Justice In The Oresteia

Many people today and in the past are familiar with the term “guilty or innocent”. This common idea of justice is what many feel needs to be followed if someone is to commit a crime. The play, The Oresteia by Aeschylus, contains question in this idea by featuring a character named Clytemnestra who does something controversial and receives a questionable or unquestionable punishment depending on one’s opinion. Clytemnestra puts forth many controversial actions throughout the story, mainly in the first part of the play, “Agamemnon”. The case that builds against Clytemnestra’s innocence is the killings of Agamemnon and Cassandra with her expression about the killings. It is easy to understand why Clytemnestra would act in such a way and express …show more content…
The prophet Calchas tells Agamemnon that the sacrifice of a virgin will send the wind needed to allow Agamemnon’s troops to get to battle. Agamemnon chose to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia who does not realize her fate until it is too late. Even with the attempt to escape this, she is still returned to Calchas for sacrifice. This leaves ten years of war for Clytemnestra to plan her revenge against Agamemnon. Upon his return, however, she gives him some love. This love quickly transitions to rage and hate after she witnesses her husband with his mistress Cassandra. Clytemnestra now has new victim after already finishing the plans for revenge on Agamemnon. Now her plan is to kill both Cassandra and Agamemnon and she does it in a very brutal way. Similar to the time of his return home, Clytemnestra acts as if she is happy and in love with Agamemnon by running a bath for him and catering to him like a loving wife. This deceitful wife takes an axe while her husband is relaxing and strikes him with three blows killing him painfully. At the same time of Agamemnon’s killing, Clytemnestra calls in Cassandra and uses the same axe to kill …show more content…
However, this rule has exceptions because Agamemnon’s murder was a sacrifice asked for by the gods. Although it is considered a murder, it is a different kind of murder because Clytemnestra had reasoning of revenge behind it and planned the killing of Agamemnon and Cassandra. Clytemnestra only has two defenses in this situation and both of them are invalid. The reasoning of blood vengeance, saying that it is okay to kill someone in your bloodline, doesn't work in this case for Clytemnestra like it does for Agamemnon because Agamemnon is the husband of Clytemnestra so there is no true bloodline, while Iphigenia is the blood-related daughter of Agamemnon. Her second invalid defense is that she did it out of blindness by rage and hatred towards Cassandra and Agamemnon. This proves to be invalid because regardless of rage or hatred, she called Cassandra in to kill her showing the audience that she thought about killing before she did it. Her murder was pre-meditated and, therefore, she cannot use the excuse of rage or hatred. The murder of Agamemnon was a well thought out and developed plan. Clytemnestra took her time, ten years to be exact, thinking about killing him. This reason stands its ground well to prove that Clytemnestra is indeed guilty. In the play, Clytemnestra