Justice is often taken for granted in the world we live in today with a judicial system that gives fair punishment for most crimes. In "The Oresteia" justice works much differently, where there are no judges or a court system to resolve disputes, instead there is revenge. Revenge is very messy because somebody will and has to get hurt first to desire revenge, and it leads to a cycle that cannot and will not end until everybody is dead. Justice does not and cannot only be revenge because in the end nobody would be left in that system. Aeschylus' Oresteia focuses on revenge as justice, with the old system that no longer works and that someone must fix, and a new system that has many advantages.
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The old system, one of revenge, leads to death after death; it also requires someone to kill the murderer and avenge the victim's death. Revenge is often spurred on my loss of a loved one. Clytemnestra is no exception to this rule; she feels that she must avenge the murder of her daughter by killing her husband, Agamemnon. When Agamemnon arrives from conquering Troy, Clytemnestra only wishes that "she will have victory'(pg47) She flatters him and attacks him through his greatest weakness, his pride by treating him and giving him the welcome of a god, "I am to be glorified/ and great me as a man "(pg44).Agamemnon realizes that Clytemnestra is not only treating him very well because he is returning home a victor but also that he is just returning alive. After Clytemnestra kills her husband and shows the blood stained body to the elders, "to bleat about banishment "(pg71).She demands why they did not bring charges against Agamemnon for sacrificing "his daughter, my daughter "(pg71). Clytemnestra also gives her justification for murdering her husband,and for ten long years she thought about how sweet revenge would be when Agamemnon arrived.
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Clytemnestra tells her lover, Aegisthus, "we have more than enough grief"(pg84).