presided over by Athena; he is acquitted.
Conclusion: Conspiratorial matricide is a less serious crime than the murder of a pompous philandering husband who murdered his daughter and brought his mistress to his wife's bed. But it is difficult to see how that resolution of action constitutes a reassertion of order on any level. Given the dreaded myth of the house of Atreus, it seems reasonable to suggest that with so many justifications and rationalizations for killing off one's family members to go around in the text of the Orestia, any assertion that the Eumenides has resolved and explicated for the human cosmos for all time the proper character of justice is open to dispute. The Trojan War, it appears, is riddled with issue fronts as vexed as those of the Vietnam War, which engaged the emotions and politics of so many people around the world--and possibly Gulf War II, though the oracle may be out on that one until the shooting stops.
But war itself can offer an explanation for disordered behavior of individuals and institutions. Orestes' trial before
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