The Theme of Justice in The Orestian Trilogy
The Theme of Justice in The Orestian Trilogy
Revenge……….a dish served cold.
"Revenge is a kind of wild……" Francis Bacon
What is justice and how is it related to vengenance? Can justice be reconciled with the violence of human feeling and the forces of fate? These questions provided the theme for "Agamemnon, The Choephori and the Eumenides," the grim tragedies that makes up the Oresteian Trilogy. In these plays, Aeschyus takes on his subject the bloody chain of murder and revenge with the royal family of Atreus, a chain finally broken by the intervention of the goddess Athene. It is appropriate that the plays are a trilogy as they take on three various forms of justice.
Democracy, emerging in the city state of Athens, allowed the unprecedented power to her citizens. Among these new powers was the ability to legislate. The Greeks were attempting to establish a governmental system which would span the middle ground between anarchy and despotism. By the crimes played out in the trilogy, Aeschylus demonstrates the contrast between anarchy and despotism and judges them both guilty. He shows, by the end of the play, that the only way man ca be absolved of guilt is by joining leagues with the gods in a united effort to promote justice. The cure of continued injustice can only be ended by the cooperative effort of man and Gods.
Retributive justice is an effort established between equals. The history of the house of Atreus has been a history of retributive justice. In a moral sense, it does not re-establish order but instead states violent act upon act, each even serving to disrupt the equilibrium further. The Oresteia represents humanity's emergence from darkness to light, from aristocracy to the democratic state. It is a rite of passage from savagery to civilization.
The first book of the trilogy is "Agamemnon." Agamemnon, king of Argos, is the war hero of Troy who retuned home after 10 years. The king had left on a rather sour note, having murdered his daughter Iphigenia to appease the Gods in order for the fleet to sail to Troy. Clytemnestra, the queen of Argos, could not understand the sacrifice. Agamemnon's actions are typical of the classic Greek "male" point of view. He is...