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.