ABSTRACT

An examination of Aeschylus' Oresteia directs our attention to these questions, while making clear the central place intergenerational concerns played in ancient understandings of democracy and suggesting ways in which democratic institutions might begin to address these difficulties. Over the course of the three plays that compose the Oresteia, audience members and readers are invited to consider the need for and difficulties of intergenerational responsibility as the central characters deal with the tension between freedom and claims of necessity, set amidst the backdrop of the development of their own familiar Athenian legal institutions. This chapter introduces the plays and the attendant intergenerational themes. It examines the ways that Aeschylus' trilogy addresses intergenerational justice through a consideration of the ways successive characters deal with the past and either refuse or affirm responsibility for their actions in light of it. Aeschylus calls the audience's attention to the tensions that remain even at the moment in which transgenerational orientation finds institutional accommodation.