In Sophocles's Oedipus the King and Antigone, the state is the perpetuator of abuse, and the mortals in power are punished by the gods. However, in Aeschylus's Oresteia, individuals err, and the state, in the form of a court established by the gods, brings about justice.
In Oedipus the King, Oedipus and his queen, Jocasta, do not believe that Oedipus is guilty of killing his father and marrying his mother, though the gods decreed...
In Sophocles's Oedipus the King and Antigone, the state is the perpetuator of abuse, and the mortals in power are punished by the gods. However, in Aeschylus's Oresteia, individuals err, and the state, in the form of a court established by the gods, brings about justice.
In Oedipus the King, Oedipus and his queen, Jocasta, do not believe that Oedipus is guilty of killing his father and marrying his mother, though the gods decreed that this would be Oedipus's fate. In the end, the gods' prophecy comes true, and the gods are the arbiters of fate for the flawed mortals who rule the state. In Antigone, the King, Creon, prohibits Antigone from burying her brother, Polynices. When Antigone does so anyway, Creon sentences Antigone to death and angers the gods in doing so. As a result, Antigone kills herself, as do Creon's son and wife. In this work, the gods are again the arbiters of what is right for the erring mortals who run the government.
However, in the Oresteia, the gods establish a court to deliver justice. Apollo and Athena help to bring Orestes to trial after he kills his mother Clytemnestra (who murdered his father, Agamemnon). In establishing the court, Athena and Apollo rescue Orestes from goddesses known as the furies, who mete out justice. Therefore, truth and justice lie in the hands of this civil institution, which has divine inspiration but is also an instrument of the state. Justice and truth become an earthly rather than a totally divine matter in the Oresteia.
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