Some personal information about Sophocles?

Sophocles Electra, how are'dike'and associated values presented and translated

• Sophocles Electra Lines 525 - 550 and 1490 - 1510 I need to analyse how 'dike' and associated values are presented and translated and consider how the values presented are contextualized, and what broader issues are raised. I need this information by Mon 16th June at the very latest

• Answer:

  The Greek term "dike" is defined at root as "custom, usage", as in "it is the custom to behave in this manner." By the time of Homer, the term had evolved to mean "according to law" or more simply, "Justice," and it is this Homeric meaning that is translated in the "Electra" (not only in the Chicago translation, but in all standard translations). (See definition at Perseus, g.v. below. "dike [i^], he, custom, usage, haute d. esti broton this is the way of mortals, [...] IV. after Hom., of proceedings instituted to determine legal rights, hence, 1. lawsuit [...] 2. trial of the case [...] 3. the object or consequence of the action, atonement, satisfaction, penalty." This implies a process, not merely an action arising from arbitrary personal judgment.) All the characters in the play agree that the Greek concept of "Justice" involves adherence to customary practices and behaviors, to the uncodified "Natural Law". Everyone agrees that murder is punishable by the execution of the murderer, that children should honor their parents, that the gods show their approval or disapproval of human conduct through the favor that they grant or withhold. The conflict arises from the differing interpretations that the opposing characters place upon those concepts and beliefs. Clytemnestra claims that she has acted in accordance with this natural form of justice. She says that the killing of her husband Agamemnon was the just requital for Agamemnon's sacrificial killing of their daughter Iphigeneia, Electra's sister, prior to the sailing of the Greek fleet to Troy. " Your father, yes, always your father. Nothing else is your pretext -- the death he got from me. From me. I know it, well. There is no denial in me. Justice, Justice it was that took him, not I alone. You would have served the cause of Justice if you had been right-minded. For this your father whom you always mourn, [530] alone of all the Greeks, had the brutality to sacrifice your sister to the Gods, although he had not toiled for her as I did, the mother that bore her, he the begetter only." This requital is the ancient custom, and it has earned the approbation of the community at large, who have acquiesced in it through the generations. "I am not dismayed by all that has happened. If you think me wicked, keep your righteous judgment [550] and blame your neighbors." (The Chorus and Chrysothemis constantly recur to the idea that submission to the powerful is wisdom.) She claims, also, that Electra, if she were right-thinking (see above), would share this interpretation, that it is, in brief, her filial duty to respect her mother's judgment and to accept the killing of Agamemnon as just and necessary. Electra counters that her mother is using the law of just requital as a pretext for her own motives of lust and the hunger for power, that Agamemnon was killed not because he had sacrificed Iphigeneia, but because of Clytemnestra's adulterous affair with Aegisthus, who plotted to usurp the throne of Agamemnon in Mycenae. Electra points out that Agamemnon was acting at the express command of Artemis (561 ff.), whom he had offended, when he sacrificed Iphigeneia, and that he had no choice but to obey if he were to expiate his crime (taking a stag from her sacred preserve): the Greek army could neither have returned home nor launched for Troy without the approval of the goddess. Agamemnon had resisted the harsh penalty, but in the end had obeyed, as was only just and proper he should, the will of the deity. This is the crucial difference between Clytemnestra's and Electra's interpretation of the natural law. For Electra, the just basis and power of the law is the divine will, and only by following the express will of the gods can a law or custom be rendered just and good: the will of the gods is the spirit of the law. (Clytemnestra is basically advocating the "law of the jungle" says Electra. "If this is the law you lay down for men, take heed [580]/ you do not lay down for yourself ruin and repentance./If we shall kill one in another's requital,/ you would be the first to die, if you met with justice.") Clytemnestra, however, had no such divine sanction for her actions. Indeed, Electra has given one instance of the impiousness of Clytemnestra's actions when she notes that the queen insituted a celebration to be held monthly on the very day of Agamemnon's murder to thank "the gods that had saved her." (280-281) It is true filial piety for Electra to mourn her father and to resist his unsanctioned murderers. The audience have already seen that Electra's interpretation is the correct one. Orestes, the instrumentality of the divine will of Justice, has returned secretly to Mycenae to exact the punishment decreed by Apollo. Orestes has been given the god's explicit instructions through the oracular Pythonesss of Delphi: he is to act from concealment and to avenge the murder of his father. "When I came to Pytho's place of prophecy [33] to learn to win revenge for my father's murder on those that did that murder, Phoebus spoke to me the words I tell you now: 'Take not spear nor shield nor host; go yourself, and craft of hand be yours to kill, with justice but with stealth.'" (This is interesting, too, as it implies a proportionate punishment. The god commands that Orestes punish only those who had committed the crime, not the entire city. He must not take an army, "host," and fight a war, in contrast to the Trojan campaign, perhaps, but must go himself in person to act with discrimination.) Orestes shows that he is acting with true filial piety at this point when he postpones putting the plan immediately into effect so that he can visit the grave of his father and make offerings to the dead. His ruse, the false report of his own death, causes Clytemnestra to lower her guard and to admit the party of executioners. This comes immediately after she has impiously prayed to Apollo for his approval of her past actions and the continuance of her present state of good fortune. The arrival of the Paedagogus with the false news is, in effect, further evidence of the god's participation in the working out of the plan, as the juxtaposition of prayer and its seeming fulfillment misleads Clytemnestra to believe that the god is on her side. She is shortly to be proven wrong. Orestes concludes the executions by telling Aegisthus that those who act above the law shall be killed. By this, he is clearly saying that Aegisthus not only usurped the throne, he usurped the divine authority of the law by acting without the sanction of the divinely inspired natural law. It is only by swift punishment that deterrence of crime is to be achieved. "...Justice shall be taken [1507] directly on all who act above the law-- justice by killing. So we would have less villains." BASIC REFERENCE Peresus Project Texts Sophocles, Electra (ed. Sir Richard Jebb) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Aabo%3Atlg%2C0011%2C005&query=1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0188&layout=&loc=550 Greek-English Dictionary at the Perseus Project Liddel, Scott, Jones Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?layout.reflookup=di%2Fkhs&layout.refembed=2&doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2326943&layout.refcit=line%3D521&layout.refabo=Perseus%3Aabo%3Atlg%2C0011%2C005&layout.reflang=greek&layout.refwordcount=1&layout.refdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0187 SEARCH TERMS ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Perseus+Project+Sophocles+Electra hlabadie-ga