The Epic Tragedy Part II: A Circular Form of Justice; What Justice Was Before The Athenian Law and Judicial System

First, before I begin my post, I would like to apologize for taking so long to post the second part to Aeschylus’ trilogy. I have been sick and a little under the weather as of late and so couldn’t post as I wanted to. So I hope my readership will forgive me for my absence. Thank you.

Like with my last post I will be giving comparisons between Greek culture and life, and the classic epics written by Greek authors. I will provide a brief summary of Aeschylus’ second play in the Oresteia; The Libation Bearers. The play opens up with the exiled son, Orestes, back in Argos at his father’s grave. He regrets he wasn’t there for Agamemnon’s death. He cuts two locks of his hair and places them on the grave for a salutation, but he is interrupted by a group of women coming to the grave. Orestes and his friend hide behind the grave as Electra, his sister, and her slave women come bearing libations. A libation is a ritual of pouring a drink as an offering, and in this case it’s an offering to Agamemnon’s memory. Clytaemnestra had sent the Libation bearers to the grave, and we find out that the only reason she did so was because of a dream that scared her into doing so. She sent her daughter, Electra, to the grave with the libation but Electra doesn’t know what to say because she was sent by the woman who killed her father. She asks her slave women what she should say and the leader provides the words for her. She prays for an avenger whether man or god to avenge her father, and her prayer is answered. Electra discovers the locks of hair on Agamemnon’s grave and at first doesn’t speak out loud that she knows who the hair belongs to, because she doubts it, but then Orestes shows himself and even though she doesn’t believe it at first it is truly him. Then Orestes comes up with a plan to kill both his own mother and her lover, Aegisthus. Orestes claims he has to come up with a cunning plan to kill them because Clytaemnestra used cunning to kill Agamemnon. Orestes comes to the palace as a stranger and gives them news that Orestes is dead, but then when he gets them alone, which he planned out with the leader of the slave women, he kills them both. In the end of the play Orestes is scared because the Furies begin to chase him to avenge Clytaemnestra, because he has the blood of his mother on him. This is the story-line of Aeschylus’ second play in the Oresteia, The Libation Bearers, now I will go into the cultural comparisons between this epic tragedy and Greek life.

The fist cultural comparison I will make is the ritual of the Libations. As I said above the ritual of the libation is a cup filled with wine, oil, perfumes, honey, or any other kind of precious liquid, and then the holder of the libation pours it over a grave or alter for an offering to either a god or a spirit who has passed on. In this play the libation is for the spirit of Agamemnon, and his daughter Electra is the holder of the cup. Clytaemnestra wouldn’t have sent such a sacrifice if she had not received a dream that scared her into sending the Libation Bearers. Electra, speechless of what prayer to offer her father, asks what she should say: “What kindness, what prayer can touch my father? Shall I say I bring him love for love, a woman’s love for husband? My mother, love from her? I’ve no taste for that, no words to say as I run the honeyed oil on father’s tomb.”[1] She asks her slave women for help in what to pray as she pours her sacrifice over her father’s grave, and the leader tells her to ask the gods for “The one who murder’s in return.”[2] Electra does as the leader suggests and prays for the gods and her father to send her brother: “O bring Orestes home, with a happy twist of fate, my father…… For our enemies I say, Raise up your avenger, into the light, my father – kill the killers in return, with justice!”[3] Many cultures used libations as a religious ritual, and one of those cultures was Judaism; we can see in the Old Testament. In Genesis Jacob uses a sort of libation to pour over the alter he made at the place he called Beth-el. “And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him [God], even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon (Genesis 35:14, KJV).”

Next we see in The Libation Bearers, what I talked about in my last post, but will improve upon, the view of women in Greek culture. As I stated in my last post the Greeks view of women was high, and this can be seen in all of the Greek epics in one form or another. Whether the woman is the Heroine or the antagonist, or even a goddess, most of the women in the Greek classics are intelligent and clever. In The Libation Bearers I will show three different types of women that Aeschylus’ places in his play. First we’ll look at Clytaemnestra the murderess of her husband, and mother of Orestes and Electra. I showed her intelligence in my last post with setting up the “Beacons.” Orestes states that she and Aegisthus will die by the same cunning they used to kill his father: “They killed an honoured man by cunning, so they die by cunning, caught in the same noose.”[4] But in fact we saw in the first play that the one who really set up Agamemnon’s murder was in fact Clytaemnestra and not Aegisthus. The second women I will show is the leader of the slave women. Even as a slave she shows how much knowledge she has by giving words to Electra and also by being used in Orestes plan. He encourages the Leader to tell his old nurse, when she was sent to get Aegisthus (for Orestes, disguised as a stranger, urged for Aegisthus to be brought to the guest room so that he could talk “man to man” with him about Orestes death), that the nurse should get Aegisthus to come alone; without his bodyguard. If it was not for the Leader’s part, Orestes plan would not have worked. We see that her knowledge comes from experience because she is an older woman “We’re old. You’re young, now you teach us.”[5] We see the difference between this slave and the Queen, but nonetheless both portray a form of intelligence. The final woman in Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers is Orestes sister Electra. Electra in the play seems to be blinded by her grief to think straight and even when she figures out that Orestes is back in Argos, and has been at the grave, she doesn’t believe it at first. But nonetheless she was the one who discovered his return. Orestes even scolds her for being slow for not realizing that it is really him: “Open your eyes. So slow to learn. You saw the lock of hair I cut in mourning. You scanned my tracks, you could see my marks, your breath leapt, you all but saw me in the flesh – Look – put it [the lock of hair] where I cut it. It’s your brother’s. Try, it matches yours.”[6] All of these women play significant roles in Aeschylus’ play and having women in such roles gives us insight into Greek thought, and how women were viewed and treated in the Greek civilizations.  

The final comparison to be made is the presence of oracles in the epics and their role in the religious rituals of ancient Greece. Oracles are used in many of the Greek epics and oracles are mainly played as female characters. (Again we see how women played a significant part in the epics and in Greek life). Oracles were priestesses of a god’s temple and were the mediator between the gods and the humans; they were the voice of the god they served. One of the most important Oracles in the Greek epics was the Priestess of Apollo, the Pythia, who is mentioned often as the Oracle at Delphi. She is the oracle that is used in Aeschylus’ trilogy. We find out in The Libation Bearers that Orestes did not come to avenge his father just for himself, but that he was sent by Apollo to do it. The Oracle, the Pythia, was the voice of Apollo to Orestes and told him to avenge Agamemnon. Orestes tells Electra and the slave women this and that this is the reason he is back in Argos: “Apollo will never fail me, no, his tremendous power, his oracle charges me to see this trial through. I can still hear the god – a high voice ringing with winters of disaster, piercing the heart within me, warm and strong, unless I hunt my father’s murderers, cut them down in their own style – they destroyed my birthright. ‘Gore them like a bull!’ he called, ‘or pay their debt with your own life, one long career of grief.’ Such oracles are persuasive, don’t you think? And even if I am not convinced, the rough work of the world is still to do. So many yearnings meet and urge me on. The god’s commands. Mounting sorrow for father.”[7] The oracle that is mentioned plays a part in the third play of Aeschylus’ trilogy as well, The Eumenides. In fact the play begins with the Pythia’s prayer (Aeschylus The Eumenides, p.231-233. 1-66). Oracles were greatly esteemed in Greek culture as well as priests, priestess, and seers. All of these occupations dealt with, in some form or another, service to the gods. It was not uncommon for the Greek, and even Roman, people to get spiritual and future advice from those who were in service to the gods. In fact in Roman culture you would consult seers for the perfect day for you to get married and other ceremonial events. Oracles, and all other religious figures, were highly respected because they were looked at as the voice of the gods.

The final thing I will talk about, which is the reason for my title, is the view of justice and law before the Athenian judicial system. During Aeschylus’ time-frame for his tragedies he shows how justice and law worked before his own era’s judicial system. In the time of Aeschylus the Athenian law and form of justice was similar to our judicial system and court of laws. In my next post I will go into detail about the Athenian justice system, and the third play of the Oresteia gives us a detailed example of how this worked. But in this section I will be looking at the form of “justice” before this particular court arrangement. Law and justice was put in the hands of everyone, even though there were Elders (as we saw with the Old Men in the first play, Agamemnon) who were supposed to judge matters they’re judgment could only go so far. This type of “justice” was circular and we see this in the Oresteia. Why in the first play of the trilogy does Clytaemnestra kill her husband, and Cassandra? Because he sacrificed their daughter to appease the gods for safe travel to Troy, and so she waited, hoping he would return unharmed, so that she could get her revenge; she thought this was justice. Then Orestes, their son, is told by the god Apollo to avenge Agamemnon and kill his murderers; who are Aegisthus and his mother. This he does and he believes he is doing the right and just thing, but the furies come to kill him for murdering his own mother. This then is the view of justice in the first two plays, and it’s circular, “Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” kind of justice. In this form of justice there is no right over wrong or good over bad, so anyone is justified in thinking that they are right. Was Agamemnon right in sacrificing Iphigeneia? Was Clytaemnestra wrong to want revenge? Was Orestes justified in killing his mother? Orestes states: “Now force clash with force – right with right!” So we see that this form of “justice” is flawed, and even though in the last play the idea of “justice” changes we will see some flaws even in it. But for now in the Oresteia the “old form” of justice is circular and it comes to a point where even Orestes knows that if he kills his mother the effect of his cause will turn into someone, or something, killing him. The leader of the slave women mention: “’Word for word, curse for curse be born now,’ Justice thunders, hungry for retribution, ‘stroke for bloody stroke be paid. The one who acts must suffer.’”[8] The Leader urges Orestes to stay in Argos after he kills his mother but he knows that the Furies are after him and states that he must move on: “No, no! Women – look – like Gorgons, shrouded in black, their heads wreathed, swarming serpents! – Cannot stay, I must move on. You can’t see them I can, they drive me on! I must move on –“[9] This is where the second play in the Oresteia ends, and I will end this post here but I will continue to show the view of “justice” in my next post. Aeschylus shows us many things in his tragedies but one thing he wanted to show was the evolution of justice, and law and order, how it was before the Athenian judicial system and how it changed into the “justice system” that Athens came to use.           

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[1] Aeschylus The Libation Bearers, p. 180. 87-91.

[2] Ibid, p. 182. 123.

[3] Ibid, p. 183. 143-44, 147-49.

[4] Ibid, p.202. 543-44.

[5] Ibid, p. 185. 174.

[6] Ibid, p. 188. 227-33.

[7] Ibid, p. 191-192. 272-81, 302-06.

[8] Ibid, p. 192. 316-20.

[9] Ibid, p. 225. 1047-50, 1060-61.

The Epic Tragedy Part I: Do The Greek Plays Accurately Display What Greek Culture Was Like?

I am going to go through all three of the tragedies in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, to show that the plays and poetry of the Greek writers portrays the culture in which they lived. The lifestyles, thoughts, rituals, and traditions that are depicted in Greek epics were the same for the Greeks at that time. I’m going to focus on how the Greeks viewed and worshiped their gods, and this part of Greek culture can be clearly seen in the plays and poetry from poets like Aeschylus, Homer, and Sophocles. Although Plato would disagree with me because he believed the poets misrepresented the gods; he had an understanding of god that most Christians today have. But why focus on this topic? Because I believe it will give a better understanding of why so many Romans and Greeks, after the death and resurrection of Christ, flocked to Christianity and its views.

The first play in the Oresteia trilogy is Agamemnon, which deals with the return of Agamemnon from the Trojan War after ten years. I will give a small summary of the play here. It takes place after the ten year war between the Greeks and the Trojans, all for a woman named Helen, and is set in Argos the home of Agamemnon. The wife of Agamemnon is informed about his return by a chain of torches, which she set up, that moved across the land from Troy to Argos. We see the same imagery used in the film The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King, which displays the burning of the “Beacons” from Gondor to Rohan. Ten years ago, the Old Men tell us in the play, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter to calm the seas for their travel. Clytaemnestra never forgave him for this, and we don’t see her maliciousness until the end of the play. Agamemnon returns, with the Priam’s daughter the seer Cassandra, and the end catapults. The moment Clytaemnestra has waited for, for ten years, has finally come; her chance to get “justice.” (I put the word “justice” with quotations because we will see in the rest of the trilogy different forms of that word. For Clytaemnestra “justice” is, as we would say, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” So a death for a death. We will find out in the later plays that justice will change. It is amazing to see that in Aeschylus’ trilogy the development of justice and the law formed into what it was during his era). Cassandra foretells of hers and Agamemnon’s death to the Old Men and the Leader. (The Old Men and the Leader are like what most clans and cultures had, the elders of the city, like a city council and they controlled the law and order in the city other then the king; and when the king wasn’t there). They don’t know whether to believe Cassandra or not, but the next scene when she goes into the palace they hear the cries of agony from Agamemnon and the future was revealed. When they finally go in to investigate they find both Agamemnon and Cassandra dead; just like Cassandra foretold. Clytaemnestra doesn’t even hide that it was her who murdered them, and she claims that she did it out of, what she declares as, “justice;” having blood for blood. But apparently she was not alone in her malicious plan, Aegisthus her lover and son of Thyestes, brother of Agamemnon’s father Atreus, was in on it with her. All because of what Atreus did to Thyestes' other son. In the end of the play the Leader of the Old Men challenges Aegisthus, but Clytaemnestra prevents them from more death and for now Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra rule the land of Argos.       

The first cultural comparison we can make between the Greek plays and Greek culture is the practice of prayer. Prayer was a ritual carried out in all homes and statuses in Greece; whether you were a priest or priestess, or just a simple house wife. This ritual is shown in many of the Greek’s writings and in Agamemnon the play begins with a prayer. There are many different types of prayers that are portrayed in this play, and I will give a few examples of this. The play starts out with a watchman who is fighting to stay awake. In the first line the gods are mentioned as the watchman prayers to them trying to keep his mind active (Aeschylus "Agamemnon", P.103-104. 1-42). This type of prayer to the gods would have been similar to the every day prayers that most Greeks of that time would’ve prayed. It is a pleading prayer, pleading for something to occur that would make the watchman’s life better, and what he asked for he received. The “Beacons” are lit and the Watchman’s pleading pray for the return of his king is answered; Troy is won and Agamemnon is returning to Argos. These types of prayers are seen in the Greek epics and are seen throughout the Oresteia. These pleading prayers are a cry out to the gods for intervention. Another type of prayer that is shown in Agamemnon is a prayer of thanks. A common phrase that is often used in the Greek epics is “Thank the gods,” which is a small prayer of thanks offered up kind of like when we would say “Thank God.” The Leader who asks Clytaemnestra about how she knew the Greeks won the war in Troy says: “We’ll thank the gods, my lady – first this story, let me lose myself in the wonder of it all!”[1] The last type of prayer I will show here is what Agamemnon does: a salutation to the gods for the conquering of Troy. “First, with justice I salute my Argos and my gods, my accomplices who brought me home and won my rights from Priam’s Troy – the just gods.”[2] These sorts of prayers are the basic prayers for any religion whether Dualistic or Monotheistic, So it probably wasn’t uncommon for those living during the time of Aeschylus to offer up these types of prayers.

Another cultural aspect that is shown in the Oresteia is the view the Greeks had about women. Where the prayers are a ritual aspect of Greek culture, this next comparison of the Greek epics to their culture deals with the thought-frame of the ancient Greeks. Unlike like most cultures where women were put down the Greeks educated their women until a certain age, and the Romans did as well. Even though women were still meant to be the overseer of the house they weren’t unlearned. Aeschylus shows us this with Clytaemnestra, on page 113 the Leader asks Clytaemnestra how she had news that the war in Troy was done and how she knew the Greeks won: “And who on earth could run the news so fast?”[3] She replies to his question by telling him about the beacons she set up from Troy to Argos: “The god of fire – rushing fire from Ida! And beacon to beacon rushed it to me, my couriers riding home the torch.”[4] Aeschylus shows that Clytaemnestra is quite intelligent for thinking up this plan, even though it’s also good for the plot, but by doing this he gives us insight into Greek thought. In Greek mythology there is equally tales about men and women, you have Hercules and then you have Psyche, heroes and heroines; with antagonists being both male and female. Also the gods were both male and female, you had gods and goddesses, and even the deity of wisdom is a goddess; Athena. Why would women be placed in such roles if the Greeks didn’t think highly of them? This goes to show that women had some sort of equality with men, and it was on the intellectual scale. We see Clytaemnestra’s intellect for setting up the “Beacons” from Troy to Argos, and we also see it in her plans to kill Agamemnon. The Romans gained this thought-frame from the Greeks; they borrowed a lot of their religion, thought, culture, and lifestyle from the Greeks. They even borrowed the Greek gods, although renaming them.

The final comparison I will make between Greek culture and the plays of the Oresteia is the ritual of worship. Why did the Greeks, and later the Romans, worship their gods? There were many different forms of religion in ancient cultures and many of people worshiped their gods for one reason alone; fear. This worship because of fear is seen quite a few times in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and this was the same type of worship for the Greek/Roman gods during the time Christianity came on the rise. In the end of this post I will show that because of this type of worship to the Greek/Roman gods many Romans flocked to Christianity because it is completely different from the religion they grew up believing. The first place in Agamemnon where we see this worship out of fear is when Clytaemnestra tells the Leader that she hopes for the safe return of Agamemnon. “The run for home and safety waits, the swerve at the post, the final lap of the grueling two-lap race. And even if the men come back with no offence to the gods, the avenging dead may never rest – Oh let no new disaster strike!”[5] She says this because she is afraid the gods that sided with the Trojans during the war, which this division of the gods can be seen in Homer’s Iliad, will avenge them and attack the victorious Greeks. The Old Men continue this type of reverence to the gods: “The reach for power can recoil, the bolt of god can strike you at a glance.”[6] The last scene where we see this type of worship is when Agamemnon returns and Clytaemnestra sets out, what you can say as, the “Red carpet” treatment for him. He refuses to walk upon the scarlet tapestries that she had set up for his arrival because he claims that it’s the kind of treatment a god should have, but not a man. “This – you treat me like a woman. Grovelling, gaping at me – What am I, some barbarian peacocking out of Asia? Never cross my path with robes and draw the lighting. Never – only the gods deserve the pomps of honour and the stiff brocades of fame. To walk on them…I am human, and it makes my pulse stir with dread. Give me the tributes of a man and not a god, a little earth to walk on, not this gorgeous work. There is no need to sound my reputation. I have a sense of right and wrong, what’s more – heaven’s proudest gift. Call no man blest until he ends his life in peace, fulfilled. If I can live by what I say, I have no fear.”[7] Clytaemnestra convinces him that it’s safe and he gives in, but not without first saying: “Hurry, and while I tread his splendours dyed red in the sea, may no god watch and strike me down with envy from o high.”[8] The ancient Greeks, and even the Romans, held the same view about the gods, that if you made any offence to the gods they would strike you down at their whim. They worshiped their gods out of fear but these deities they worshiped had humanistic characteristics and the humans would disagree with their actions, but they worshiped the deities anyways because of the fear. As the Old Men state: “First comes and the news is good, it races through the streets but is it true? Who knows?  Or just another lie from heaven?”[9] This shows that the deities of the Greeks, who had humanistic attributes, could do both virtue and vice. They can lie, steal, kill, and do any other vice that any human can do, so they were serving gods who had the same emotions, attributes, and characteristics as themselves, and the only reason they worshiped such gods is because they were afraid what would happen to them, their culture, and their entire civilization if they didn’t. These gods not only held vice and the ability, as we can say, to sin; but they were also unpredictable.

What makes the worship of these deities so different from the God of the Bible? How can we see that from this type of worship, which the Romans held to like the Greeks, why so many left these deities and turned to Christianity? Because the God of the Bible is completely different from the Greek gods. God is a loving god, and loved man so much that He sent His only son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was the manifestation of God’s love to man (1 John 4:9). Where the Greek gods would strike you down just for looking at them wrong. Who wouldn’t turn to the Christian God? Also God doesn’t have human vice, sin, like lying (Titus 1:2), and he can’t even sin at all (1 John 3:9), and lastly he’s not tempted like the Greek gods: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man (James 1:13).” So we can clearly see the difference between the God of the Christians and the gods of the Greeks. With the Greek gods, god is made in man’s image instead of man being created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26).

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[1] Aeschylus Agamemnon, p.115. 319-20.

[2] Ibid, p.133. 794-97.

[3] Ibid, p.113. 280.

[4] Ibid, p.114. 281-83.

[5] Ibid, p.116. 346-51.

[6] Ibid, p.120. 461-62.

[7] Ibid, p.137-138. 911-26.

[8] Ibid, p.139. 942-45

[9] Ibid, p.120. 467-70.