In the original concept, revenge was justice. With the creation of the city-state, the tradition of revenge came to an end. With the court, the plaintiff and the defendant went to court, asserted their claims, presented evidence, refuted arguments, weighed right and wrong, and made a judgment. Thus the cycle of revenge was broken, and the chain of revenge was cut by a neutral third party (the court) with no interest, and no one would avenge Orestes. The revenge represented by the goddess of vengeance and the primitive justice from ancient times evolved into the realization of justice through judicature, and revenge eventually led to judicial justice. People began to establish a sense of personal responsibility, and the primitive system of revenge was disintegrated, and the earliest courts came into being. The court of the Orestes trial might be regarded as the first formal judicial institution in the classical world. This marked the beginning of an era of public relief.
2 thoughts on “What kind of commentary on justice does the trilogy (especially the third play?) contain?”
Comments are closed.
In this work, they choose twelve people to make judgements, and when it is the situation that six people agree and the other six disagree, they gave the last decisive vote to the god Athena. I think it is not fair, because Athena was not chosen by the public. Even though it is the start of an era of public relief, it still needs improvement.
I think the actual commentary that is built around the justice in this trilogy is not limited to the seeking of revenge as justice or the introduction of court trials to diminish self-help justice that was being participated. It has more in-depth metamorphic meaning to the entire evolution of primitive Greek society which was governed by instincts and vigilance to a modern democratic society governed by collective judgements of people so that the society could sense the real meaning of justice. I believe, justice was used just as a tool to explain the passage of the transmission of an ancient society to a modern one.