Values are actions that society universally qualifies as good; therefore, the wider community sets them as their goals in life. The play revolves around Atreus’s house in which it seemed there was a revenge cycle. Haunting in the Atreus house by ancient crimes began with the patriarch, Pelops. Atreus invited Thyestes for a banquet and feed him on his own son’s flesh. Thyestes flees with his infant son Aegisthus whom he brought up with the sole purpose to avenge atrocities meted on his siblings and disgraced father. Aegisthus avenges, not against Atreus but the son Agamemnon who had initially killed his own daughter Iphigenia. The killing of Iphigenia made Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra much agitated. Aegisthus capitalized on this to connive with Clytemnestra to kill her husband Agamemnon on his return from Troy. Orestes, Agamemnon’s son pursues his killers and kills Aegisthus and his concubine Clytemnestra who was also his mother.
The play revolves around the concept of justice: justice as revenge thus putting personal responsibility of revenge on the insulted. Aeschylus in the Oresteia depicts a progression from the ancient crimes to a state of justice by use of darkness to light, disorder to order. Two conflicts had to be resolved quickly. The cycle of deaths, that hovered around the house of Atreus. The second is the Furies; the older generation of gods who have a contrary mission with the younger Olympian gods because they wanted to avenge the murders in the Atreus family. These conflicts had to be resolved for harmony to prevail.
In the play, progression emphasized in the transition from evil to good is accompanied by the two conflicting images of order and disorder. Periods of darkness emerge vividly in the initial stages of the play as can be seen in Agamemnon, which later progresses to the killings of Thyestes’ sons continued with the Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon and Cassandra. Darkness progresses in the story as illustrated in the book by Clytemnestra when she says that Agamemnon died and left her with the evil spell of vengeance. Clytemnestra is depicted in the book as an evil and malicious wife who murders her husband (Agamemnon). Aeschylus portrays these murders as pure evils, and as long as they continue, Oresteia will remain in darkness. The cycle of murders in the Atreus house depicted as justice went against established values.
There is a conflict of values at the beginning of the second part of the play through Orestes’ act of killing his mother Clytemnestra in revenge for Agamemnon. Aeschylus justifies this murder in that Apollo, who by mere coincidence was the god of light, ordered it. According to Aeschylus, the divine support to Orestes from the god of light is a sign of progress from darkness to goodness and order in Oresteia. Orestes is also a sign of light as shown in the later play The Libation Bearers. In a chorus, Orestes is the snake that Clytemnestra dreamt she gave birth to. Clytemnestra woke up from her nightmare with a lot of fear illustrated by her wailing and shaking. Aeschylus describes Clytemnestra’s house as dark, darkness brought by her murderous act. Torches in Clytemnestra’s dream were a sign of Orestes’ coming to avenge Clytemnestra’s father. Aeschylus views this as Orestes’ restoration of light in Atreus’ house.
Those sympathetic to Orestes looked at him as the light that will bring to an end the evils of Atreus’ house. The chorus of The Libation Bearers and the Electra are the sympathizers to Orestes. To show the support that Orestes got from the chorus which in this case are his father’s subject, they expressed their gratitude to Orestes’ decision the avenge his father’s killer when they said strength came with hope lifted, taken away their sorrows, and brighten their life. The chorus proclamation that light was on them clearly demonstrated that Orestes is the one who brought illumination. Electra also affirms that Orestes is the one who will deliver them from this evil situation when she says he redeemed her life. Orestes’ involvement brightens the gloomy state of Electra’s mind together with the darkness of Atreus’s house.
The murder of Clytemnestra and the Aegisthus by Orestes ushers in resolution of the conflicts, which had engulfed the mortal house of Atreus. Orestes had fulfilled the oracle forced on him by Apollo. In the drama, to show their joy, the chorus proclaims the mistreatment they underwent had been taken away. Orestes’ illumination into the house of Atreus had overcome evil darkness. The conflict between Olympic and chthonic gods sees Aeschylus’ manifestation of the imagery of light and darkness. Athene and Apollo, who was a domain for justice and reason and a god of light respectively, represented the Olympic gods. Furies, black-clad chthonic gods, whose areas of specialization were bloody revenge and darkness. In Eumenides, Pythias describes the Furies as repulsive and black. The difference in the two gods is another progression according to Aeschylus, from darkness to light in Oresteia.
The Furies never felt Orestes deserved justice not considering the pressure he had from Apollo to kill his mother Clytemnestra. When their anger subsided with time they accepted Athene’s arbitration, who in return offered them honor and land in Athens. Their acceptance of this honor and landmarked their equivalence to light, thus embracing the just attitude of the Olympic gods; Apollo and Athene, progressing to a doctrine of reason and justice from the one of bloody vengeance. Their progression is clearly manifested in Eumenides when the Furies proclaim that light has come into Athens which will brighten the citizens’ lives for the generations to come. A sign that the chthonic gods had surrendered. At the end of Eumenides, Furies changed their clothes from black robes to white crimson robes and called themselves the Eumenides or the benevolent ones.
The importance of gender in Aeschylus’ Oresteia look quite explicit, in that there is a series of female-male conflict with evil-mannered women characters such as Clytemnestra dominating which is contrary to normal values of the ancient Greek. Gender conflicts shown in fights between Oikos and Polis, Chthonic and Olympian, young and old, develop out of female-male conflicts. Aeschylus seems to be strongly advocating for male dominance over women but the character of Clytemnestra breaks this tradition. She is full of vengeance and displays more intelligence than any character in Oresteia. It is common practice in ancient Greece for a man to have extra-marital affairs but Clytemnestra is condemned to having an affair with Aegisthus. Aeschylus seems to apply double standards in this case.
In the play, it is hard to judge who was innocent and guilty, Clytemnestra innocence hangs in a balance. The basic idea of justice is that the accused of a crime is either guilty or innocent which is truly lacking in the play. The judgments of Athene in the resolution of conflicts in Oresteia were always ambiguous meant to satisfy everybody. Athene went ahead to approve Apollo’s argument of the superiority of paternity and thereby approves that Orestes was morally right to murder Clytemnestra by saying she does approve the killing. Athene thereby left Orestes to go scot-free on the basis that she cannot give great weight to the death of a woman. In breaking the female tradition, Clytemnestra is seen as a non-conservative while, Electra is portrayed as a conservative of the female’s status quo. Electra has been shown to be one ready to extend the male dominance in this community. The death of Electra’s father and the non-motherly role of Clytemnestra makes Electra desperately look forward to the arrival of her brother Orestes, to become a father figure in her life. This is illustrated when Electra calls Orestes her father and promises to show love to him like the one she showed to her mother.
At the end of the play, there is a wave of justice and order, which swept from the city-state of Athens through Greece. This resulted in unprecedented powers in the hands of the citizen. The citizen had acquired powers to legislate, which came with many problems in that they had to agree upon what was just and unjust. The new legislations enforced brought the unjust to reconcile their guilt through public trial in which the appropriate penalty was dispensed. By the crimes, Aeschylus compares anarchy and despotism, which he both judges to be guilty. He concludes that man can only be absolved of guilt is through justice. Aeschylus established moral values were: in Agamemnon, humanity, and pity; revered blood, in choephori and judicial integrity in Eumenides which some characters in the play willingly or unwillingly showed by destroying the laid down principles (Bloom, p78). For Aeschylus, the conflict between two opposing sides can ultimately result in civilization through the hierarchization of values. There comes a new dawn in the restoration of justice and order in the Oresteia. Thereby Aeschylus places Olympian doctrines over those of chthonic gods, culturally Greek over barbarian, and socially putting men above women (Zeitlin, p87).
Works cited
Bloom, Henry. Aeschylus: comprehensive research and study guide. California: Chelsea house publishers. 2002, p.78.
Zeitlin, Franzen. playing the other: gender and society in classical Greek literature. Chicago: university of Chicago press. 1996, p.87.