Justice in Herodotus and Aeschylus

Orestes, the Furies, Croesus, and Cyrus - What do all these disparate characters have in common? The answer is that divine justice decides the course that their lives will take. Divine justice plays a large role in both of the works that these characters are from - the Oresteia of Aeschylus and The Histories of Herodotus. However, the two works differ on what exactly constitutes divine justice, and how divine justice operates. Aeschylus would argue …

…punish rich and powerful who presume themselves to be happy. The downfall of Croesus, whose only sin was to presume himself to be happy illustrates this. Aeschylus, on the other hand, sees divine justice as something that needs to be changed and updated as necessary. When the old system of justice based on blood vengeance become inadequate, it is replaced by a new system where reason prevails over bloodlust, and public justice replaces private murder.