Justice in the "Oresteia" Aeschylus was a

Aeschylus was a great 5th century playright who plumbed the deepest recesses of the human soul. He was ethically aware as few human beings have ever been, and if he did not come up with solutions for the evil that lurks potentially in every human breast, at least he outlined its extent, described it accurately, and suggested more moral alternatives.

Begun as a religious observance in honour of Dionysus, Greek tragedy reflected the central values of the culture. It was during the short but historically influential reign of Pericles in the 5th century B.C. that Aeschylus wrote the trilogy known as the Oresteia, probably greatest and most quintessential Greek tragedy that has survived from that era. This gripping series of three plays tells of the endless cycles of violence unleashed in the House of Atreus, which stretch across several generations. The curse on the descendants of Atreus is ended only by the intervention of the goddess Athene, described by Aeschylus in the "Eumenides", where Orestes' trial by jury due her and Apollo's intervention restores a much-needed civilizing influence to this classic blood feud.

In "Agamemnon" the king returns from the Trojan War with his new consort, the clairvoyant prophetess Cassandra, only to be murdered in his bath by his wife Clytemnestra, who hates him for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis. In her bitterness she says "�our child is gone, not standing by our side, the bond of our dearest pledges,

ies are transformed into the more peaceful Eumenides - but only after Athene intervenes to assuage their dissatisfaction with the result of the trial. Central to the "Oresteia" is the Greek concept of justice. How should crime be punished? Only by socially sanctioned retaliatory murder? In terms of this story, whose right of revenge is paramount, Clytemnestra's or Orestes'? Holly (2000) sees a change in the concept of justice by Aeschylus at the end of the Eumenides from blood feud and revenge to a kind of trial by jury, even though the male-biased Athene casts the decisive vote in favour of Orestes: "Aeschylus does wind up the story at the end of the Eumenides, by changing its rules. The end of the Oresteia is not the end of the story that begins in the Agamemnon but rather the beginning of a new story that has a different system of justice in mind". Part of the genius of Aeschylus is in showing how each character's interests or emotional state prevent them from seeing the legitimacy of their antagonist's point of view. Neither Orestes nor his sister Electra can appreciate the depth of hatred aroused in their mother Clytemnestra by their father's sacrifice of Iphigenia. In their blindness to her feelings they see no justific