Agamemnon

Themes

Justice through retaliation

Retaliation is seen in the Oresteia to cascade. In Agamemnon, it is mentioned that Agamemnon had to sacrifice his innocent daughter Iphigenia to shift the wind for his voyage to Troy.[18] This caused Clytemnestra to plot revenge on Agamemnon. She found a new lover Aegisthus and when Agamemnon returned to Argos from the Trojan War, Clytemnestra killed him by stabbing him in the bathtub and went on to inherit his throne.[2] The death of Agamemnon thus sparks anger in Orestes and Electra; they plot matricide (the death of their mother Clytemnestra) in the next play Libation Bearers. Through much pressure from Electra and his cousin Pylades, Orestes kills Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.[18] Consequently, Orestes is hunted down by the Furies in the third play The Eumenides. Even after he escapes, Clytemnestra's spirit comes back to rally them again so that they can kill Orestes and obtain vengeance for her.[18] However this cycle of retaliation comes to a stop near the end of The Eumenides when Athena decides to introduce a new legal system for dealing out justice.[2]

Justice through the law

Justice through the law is achieved in The Eumenides. After Orestes begged Athena for deliverance from the Furies, she granted him his request in the form of a trial.[1] Rather than forgiving Orestes directly, Athena put him to trial to find a just answer to the question of his innocence. This is the first example of proper litigation in the trilogy and illuminates the change from emotional retaliation to civilized decisions regarding alleged crimes.[19] Instead of allowing the Furies to torture Orestes, she decided that she would have both the Furies and Orestes plead their case before she decided on the verdict. In addition, Athena set up how the verdict would be decided. By creating this blueprint, the future of revenge-killings and the merciless hunting of the Furies would be eliminated from Greece. The trial sets the foundation for future litigation.[13] Aeschylus, through his jury trial, was able to create and maintain a social commentary about the limitations of revenge crimes and reiterate the importance of trials.[20] The Oresteia, as a whole, stands as a representation of the evolution of justice in Ancient Greece.[21]

Revenge

Revenge is a principal motivator for most characters in Oresteia. The theme starts in Agamemnon with Clytemnestra, who murders her husband, Agamemnon, in order to obtain vengeance for his sacrificing of their daughter, Iphigenia. The death of Cassandra, the princess of Troy, taken captive by Agamemnon in order to fill a place as a concubine, can also be seen as an act of revenge for taking another woman as well as the life of Iphigenia.[22] Later on, in The Libation Bearers, Orestes and Electra (siblings and remaining children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) succeed in killing their mother to avenge their father's death.[23] In The Eumenides, the Furies—goddesses of vengeance—seek to take revenge on Orestes for the murder of his mother. It is also discovered that the god Apollo played a part in the act of vengeance toward Clytemnestra through Orestes. The cycle of revenge is seen to be broken when Orestes is not killed by the Furies, but is instead given his freedom and deemed innocent by the goddess Athena.[24][25]

Mother-right and father-right

To the anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (Das Mutterrecht, 1861), the Oresteia shows Ancient Greece's transition from "hetaerism" (polyamory) to monogamy; and from "mother-right" (matriarchal lineage) to "father-right" (patriarchal lineage). According to Bachofen, religious laws changed in this period: the Apollo and Athena of The Eumenides present the patriarchal view. The Furies contrast what they call "gods of new descent" with the view that matricide is more serious than the killing of men. With Athena acquitting Orestes, and the Furies working for the new gods, The Eumenides shows the newfound dominance of father-right over mother-right.[26]

Bachofen's interpretation was influential among Marxists and feminists. Feminist Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex (1949) that the tribunal saw Orestes as son of Agamemnon before being son of Clytemnestra.[27] In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Marxist Friedrich Engels praises Bachofen's "correct interpretation". Nonetheless, he sees it as "pure mysticism" by Bachofen to see the change in divine perspectives as the cause of the change in Greek society.[26] Instead, Engels considers economic factors—the creation of private property—and the "natural sexual behaviour" of men and women. For the feminist Kate Millett, the latter factor is mistaken, and The Eumenides is important in documenting the state's arguments for repression of women.[27]


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