Justice In The Oresteia

Modern democracy is rooted in ancient Greek culture. Without accountability, mankind would be corrupt and chaotic. Before the creation of the court system, vengeance served as the primary basis of justice. Justice and revenge were at one time nearly synonymous, but this is no longer the case. Justice is now synonymous with integrity and authority. Aeschylus portrays this shift from blood-lust vengeance to equity through his trilogy, The Oresteia. The three plays, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides outline how the way of life in the ancient Greek culture was being molded.
In order to analyze the tragedy of the family of Agamemnon, one must know of the Curse of the House of Atreus, Agamemnon’s father. The Archaic Greeks believed that guilt was inheritable and that misfortune could be attributed to the crimes of a cursed ancestor (Ancient Orgins).
Agamemnon shows the “old way” of justice. Law was divine, and all punishment came from the gods, therefore, the punishments could not be refuted. In the play, Agamemnon kills his daughter
In The Libation Bearers, Orestes and Electra seek vengeance for the death of their father and hatch a plot to now kill Clytemnestra, their mother. They call upon Apollo for help, and he gives Orestes divine permission to kill Clytemnestra in revenge. The chorus sings, "To have good success – / this is god among men, and more, even, than god / Justice weighs down with its dark, / quickly upon some in the light; / for some mid-way to the dark, / delay grows full with time; / some have night with no fixed end" (The Libation Bearers 59-65). This line in The Libation Bearers presents justice as a divine force who interferes with human affairs. Orestes is successful in murdering his mother, but the old way of justice says that there is no retribution in killing a blood relative, especially one’s mother. The