The Spirit Of Justice In David's Tales From Ovid

In parallel to the argument between the Just and Unjust speeches, ‘new’ triumphs over ‘old’ once again in the fight between Strepsiades and Pheidippides. Pheidippides declares to his father, “I will make it clearly apparent, by Zeus, that I was beating you with justice (Clouds, 1332). Throughout their argument, Pheidippides was applying the same techniques to his speech that the Unjust speech utilized. Their apparently cynical disrespect for social mores emphasizes the fact that what is ‘old’ is losing its strength within society. What is right is in palpable contrast to what is currently occurring in the social order. Strepsiades broached the suggestion that as a father he has nurtured Pheidippides from infancy to his adulthood. Because of this, Strepsiades insists that he has earned his son’s respect. However, Pheidippides is convinced

The pursuit of justice is an endeavor that many find to be challenging and a quest itself, as one will come across various trials and complications that may stop them in their pursuit or may mislead them. As humans, we find moral correctness and righteousness a very appealing state to be in, as justice will act as a platform to satisfy the desire for this correctness. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, we meet our miserable anti-hero, Oedipus, in his pursuit for truth and righting the wrong of the plague that is affecting his people of Thebes. As he makes efforts to solve this problem, he comes to find out that he is the source of the issue, thus exposing the tragic flaw of Oedipus and effectively making this play a very effective Greek tragedy. This pursuit of righteousness ends up being the downfall of Oedipus. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Oedipus pursues justice through his realization of his past, his interactions with various characters in the play, and comes to understand more of justice in his situation through his reactions to adversity in this play, in order to portray a questionably successful pursuit of justice.

Have you ever acted out in retribution for something done to you? Some examples could be if you punched someone for intentionally kicking you, or if someone deliberately hurt the feelings of someone you love and you retaliated in kind. You probably thought the punishment you received for your actions was too harsh or lenient. Many factors went into the decision of what discipline you received for this act and some were fair while others probably were not. This is true for the actions of many people in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. In each of the three plays, someone is seeking vengeance for a wrong done unto them, someone they know/love, or both. For this paper, I will be focusing on the vengeance enacted by Clytemnestra, Orestes, and the Fates. The vengeance that each person enacted was deemed just or unjust depending on many factors including the people who were doing the judging. Vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is viewed through the social lens of the society that it was enacted in. This lens is made up of the popular values, beliefs, and social conventions of the period as well as the judge’s personal views and/or experiences. These factors (such as gender and relation to the victim, as well as the presence or absence of transgressions on the characters part) lead to different opinions about the guilt of the accused individual and the individual themselves. The view of vengeance in Aeschylus’s Oresteia is very subjective.

Justice is a very important ruling power for both gods and mortals. For instance, in Sophocles' tragedy, Antigone,

Many authors have employed the religious beliefs of their cultures in literature. The deities contained in Homer’s Odyssey and in the Biblical book of Exodus reflect the nature of the gods in their respective societies. Upon examination of these two works, there are three major areas where the gods of the Greek epic seem to directly contrast the nature of the God of the Israelites: the way problems are solved, the prestige and status that separates the divine from the masses, and the extent of power among the immortal beings.

Retribution is a monster of appetite, eternally bloodthirsty and never filled. Rage, resentment and envy does not change the heart of others. A massive success is the best revenge for a woman. It is the only way to get back at someone for a pain they have caused. In Euripides’ Medea and Ovid’s’ Metamorphoses, Medea and Juno exhibit vengeance to defend their dignity.

“Gods can be evil sometimes.” In the play “Oedipus the King”, Sophocles defamed the gods’ reputation, and lowered their status by making them look harmful and evil. It is known that all gods should be perfect and infallible, and should represent justice and equity, but with Oedipus, the gods decided to destroy him and his family for no reason. It might be hard to believe that gods can have humanistic traits, but in fact they do. The gods, especially Apollo, are considered evil by the reader because they destroyed an innocent man’s life and his family. They destroyed Oedipus by controlling his fate, granting people the power of prophecy, telling Oedipus about his fate through the oracle of Apollo, and finally afflicting the people of

The concept of fate and the influence of gods on mortals’ lives are prominent aspects of Greek mythology. While the gods of Olympus are commonly presented as the primary manipulators of human lives, the Fates are the true creators of destiny. Gods may be able to affect human lives in monumental ways, but predetermined destiny and the Fates’ intentions ultimately reign. The gods have respect for this authority, as well, as they’re aware that a limit on their ability to intervene is necessary to maintain the order of the universe. This leaves one to question the amount of knowledge that the gods themselves have of fate, and whether they have their own free will to refrain from intervening or if they truly must submit to the authority of the Fates and their plans. The gods do have some knowledge of the Fates’ plan, but they are also wise enough to avoid too much interference and therefore don’t necessarily need to be commanded; they sometimes help guide mortals by sending them messages and symbols—and sometimes even influencing them for their own advantage—but ultimate fate cannot be avoided.

When Teiresias asks in Antigone (line 1051), "What prize outweighs the priceless worth of prudence?" he strikes (as usual) to the heart of the matter in Sophocles' Theban Plays. Sophocles dramatizes the struggle between fate and free will, in one sense, but in another sense the drama might be better understood as the struggle between the will of the goods (which it is prudent to follow, according to Teiresias) and man's will (which is often imprudent). Sophocles' characters are moved by their own wills, of course (either in accordance or in conflict with the will of the gods). Oedipus in Oedipus the King is determined to pursue the truth in spite of the objections of Jocasta, the priest, and his own misgivings. In Oedipus at Colonus, Theseus "cannot rest" (line 1773) until he has served both Antigone and the late Oedipus (implying that conscience is his motivator awareness, in other words, of his duty towards them). In Antigone, Antigone acts in accordance to the will of the gods (but in disobedience to the will of Creon) and does so knowing the punishment that awaits her: "Go I, his prisoner, because I honored those things to which honor truly belongs" (lines 178-9). This paper will show how while fate is a powerful force in The Theban Plays, the characters themselves are still left to exercise their own free will (either with respect or disrespect to will of the gods). Thus, the main drama consists not in the

Two famous myths from the ancient world, “Pandora’s Box” and “Loo Wit, The Firekeeper,” describe human suffering in their own way. The theme of “Pandora’s Box” is acting out of revenge will only lead to suffering. The all-mighty god, Zeus, cultivated a plan out of revenge for what Prometheus had done (shown fire to the humans), “Zeus extended his displeasure… It was a scheme which would [affect]... the whole race of human beings…” (Untermeyer 1).

The concept of justice is manifested through the three plays of Aeschylus' Oresteia. The old tradition of justice, the private blood feud, caused an ungoverned succession of violent acts that spiralled uncontrollably. Aegisthus, Clytemnestra's lover, is introduced in Agamemnon; he desires vengeance for the plot contrived by Agamemnon's father (Ag: 1605-1611).1 Neither Agamemnon nor Aegisthus took part in this "plot" and yet as the chorus explains (Ag: 755-6)

In Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and William Shakespeare’s King Lear it is evident that the punishment of innocent individuals by evildoers catalyzes violence thus, culminating in the disruption of society.

* Aegisthus says as much in his speech on page 302, “It feasts my eyes-/he pays for the plot his father’s hand contrived.” Although Aegisthus claims he is the “weaver of Justice” and “plotted out the kill,” we FIRST-PERSON LANGUAGE!! The syllabus says the Test fails here. are told by the Chorus that “[Zeus] lays it down as law that we must suffer, suffer into truth.” According to them, Justice is not meted out by man’s will alone, but as a cog in the machine of the gods; a means to a divine end. *

The Oresteia is a book of plays written by Aeschylus that centers around the myth of the polis. In each story, the theme of the polis is different. They each want to get revenge or avenge someone that did wrong to someone that they love or loved. The in this story the polis poses questions as what is the nature of justice and what are the methods of establishing and maintaining justice on earth. This story uses the legend of the family Atreus and how he took revenge on his brother, Thyestes, for seducing his wife. Atreus killed two of Thyestes sons and fed them to him to avenge the seducing of his wife. This started the chain of events that led to the family thinking that an eye for an eye is the only way to settle things. It first started off with Agamemnon’s father Atreus and his brother Thyestes who is the father of Aegisthus. During those times, they were contended for the throne of Argos, but during this time Thyestes seduced his brother’s wife and was driven out of Argos. When he came back Atreus had established himself as the sole king. Thyestes begged his brother for forgiveness and Atreus pretended to forgive him. Atreus was still upset that his brother seduced his wife and was plotted to avenge that so he killed Thyestes two younger sons, cooked them, and served them to Thyestes to eat. When Thyestes found out he was disgusted and horrified so he took only son that he had left and fled from Argos. This is what started the polis in this story of The Oresteia. To

Is justice, despite of its rewards and penalties, a virtuous thing in and of itself? Moreover, how do we, or how should we, define justice? Throughout time we have been given different interpretations of what is justice. One of the world’s greatest philosopher, Plato, for example, considers justice, in individuality, to be a ‘human virtue’ that makes an individual good; in the other hand, socially, justice is a social perception that makes a society amicable. In, “The Book of the City of Ladies”, by, Christine de Pizan, a French feminist and pioneer in women’s rights during medieval times, and in “The Tempest”, by, the famous English playwright and poet, William Shakespeare, the concept of justice is put at play. Simply put, in this context at least, justice, is the preservation of doing what is just in one’s judgement due to someone’s actions inflicted upon us or vice versa. That being said, this paper’s thesis is: both authors illustrate the same, yet different ideals of what justice is, for instance, both stories contain a character that acts like a God who chooses the right reward or punishment to an individual and they both present the idea that no one escapes justice, however, unlike “The Tempest”, in “The Book of the City of Ladies”, Christine favors God himself as the ultimate judge of justice, and it also has a more justifiable and less harsher view over what justice is, finally, as its main focus, it also talks about gender equality.