The Oresteia and the Poetics of Equity

Abstract

The essay aims to articulate how Aeschylus’s tragic trilogy The Oresteia articulates what I call a ‘poetics of equity’. After placing the genesis of this article within a theological debate between David Bentley Hart and Rowan Williams on the viability of a Christian appropriation of tragedy, I aim to show - using the suggestive work of J. Peter Euben (amongst others)– that The Oresteia dramatizes a growth in perspective and linguistic capaciousness which confirms Williams’s general picture of ancient tragedy. The progress of the trilogy, from the Agamemnon to The Eumenides, can be shown to represent ever-deepening awareness of mutual claims of justice and recognition, and moreover that its linguistic indeterminacy manifests the breadth and instability of the lexicon of justice (dikē), and how this plays itself out within the Aeschylean narrative.