Sunday, August 2, 2015

How does justice work in the Greek tragedy Agamemnon by Aescylus?

The most obvious way in which justice is represented in
Agamemnon is in the victory of Agamemnon's armies over
Ilion.



I set to
mark
When shall stream up the glow of signal-flame,
The bale-fire bright, and
tell its Trojan tale-
Troy town is
ta'en:



It was Paris of Troy who took
Helen of Sparta from her husband Menelaus, a Greek along with Agamemnon and Achilles. Paris took
her because they had been promised to each other by the goddess Aphrodite as a reward for his
praise of Aphrodite's beauty. It can therefore be argued that justice was served when the Danaans
(Greeks) won the ten-year Trojan War and Helen was returned to her husband Menelaus and their
daughter Hermione.


The concept of justice in
Agamemnon is a dubious one by our standards for each act of justice involves
personal revenge, violence, and death as when Clytemnestra exacts justice by slaying Agamemnon.
Clytemnestra seeks justice for Agamemnon's intentional sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia to
appease the goddess Artemis, whom he insulted. At the end of the tragedy, Clytemnestra cries out
to the gods who spoke in the oracle governing "O'er all the race of [Agamemnon] Pleisthenes,"
saying, "I pray thee let thine anger cease!" She claims that by her deed of murder a curse is
lifted:



The bloody lust
and murderous,
The inborn frenzy of our house,
Is ended, by my
deed!



Clytemnestra clearly believes
her acts of murder are the administration of justice because, as the Chorus
says:



The children of
the curse abide within
These halls of high estate--
And none [could] wrench
from off the home of sin
The clinging grasp of
fate.


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