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Erik Buckalew
Professor Zeccardi
Greek Seminar
2 Nov 2010
Revenge as Injustice in The Oresteia
People debate over what constitutes justice, which is often very ambiguous and personal.
Some people in the world believe that revenge, or punishing someone who commits a crime by
repeating that crime against him or her, is justice. However, there are those, such as Aeschylus,
who believe that revenge is unjust. His play, “The Oresteia”, features a cycle of revenge within
Agamemmnon’s family. Through this cycle, Aeschylus shows that revenge is unjust because
revenge punishes everyone involved, forces people to act unjust, and causes people to ignore the
motivations and circumstances of those who kill someone.
The first reason why revenge is unjust is because everyone who takes revenge in the
name of justice is punished by someone else seeking revenge, and thus no one walks away
unpunished. This suggests that no one is justified, but instead revenge just leads to bloodshed
and death. This bloodshed is present in the cycle of revenge in Agamemnon’s family.
Clytemnestra and Aegisthus begin this cycle by killing Agamemnon in order to avenge someone
important to them in the name of justice. For Clytemnestra, it is her daughter, Iphigeneia, who is
sacrificed by Agamemnon to stop a storm that impedes the path to war. For Aegisthus, it is his
brothers and sisters, who are killed by Agamemnon’s father, Atreus. Clytemnestra believes that
she acts in the name of justice by saying that she killed Agamemnon with her right hand, “a
masterpiece of justice” (“Agamemnon” 162). She then admits that revenge drove her right hand
to kill Agamemmnon by saying that the “savage ancient spirit of revenge” lives within her
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(“Agamemnon” 165). This suggests that Clytemnestra associates revenge with justice when
killing Agamemnon. Aegisthus also expresses a similar ideal when, after he kills Agamemnon,
he says that he is the “weaver of Justice” and declares “what a brilliant day for vengeance!”
(“Agamemnon” 168, 169). By associating a day of vengeance with the action of weaving justice,
Aegisthus shows that he believes justice is revenge. Both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus associate
justice with revenge and yet they are killed by Agamemnon’s son Orestes, who also believes the
same idea.
Orestes shows that he believes justice is revenge when he speaks with Electra and the
Chorus to plan how to take revenge and says that “for parents of revenge revenge be done” (
“The Libation Bearers” 194). Here, he is referring to how he is going to take revenge on his
mother, Clytemnestra, who kills Agamemnon for revenge. Orestes suggests that his revenge is
justice when he finally kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and says that “[he] pursued this bloody
death with justice, mother’s death” (“The Libation Bearers” 221). So by killing Clytemnestra for
vengeance and declaring her death in the name of justice, Orestes shows that he correlates
revenge with justice. There can be no justice in Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon for revenge if
she dies from Orestes because of this act. This shows a cyclical nature of revenge, where people
who take revenge inevitably face retribution by someone else who also believes that justice is
revenge. This cycle of revenge suggests that revenge is an injustice because the avenger always
dies as a punishment for revenge. The deaths of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Orestes suggests
that Aeschylus is saying that if someone takes revenge in the name of justice, then he or she is
going to face retribution, which disproves that revenge is actually justice. However, Aeschylus
raises the possibility that a person who takes vengeance, like Orestes with his mother, should not
be punished because of the circumstances and motivations for his revenge.
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The second reason why revenge is unjust is because this belief places people like Orestes
in a situation where they will face retribution for their actions, and thus be unjust, regardless of
whether they take revenge on someone or not. This is shown in the internal conflict of Orestes
when he is about to kill Clytemnestra: she warns him that “the hounds of a mother’s curse will
hunt you down”, and Orestes responds with “but how to escape a father’s if I fail?” (“The
Libation Bearers” 218). This is showing that Orestes is stuck and forced into a predicament
where no matter what he does, he will be punished for it and thus be unjust. The reason why he
would be punished either way is due to the demand for revenge. This curse that is mentioned by
Clytemnestra refers to the Furies, who are spirits of revenge and describe themselves by saying
that “[d]eep in the halls of Earth they call us Curses” (“The Eumenides” 249). This suggests that
these curses come from the belief that revenge equals justice, and this forces people like Orestes
into situations where he will be unjust regardless of if he kills his mother or not. If Orestes kills
Clytemnestra to avenge Agamemnon, then her Furies will pursue Orestes and punish him to
avenge her death. If Orestes does not kill her, then Agamemnon’s desire to take revenge on her
will not be fulfilled, and his spirits will haunt Orestes to punish him for not fulfilling this desire.
This predicament of Orestes shows Aeschylus’ point that believing that justice is revenge is
wrong because a justice that forces people to do unjust actions cannot be true. Oftentimes, the
perception of revenge as the only method of justice and punishment can cloud the judgment and
clarity people have on an issue, where they do not take into account how someone’s revenge is
forced.
The third reason why revenge is unjust is because people who take revenge are so caught
up in vengeance that they ignore the circumstances around the murders that they are avenging.
For example, when the Furies are speaking to the goddess Athena about Orestes’ killing of
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Clytemnestra, Athena asks “[a]nd nothing forced [Orestes] on, no fear of someone’s anger?”
(“The Eumenides” 250). Here, Athena is bringing up the possibility that Orestes may have been
coerced into revenge for fear of retribution and to protect himself, which would mean that
Orestes should not be punished because he is not responsible for Clytemnestra’s death. While
Orestes physically is the one who kills Clytemnestra, he does it out of self-preservation that
arises because of the inevitable punishment from Agamemnon’s spirits if he does not kill her.
However, the Furies who are committed to avenging Clytemnestra’s death because they believe
that matricide is unjust reply with doubt by asking “[w]hat spur could force a man to kill his
mother?” (“The Eumenides” 250). The Furies do not appear to think about the circumstance by
which Orestes killed his own mother because they are so preoccupied with taking revenge on
those who commit matricide. They only look at someone who physically does the killing, rather
than at who forces the person to kill in the first place. Athena’s reply to the Furies show that the
price of obsessing on the act of killing, rather than the motivations behind it, is the risk of
injustice.
Athena responds to the Furies by pointing out how she cannot make a judgment about
Orestes because “[t]wo sides are here and only half is heard” (“The Eumenides” 250). She is
pointing out that people cannot make a judgment on whether someone’s actions are just or not
unless they hear from both sides of the argument. From this, it can be concluded that if the belief
that revenge is justice causes people to ignore the circumstances behind the killing that they are
avenging, they would go after the one who does the crime, and not those who force that person to
commit the crime. Logically, Orestes is justified in killing Clytemnestra because he does it out of
self-preservation, and thus it would be unjust for the Furies to punish him for following the
natural instinct of protecting his own life. Instead, the Furies should pursue Agamemnon’s spirits
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that threatened Orestes and forced him to kill Clytemnestra in order to protect himself. In this
dialogue between Athena and the Furies, Aeschylus is suggesting that believing solely in revenge
and retribution for a certain crime, such as matricide, causes a lack of perspective on the situation
as a whole, such as from the Furies’ point of view. Thus, revenge would be taken on someone
like Orestes, who should not be punished, when revenge should be taken on Agamemnon’s
spirits, who cause Clytemnestra’s death.
In “The Oresteia”, Aeschylus uses the cycle of revenge between Clytemnestra, Aegisthus,
Orestes, and the Furies to show that revenge is unjust. The cyclical nature of revenge, which
punishes everyone who uses revenge to justify murder, suggests Aeschylus’s first reason that
revenge is unjust is because of this cycle in which no one is unpunished. Aeschylus uses Orestes’
unique predicament, in which he suffers from either his father’s or his mother’s spirits depending
on how he decides to handle his mother Clytemnestra, to show that revenge is unjust because it
makes people commit an unjust act, which warrants punishment, regardless of what they choose
to do. Lastly, the conversation between Athena, who tries to figure out what to do about Orestes’
killing of Clytemnestra, and the Furies show that people can become so concerned with taking
revenge in the name of justice that they do not consider if a person commits a murder because he
or she is forced by others to do so out of self-preservation. This means that a person who
believes that justice is revenge may take vengeance on the wrong person, the one who kills,
rather than the one who causes the killing to happen. Aeschylus believes that not considering the
motivations and justification of murders, like how Orestes is forced to murder Clytemnestra
because of a fear of retribution, causes people to take revenge on someone unjustly who is not
entirely responsible for his or her act of murder. Throughout “The Oresteia”, Aeschylus suggests
that revenge is unjust and that people in the world should keep this possibility in mind and not
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accept revenge as the only option for justice. Instead, people need to examine all the possibilities
and circumstances of a certain crime before they can prosecute and determine what punishment,
if any, is just. Hopefully, people can take this lesson to heart and not murder others in revenge,
which will reduce bloodshed and death in society.
Works Cited
Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. Print.