Justice In Oresteia And Hippolytus

Upon reading Greek tragedies, many similar themes and tropes would often reappear as a way to tell the audience that the story which they are reading is a tragedy. One of these tropes was the seeking justice. Whether if the justice for another person or their own gratification, justice was a major influence in these plays. Two examples of such tragedies were the Oresteia and Hippolytus. In both, the death of one character sparked a chain reaction that leads others characters to find ways to avenge the fallen ones. This would usually entail more death to come, and cycle of violence seemed to be endless until the gods stepped into the fray to resolve the conflict that the humans simplicity could not. While many could interpret the god’s actions as the law because as powerful beings, they
What this meant was that there was no justice given to the mortals because did not serve the mortals any justice, rather the gods serve only to benefit themselves. Before concluding with how the gods did not serve the mortal in a just way, and establishment needs to be made on what the mortal wanted. In the Oresteia, Aeschylus began with the homecoming of Agamemnon from the Trojan War. There, he acquired a concubine, Cassandra. Upon bringing her home, his wife, Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, plotted their murder. This prompted the return of Orestes from his years of exile from Argos to avenge his father’s death. Ultimately he killed both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. This lead the Furies to drove him into madness and both Apollo and Athena had to be brought in to stop the tutor. In this play, the motives for each of the killings was justified by the killers because they did it for the justice of another person. For Orestes, he wanted to avenge his father to the best of his abilities. Clytemnestra said that she wanted Agamemnon dead was because of the death of their daughter Iphigenia. She was sacrifice after Agamemnon offended the goddess Artemis and could not set