Justice In The Oresteia

In Greco-Roman times, justice was seen as an action that could only be achieved using revenge. Today, though justice can be achieved in the same way, it is most commonly achieved by the use of laws or with the aid of the legal system. This is due to the fact that today, in order to ensure fairness between all people, there must be an established baseline that can be used to judge actions, that all people agree upon. This baseline is the laws, and the judgement is done by the jury, by using people to make the best decisions in accordance to what they feel is just. But the question that remains is what is justice, and how can it be portrayed between humans? Justice between humans is something that is quite difficult to pin down, due to the fact

She exclaims, “Praise me, blame me as you choose. Its all one. Here is Agamemnon, my husband made a corpse by this right hand - a masterpiece of Justice. Done is done” (Aeschylus 162). In this example, it seems almost as if justice essentially took over Clytaemnestra’s body in order to fulfill this deed. In making the contradiction by saying that it was her right hand that killed justice, yet the entirety of of this action was taken due to justice, it alludes to the point that justice matters more than anything else, and is a stronger force than initially thought of. Moreover, the conclusion can be made that in the Greco-Roman period, justice was a higher force that came from divinity. Additionally, even though people could not claim they had true justice, they were able to enact justice in ways that they deemed fit. Still, at that time, people had varying views on justice itself. Some believed that it was meant to be an equalizer, literally meaning an eye for an eye. This is likely how Clytaemnestra saw it. Due to the fact that Agamemnon killed their daughter, she was required to kill Agamemnon because in her mind it was the right course of action to take. Therefore, it can confidently be said that justice was turned into acts of revenge, based on the people’s personal connections and gain to whoever they enact justice