The Oresteia (458 BCE) and the Evolution of Athenaean Justice

Aeschylus (and Socrates, and Plato...and everyone) is interested in the following eternal questions:

To what degree are our destinies fated and to what degrees do we have control over our own destinies?  Can we choose our futures, or have they been predetermined by history, divine will, the actions of others beyond our control etc.?

Is truth, and thus justice, absolute, eternal, unchanging and universal (defined and delivered by the gods, such as Zeus and Apollo), or is it situational and relative (defined and delivered by the community, the people, the polis)? Is truth, and thus justice, the domain of the gods or God and accessed thru revelation (in the Greek case, the oracles), or is it the domain of humanity, that is: something humans alone can determine?

How does our perception of truth itself change when we shift perspective -- how, for example, would Agamemnon's death appear to us if we told the story from Clytemnestra's perspective?

If truth and justice are the domain of humanity, how can we – humans of diverse and competing interests and perspectives -- reach agreement on their nature?

How can the instinctual needs of individuals – for freedom and independence, but also for retribution and the satisfaction of personal desires – be balanced with the needs of the polis for order and civility?

These are philosophical questions – questions into the nature of truth itself – but they also show the necessary and inherent relationship between ontological philosophy (what is the nature of things?), ethics (how should I live?) and politics (how should we live, as a community?). 

They also show Classical Greeks wrestling with the questions we are still trying to sort out: the limits of civil liberties (the freedom of the individual) balanced with the state or group’s (the polis/community’s) interests; the relationship between religious belief (truth as the domain of gods: absolute and eternal) and the individual and state.   Note how each question implies the next, or how each subsequent question builds on the previous.  This relationship itself represents the tradition of critical enquiry inherited from the Greek philosophers.

Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Retribution, and Competing Models of Greek Justice

When combined with the "original" story as told in The Odyssey, the Oresteia outlines four increasingly evolved/advanced models of Greek justice.

1) The Odyssey: Homeric Justice: Black and White
 

Fate: As in the Oresteia, the gods are the ultimate cause of fate, war, suffering etc: Helen is the half sister of Clytemnestra and daughter of Zeus – war is the result of Zeus’s passion and Hera’s jealousy

Perspective: Although the narrator is omniscient, we are denied Clytemnestra's and Aegisthus' perspective: what we get is a simple, one sided truth: Clytemnestra is evil.

Justice: Clytemnestra and Aegisthus broke basic laws of sexual conduct and so justice is clear: Orestes must punish them.

2) The Agamemnon: Ancient Justice and Sophism

Fate:  Tragic house of Atreus.  Children’s behaviors are the results of their grandparents’ travesties.  We cannot escape the tragic cycle and must fulfill it, even as it destroys us and those we love.

Perspective: Aeschylus purposefully shifts perspective to Clytemnestra’s.  Introducing Iphegenia shows us that her actions are justified. Aegisthus is justified because he is completing a cycle begun before him; again, perspective shifts.

TRUTH IS DE-CENTERED: we feel that we will agree with whoever we learn the story from.  (Discuss Aeschylus adding second actor to the stage: how this opens the stage up to perspective).  This is Sophism.

Justice: First, the law is divine; it comes down from the gods and therefore cannot be changed; in the technical sense, the law is determined by Oracles (priests, priestesses, usually to Apollo, the god of unflinching, brutal absolutes). Like the Homeric view, above, Clytemnestra is justified killing Agamemnon in retribution for his sacrificing Iphigenia.  Aeschylus suggests that if we are willing to see Clytemnestra's side of the story, we should be willing to see Agamemnon's, and if we can see theirs, we must also accept Orestes'.  In short, there can really be no justice using this model because each perspective cancels or calls into play all the others.  This sets us up for the next play.

3) The Libation Bearers: Tragedy Explored

Fate: same as above but with this twist: we now begin to suspect that so long as we give into black/white laws, the cycle will never end.

The fate of those who are caught up in fate is inherently tragic. Apollo, the god of pure, unflinching reason, order and law,  orders Orestes to kill his mother; he must violate the same taboo -- murder, especially of a family member, especially of a parent -- in order to punish the violation of that taboo.

Justice: Aeschylus shows us that this simplistic, ancient, black/white personal/instinctual vision of justice destroys social order, including those who commit the retribution (Orestes) and also the polis: the town/community.

Tragedy: This cycle is inherently tragic: it involves forces beyond our control (fate, the will of the gods, the actions of our ancestors) and compels us toward inherently absurd and destructive choices and actions.  There is a divine order (this will of the gods) but it implies continued chaos and social disorder on earth.

4) The Eumenides: Justice's Blind and Balanced Scales

("The Eumenides" translates literally as “the kindly ones”: Athena turns the Furies into the the Eumenides)

Justice: must serve ALL INVESTED PARTIES.
Retribution is a small measure of “Justice”

The city learns to live with new, democratic law; justice will be determined by polis (the people) because
a) it effects them
b) only they can step outside of the perspective of the invested parties to deliver justice that is blind (impartial/unbiased) and fair.  Our own modern view of justice incorporates these elements: Lady Justice carries a sword (retribution) is blindfolded (impartial) and carries a balance (weighing the reasoning of the interested parties).

Tragedy: This new, Athenian model of justice breaks the cycle of retribution, and thus of tragedy.