And they took hold of him, and brought him unto the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is, which is spoken by thee? – Acts 17:19
What is justice? The age-old question which has plagued mankind since the beginnings of civilization itself. In America today we may argue over the peculiar aspects of various legal codes and definitions, but all of our conjecturing belies the fact we live in a world that has defined justice in very particular ways. The founding fathers, nearly all of them being lawyers themselves, created this nation on a code of ethics and a system designed towards justice. But what are the roots of our conceptions of justice? Why do we have juries and lawyers and courts at all? Athens, Greece during the 5th Century BC was beginning to develop and enshrine the first experimental versions of democracy the world had ever seen. It wasn’t perfect, and it had a number of starts and stops along the way, but democracy was definitely forming and taking root in the society that was for sure. Likewise the court systems were being developed at this time as well, and wealth and power were also growing all throughout Athens.
The Greco-Persian War began in the beginning of the 5th Century BC and ended halfway through the century with Athens and Greece the victors. For some reason, accurate or not I cannot say for sure, but I tend to view life in Ancient Greece after the Greco-Persian war as something similar to how life was lived in America after World War 2. In short good things were happening where positive change and development was rich in the air and in the hearts and minds of most everyone.
In this post I’d like to speak further about those social changes particularly as they were happening in Athens, Greece and even more particularly in how we can begin to see those changes manifest in one of most famous trilogy of plays ever written called The Oresteia. I’m not so sure how many people are familiar with these plays. I know for myself it wasn’t until long after I graduated college that I became acquainted with them. The Oresteia is written by Aeschylus in the 5th Century BC, after the Greco-Persian War. Aeschylus himself was a brave warrior in that war and was greatly respected. He also won numerous awards for his plays, including The Oresteia. The man must have been one heck of a guy to have dinner with, I can only imagine! This trilogy of plays tells the story of a royal family caught in a vicious cycle of violence, betrayal, and revenge. There are a number of moving parts to this trilogy, but let me at least give you a run down of the larger scope of the play. Forgive me as there are SPOILER ALERTS coming! So if that is quite important to you let me thoroughly suggest you quit reading this post now and go pick up The Oresteian Trilogy (I recommend the Robert Fagles translation linked above, but I also link below to other translations that are for free too), and then come back here when you’re finished. It’s a fantastic read indeed!
The three plays are titled in order – Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides – and they tell the story first of Agamemnon, who was the Greek King and Commander during the Trojan War. The play begins with Agamemnon finally returning home from the 10 year war, but unbeknownst to him not all is well at home. His wife Clytemnestra is bitterly upset and fiercely angry at him, and rightfully so, for he savagely killed and sacrificed their own daughter Iphigenia before he left off to battle 10 years earlier only to return now with a young and beautiful Trojan princess and seer named Cassandra and is his latest sexual dalliance no less. That’s probably not going to go over too well Agamemnon! So upon his arrival home his devious wife, who has been sleeping with her husband’s cousin for some time now, at first greets him home lavishly and with open arms, only to then brutally murder him. It is a dark and gory play no question, but arguably masterfully exhibits one of the most powerful and riveting female characters ever to be written. Here are some astonishing lines spoken by Clytemnestra just as she has stabbed her husband multiple times, killing him while he was bathing.
CLYTEMNESTRA: So he goes down, and the life is bursting out of him – great sprays of blood, and the murderous shower wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel like the Earth when the spring rains come down, the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory! So it stands, elders of Argos gathered here. Rejoice if you can rejoice – I glory. And if I’d pour upon his body the libation it deserves, what wine could match my words? It is right and more than right. He flooded the vessel of our proud house with misery, with the vintage of the curse and now he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last.
LEADER: You appal me, you, your brazen words – exulting over your fallen king.
CLYTEMNESTRA: And you, you try me like some desperate woman. My heart is steel, well you know. Praise me, blame me as you choose. It’s all one. Here is Agamemnon, my husband made a corpse by this right hand – a masterpiece of Justice. Done is done.
Whew!! Now those are some lines!!! Wowsers!! Absolutely chilling to the bone. For me Clytemnestra is one of the most amazing characters I’ve ever seen. She is both someone I sympathize with but also someone that horrifies me and I utterly condemn. I absolutely love it! It is also vital to remember that Agamemnon is a major character in Homer’s The Iliad, and every Greek watching this play would immediately know that and recognize him and, most importantly, associate him with the great sage and bard Homer. So not only do we have the death of Agamemnon in this play, but by strong and clear association, we also have a symbolic, literary, and cultural death of the great masculine and warrior-like values of the Homeric tradition, the very epics and songs which founded Greek thought and culture up to Aeschylus’ day.
If you recall a few posts back, I discussed the role of violence in Homer’s The Illiad. You can find that post here in case you missed it, but generally speaking for Homer the cycle of violence is something that must be accepted and even praised, but it must also be strongly coupled with virtue and piety and a strong moral code. This combination of brute force and high ideals became the fundamental basis for Greece to rebuild itself anew out of the fall of the late Bronze Age. It is an heroic, inspiring, and uplifting value system albeit also one that is riddled with gore and bloodshed that for all practical purposes simply could not be avoided. But for Aeschylus, living 300 – 500 years later, this value system and the role of violence is beginning to find it’s limits. Democracy is beginning to blossom, the court system is budding, and the culture and society is getting wealthier and more resourceful.
The play Agamemnon embodies the older Homeric universe where violence is found around every corner, where nothing is secure, and all can be lost at any time. Not only this but the lines of virtue and vice, piety and impiety, right and wrong are blurred and muddied over throughout this trilogy. Did you notice the key word in Clytemestra’s final lines above? “A masterpiece of Justice.” There’s that word again, Justice. This one word rests at the foundation of The Orestia. But what exactly is just in this circumstance? Clytemnestra is not exactly wrong in seeking to avenge the horrific sacrifice of her daughter. But then again, as the Leader says to her in the lines above, she has betrayed the state and killed her King. The play ends with Clytemnestra and her lover, the now dead king’s cousin, taking over power in the land and becoming King and Queen even at the objections of the helpless elderly leaders. Clearly something is amiss and obviously unjust.
In the second play The Libation Bearers, the plot thickens of course. Agamemnon does have children – Electra his daughter and Orestes his son, for whom the trilogy of plays is named after. There are many things that go on in this second play but suffice it to say that Orestes hears of his father’s brutal murder at the hands of his own mother no less, returns home from abroad, ultimately kills his mother and her lover in cold blood, and thereby avenges his father. Here are some lines from Orestes immediately after he murderers his very own mother and her lover:
ORESTES: Here, unfurl it so the Father – no, not mine but the One who watches over all, the Sun can behold my mother’s godless work. So he may come, my witness when the day of judgement comes, that I pursued this bloody death with justice, mother’s death. Aegisthus, why mention him? The adulterer dies. An old custom, justice.
So you see here again that one great word – Justice. It is the obsession of all the characters. Orestes, moments after killing his own mother and Aegisthus her lover, immediately defends himself and his deeds and demands that they are just, they are true, and they are right. Guilt is already racking him, and it is at this moment when the play takes an interesting turn. Really this could be the end of the story altogether. Vengeance has in fact been satisfied. Justice, theoretically has been settled. The murderer has been murdered, and the rightful heir to the throne, Orestes, can now assume the proper mantel as King. But alas this is not the end! This is only the middle, for we are in the second of the three plays. What instead occurs is the play closes with Orestes being haunted by three goddesses called the Erinyes or more commonly known as The Furies. These are supernatural beings or deities that rule over vengeance. They are ancient goddesses that haunt and torment their victims relentlessly. The play closes with them driving Orestes mad as he tries desperately to run away from them. In this way Aeschylus is extending the revenge story all the way to the heights of the gods, the Furies in this case, as well as to life after death as the ghost of Clytemnestra is now also seeking vengeance from beyond the grave. Aeschylus is transforming not just the classic, typical revenge story here, but he is also making substantive critiques of the efficacy and validity of vigilante justice outright, not just here on earth among mortal men, but indeed also in the Heavens among the gods. He is sparking a transformation in how Greece defines and achieves justice, peace, and law and order. Revenge, the plays argue, stays with us forever. Vengeance destroys ourselves, stains our own homes and family names. When we strike in vengeance, yes we may strike down our adversaries, but we also feed the bloodlust for a future generation. And in so doing we are actually not progressing at all. We are forever fighting our past demons, even the past demons of our ancestors and their ancestors before them, never able to free ourselves from the insatiable cycle of blood and violence.
The Eumenides is the third and final play of the trilogy. It is in this play that we delve into what I believe is the first court-room trial scene to appear in literature. This is when the play shifts to a new focus that transforms the realm of the gods and zeroes in on legal particulars and idiosyncratic arguments where Athena, the great goddess of Athens, presides as Judge over a legal dispute between the Furies and Orestes. The play physically takes place upon the Areopagus, an actual physical rock formation in Athens that does in fact have ancient historical significance as being a place of justice, of truth-seeking, and of open, free dialogue. The quote at the start of this post comes from the Book of Acts in the Bible. It is referring to a time when Paul, while visiting in Athens, spoke at this very same rock, the Areopagus, and spread the message of Christianity to the Greeks. And of course, as the quote states, when the Greeks heard him speaking, they immediately took him to this very same rock where The Eumenides takes place – the Areopagus – so that they may more formally vet this new message of Christ he spoke to them. In this way The Eumenides is literally enshrining and memorializing not just a new code of conduct but in fact a literal and physical location in Greece for all of history and all of society to focus themselves upon. Aeschylus is building community through the theater and through his artwork, and it is a communal location to seek truth, justice, and higher laws of being for all involved. He is grounding a higher consciousness for all of Greek society into an actual physical location, making the land sacred and rich and powerful.
To sum this third and final play up quickly there is a plaintiff and a defendant and both present their arguments. The Furies, along with the help of Clytemnestra’s spirit from the dead are the plaintiffs. They are claiming that Orestes is guilty and must be punished by death for killing Clytemnestra. In short they are demanding revenge. The defendants are Apollo, yes the God Apollo, and Orestes. They contend that it was not Orestes himself that actually did the murder but in fact it was Apollo who commanded him to do it and so Orestes is not guilty and doesn’t deserve punishment. And when The Furies turn to Apollo asking him why he commanded Orestes in this way, Apollo states that Zeus himself had preordained all of these events. I know it seems like a rather weak argument to our minds, but apparently when you’re a Greek God it holds a bit more weight. In the end the judges vote and it is a tie. Athena then steps in as the presiding judge, breaks the tie, and declares Orestes innocent. She then announces that from here on Athens will be ruled by the courts, and justice shall be restored here at the Areopagus, never again to be meted out through personal vendettas and vigilantes. Here is Athena’s proclamation:
ATHENA: Now and forever more, for Aegeus’ people this will be the court where judges reign. This is the Crag of Ares, where the Amazons pitched their tents when they came marching down on Theseus…Here from the heights, terror, and reverence, my people’s kindred powers will hold them from injustice throughout the day and through the mild night. Never pollute our law with innovations. No, my citizens, foul a clear well and you will suffer thirst. Neither anarchy nor tyranny, my people. Worship the Mean, I urge you, shore it up with reverence and never banish terror from the gates, not outright. Where is the righteous man who knows no fear? The stronger you fear, your reverence for the just, the stronger your country’s wall and city’s safety…Untouched by lust for spoil, this court of law majestic, swift to fury, rising above you as you sleep, our night watch always wakeful, guardian of our land – I found it here and now.
These lines speak not just for Ancient Athens, but they speak for us today. They speak of our legal system, and the mode of conduct throughout our civilization today. The fingerprint of our very modern society is found here in Ancient Athens, with Aeschylus, the goddess Athena, and throughout The Oresteia. It is truly fascinating to behold!
Now the Furies are of course very upset about Athena’s verdict, because for them this new edict flies in the face of their very purpose and being in the world. And so as if nothing more could be done, Athena goes even further and convinces The Furies to literally transform their ancient state of being from one of fury and vengeance into a higher state of justice and vigilance over all of Athens. Instead of raging revenge upon individuals, they are now to be a reverent protectorate. The Furies, ancient gods far older than Athena, Apollo, or even Zeus, transcend their very state of being into a greater state of nature that supports all of Athens, and in fact all of mankind, to flourish in justice and freedom. Here are Athena’s thrilling lines that speak to peace and prosperity alongside the transformed Furies:
ATHENA: Only peace – blessings, rising up from the earth and the heaving sea, and down the vaulting sky let the wind-gods breathe a wash of sunlight streaming through the land, and the yield of the soil and grazing cattle flood our city’s life with power and never flag with time. Make the seed of men live on, the more they worship you the more they thrive. I love them as a gardener loves his plants, these upright men, this breed fought free of grief. All that is yours to give.
This is the new purpose for the Furies. They can provide blessings and peace and prosperity to the land. As you can see the play ends with all the characters in celebration and majesty. It is one of the most joyful endings of a tragedy that I can recall, and is in distinct contrast from the tone and tenor of the first two plays. The transformation is complete. Orestes is absolved of guilt, and returns to his kingdom to rule in peace and prosperity, The Furies have a new found purpose, one that is more harmonious to all of creation. Mankind has been empowered to judge and legislate in good faith and righteousness. A new world order has been established that is based on justice and a proper court of law. And finally a new divine order has been established among the gods with the Furies raised into a new and higher calling to protect and oversee the land and people. Literally the entire heaven and earth has been restructured by the end the of this trilogy.
Meanwhile beyond the realm of the play itself, these very ideas pave the way for the height of Greek philosophy to arise in Athens with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and so many others. And there is the plethora of Greek playwrights that shall take prominence too from Aristophanes to Euripides to Sophocles. The Oresteian Trilogy is the keystone that links Homer’s grand and epic poems from the violent and tumultuous Greek dark ages to the profound and astute philosophies and arts of the wealthy and prosperous culture of Classical Athens. As an example, the foundations are laid in The Oresteian Trilogy for Plato to explore as extensively and as thoroughly as he does the concepts of Justice and the greatest Social Order in his classic work The Republic. With the death of Agamemnon occurring so suddenly in the first play of The Oresteia, Aeschylus is boldly signaling to his audience and to all of Greece that a change has come, that not a revolution but an evolution is here, both within the story of these well-known Homeric heroes but also in regards to the larger notion of what values Greek culture will esteem, what stories are to be told in this new world order, and exactly how will justice be conceived in the newly democratic Athens of the 5th Century BC. Peace and blessings indeed abound, still ringing strong and true from the ancient words and ideals cast upon the stage by Aeschylus and his remarkable Oresteian Trilogy, transforming not just Ancient Greece, but early Christianity, and even our modern civilization. Aeschylus was so remarkable and prescient in his analysis and his art that not only did he guide Athens into great success, he even assisted all of us today, over 2,000 years later and counting, in helping to establish the foundations for The United States of America and in turn for all the prosperity, peace, and freedom the world has ever known.
God bless western civilization!