overpowers the indignity she feels because her child’s well being is greater than her own. Both women’s anger and desire for vengeance grow as their children are endangered or harmed as “vengeance makes grief bearable” (Medea 2.55). The playwrights show each as either a good or bad woman based on if their vengeful actions are ultimately in favor of their children or not.

Justice in the Oresteia Justice is often taken for granted in the world we live in today with a judicial system that gives fair punishment for most crimes. In the Oresteia justice works much differently, where there are no judges or a court system to resolve disputes, instead there is revenge. Revenge is very messy because somebody will and has to get hurt first to desire revenge, and it leads to a cycle that cannot and will not end until everybody is dead. Justice does not and cannot only be revenge because in the end nobody would be left in that system. Aeschylus' Oresteia focuses on revenge as justice, with the old system that no longer works and that someone must fix, and a new system that has

Clytemnestra is Agamemnon’s wife and has been ruling Argos while he was away fighting. With help from Aegisthus, Clytemnestra made a plan to kill Agamemnon. She killed Agamemnon for the political power, for the ruthless revenge and for the curses blame. (Core 22: Series of introductory phrases using the same preposition – phrases must have balance.) Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon to avenge their daughter Iphigeneia. Agamemnon sacrifice her in order to have success in the war, but never told Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra, feeling fake sadness over her daughter’s death, felt that she was wronged and had to get back at her husband. Not only did she kill him, but she had an affair while he was away. The sacrifice is why she had the affair with Aegisthus.

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.

Oresteia is a script whose story goes on by recalling Orestes’ lost memories. The main idea which is prevalent throughout this story is about finding the truth hidden in the acts of revenge, lies, and fates which are intricately intertwined. However, as the truth does not always give us hope and pleasant, in this story, the characters are suffered by the truth and the way to find 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).

The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus (Oresteia, 2017). The Libation Bearers is the second play in the trilogy of tragedies. In the Libation Bearers, Orestes is the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. After many years of exile, Orestes returned home to Argos in secret to mourn the death of his father and to seek revenge for Agamemnon’s death to his murderers. The House of Atreus has a generation curse of bloodshed on the men in the family that seems as if it cannot be broken, causing the men in the family to kill or sacrifice their own child or family members. Apollo has also threatened to punish Orestes with further exile and more horrible consequences if he disobeys the god quest. But throughout the play, we will learn how one must come to reconcile with their fate. The chorus said that “blood, once spilt, does not seep easily into the earth. It "clots hard" and refuses to disappear.”

In the Oresteia there seems to be a continuing cycle of revenge. Someone is murdered and then a relative must kill the murderer, therefore becoming a murderer himself. A new chosen one is then selected to take revenge on that person who killed before him and the cycle goes on and on. The furies also play a part in this cycle of revenge. They seek out those who kill their blood relatives and haunt them and torture them for eternity. So basically they also take revenge for the ones that have been murdered. Revenge is a continuing theme throughout the play until Athena has a hand in making it come to an end.

“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

Unfortunately, the same fate awaits him if he commits matricide, thereby avenging his father. Orestes chooses the latter and is besieged by 'the hounds of mother's hate.' (Lib: 1055-6). Through this sequence of murderous events, Aeschylus demonstrates the complexity and futility of the blood feud as a system of justice. There are no winners, and the cycle of violence does not end. Thus, this cycle of vengeance is not justice.

Aeschylus’s play Libation Bearers begins some years after the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, has come to Argos from exile to obtain revenge for his father’s death. The murder of Agamemnon is his wife, Clytemnestra, which is also Orestes mother. Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, killed Agamemnon for killing their daughter as a sacrifice to the gods. After Orestes gives an offering to the river of Argos and to Agamemnon’s tomb, he sees his sister Electra approaching Agamemnon’s tomb with her slaves. Orestes and Pylades, Orestes’s friend, go into hiding while Electra approaches the tomb. Electra has come to Agamemnon’s grave to make an offering on behalf of Clytemnestra. Electra does not know what to say on behalf of Clytemnestra, so she asks the Chorus, the slave women, for advice. They pray for Orestes to come back.

Oresteia is a script whose story goes on by recalling Orestes’ lost memories. The main idea which is prevalent throughout this story is about finding the truth hidden in the acts of revenge, lies, and fates which are intricately intertwined. However, as the truth does not always give us hope and pleasant, in this story, the characters are suffered by the truth and the way to find it.