Betrayal sucks. It’s a classic insult/injury combination. Not only does one suffer the injury of whatever form the betrayal itself takes, but the breach of trust has domino effects that damage other relationships which can result in a vicious cycle of distrust and frustration. Take a moment to consider all the annoying security features we are obliged to navigate in our lives because of abuses of trust. Passwords that must be 12 characters long, with UPPER and lower case letters, numbers and 5p€c1al Karak+er5. When it turns out a complex and difficult to remember password isn’t good enough we have two factor authentication and those damn re-captcha things. I have to spend my time clicking blurry photos of bicycles, streetlights and city buses because people like to betray the trust of others. It’s annoying, but also entrenched to such an extent that we may overlook how pervasive a problem it is. This all to say that like an infection, betrayal carries both individual and collective penalties, the burden is borne by all. The more of it we engage in and allow in our communities, the greater the burden we suffer.
So why bother? If something directly harms those who trust you and indirectly harms and potentially destabilizes the entire community, why do it? Traitors, liars, and cheats generally have some clear motivation for personal gain or advantage. After all we live a resource limited existence; when faced with this reality and a biological imperative to survive and reproduce a brain may present its owner with a compelling case for betrayal despite the potential downsides.
Also, there’s the chance you won’t get caught, so the negative impacts may be unquantifiable and fully externalized. Not all traitors are explicitly or effectively punished. The obvious way to root out the behavior is by ostracizing offending parties. Effectively saying, “if you can’t be trusted you cannot be part of the group and you can fend for yourself”. Basically removing the survival advantages groups offer. We do this to varying degrees when the crime is deemed sufficient. In my last essay I briefly mentioned Oedipus’ and Heracles’ expulsions for blood crimes. Every 11th grader learns the story of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter. The Amish and Dwight Shrute shun. The religious community I grew up in excommunicates. The local, state, and national prison systems house our major offenders.
However, it appears the burden of detection and strict enforcement of penalties for betrayal have been deemed ineffective uses of resources, because there’s so much of it around that remains unpunished. We all betray someone somehow at some point, so there might be a bit of self-preservation in our relaxed standards and enforcement. The bottom line is a certain level of betrayal is tacitly accepted in communities. Those who exceed acceptable limits must be using a different calculus than the rest of us. Maybe there’s a threat or need driving desperate acts. Perhaps there’s a measure of sociopathy. The bottom line is that to survive groups need to collectively define betrayal, its harms, acceptable limits, and associated penalties. Storytellers have historically enjoyed an outsized influence in these matters.
Before we dig into Aeschylus and our own lives let’s consider the mechanics of betrayal. Is every lie a betrayal? How is it different from run of the mill deception? Like most terms used to describe human relationships, betrayal is complicated and pinning down its exact definition is a matter of inquiry and debate. A working definition that makes sense to me are actions contrary to the explicit or implicit terms of a mutually acknowledged relationship. Sometimes this is easy to see: let’s imagine a purely hypothetical situation. Say you are an elected official and take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of The United States, and then near the end of your term you spend months attempting to subvert the results of a failed re-election campaign, and these efforts culminate in a rally with armed supporters that leads to an assault on the nation’s capitol that disrupts the US Congress in the course of ratifying the “disputed” election. It is obvious you have betrayed the principles of the republic as laid out in the constitution you took an oath to defend. A clear cut case of actions contrary to the explicit terms of a relationship. Betrayal. If this hypothetical situation actually occurred it seems clear someone who would do such a thing cannot be trusted, should be ostracized, perhaps sent to prison, and definitely should not be put into a position of authority and power within the group ever again. At least that’s what would happen in a well functioning group with a shared sense of purpose, direction, and self-preservation. Hypothetically speaking.
Of course not every relationship involves written contracts or prescribed oaths. Most relationships are based on custom and trust so there may be genuine discrepancies between the expectations of each party. Thus an element of plausible deniability exists, “I swear I didn’t know you felt that way…”. Additionally a variety of relationship types, personal preferences, and the demands of life result in a hierarchy of obligations that occasionally come into conflict. The end result is that not all betrayals are manifestations of conscious villainy bent on social destabilization. There are relatively few Iagos among us. Often you’re just living your life and you end up between a rock and a hard place.
Let’s turn our attention to the betrayals of The Oresteia. When I consider the story, here’s what I come up with.
Paris/ Troy vs Menelaus / The World – violation of marriage and guest-host relationships
Clytemnestra vs Agamemnon – both conduct extramarital relationships, and there’s also the whole murder thing
Aegisthus vs Agamemnon – involvement with Clytemnestra and conspiracy to murder
Elektra and Orestes vs Clytemnestra – conspiracy to murder
The Furies vs Olympians and Humans – Olympians and Humans overstepping their jurisdiction into the realms of revenge and justice
One could debate this list. Elektra seems pretty openly defiant of her mother and stepfather, and Orestes reveals himself and plainly states his desire for revenge. In a culture where violence is supposed to be met with violence, one could argue he would be betraying his father if he failed to avenge the murder. This is the defense he and Apollo present at trial.
What happens when one party wants to define a relationship in a specific manner, but the other party disagrees? Is it betrayal to openly seek one’s own interests or a different method of reconciliation? Are the actions of The Olympians and Humans a genuine betrayal? By what authority do The Furies claim their “right” to enforce a specific type of justice and code of vengeance? Interesting questions for another day.
I’ve written thousands of words about the power of Xenia, the ancient Greek concept of the guest-host relationship in both ancient and modern contexts in previous journals, so I’ll spare the reader here.
The betrayal of Aegisthus seems straightforward, but not well developed in this play. The most noteworthy thing about it in my opinion is the fact that Aeschylus changes the narrative away from what appears to be the older, more traditional, version as contained in The Odyssey. In this trilogy Aegisthus is underdeveloped. His few lines are full of bravado, but the way he is perceived is clear; he is mocked by the chorus in Agamemnon, and his death is only prelude to the primary conflict between Clytemnestra and Orestes in Libation Bearers. He is not mentioned at all in Eumenides. I believe today’s youth would declare, “he thinks he’s Him, but actually gives no main character energy”. Clearly, Aeschylus is looking to focus on something and someone else.
There’s also the obvious one I didn’t include in this list: Agamemnon betraying his role as father and sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia at Aulis. This is an interesting conundrum for a modern reader. If I am asked to imagine a practice that marks a person or group as savage and barbaric the thing I imagine is human sacrifice. That or cannibalism. Consequently after the chorus tells us about the events at Aulis we have a premonition about what is gonna happen when Agamemnon gets back. When Agamemnon ends up dead at the hand of his wife I can’t help but think, “yeah, he probably had that coming”. Incidentally, the multi-generational family curse of The House of Atreus involves parents murdering children followed by cannibalism (Tantalus and Pelops, as well as Atreus and Thyestes’ children), and historically sacrificial animals were eaten in ancient Greece, so there’s that implication in this case as well. Agamemnon is arguably batting 1,000 on the whole evil barbarism business. Civilization destroying, slave-taking, human trafficking, child murdering, cannibal does not a sympathetic victim make.
The thing is Iphigenia seems absent from the hearts and minds of the ruling family of Argos. My first time reading the play I assumed Clytemnestra was exacting revenge for this murder, but she never actually says so. In fact her characterization may ultimately defy this assumption. She is described as a woman with the mind and actions of a man. After the signal fires are spotted and Clytemnestra leads out in making public sacrifices and rejoicing; the chorus is amazed and they question her potentially premature celebration of the victory at Troy and return of the army:
Chorus: And you have proof?
Clytemnestra: I do, I must. Unless the god is lying.
Chorus: That, or a phantom spirit sends you into raptures
Clytemnestra: No one takes me in with visions – senseless dreams
[alternate translation: I accept no guidance from a mind asleep (Meinick). ]
Chorus: Or giddy rumor, you haven’t indulged yourself
Clytemnestra: You treat me like a child, you mock me? (Fagles 272-277)
She then explains the details of her signal relay whose planning and execution clearly impresses them, “Spoken like a man, my lady, loyal, full of self-command. I’ve heard your sign and now your vision.” (Fagles 355-357) or “Lady, you speak wisely like a man of discretion” (Meinick) or “Woman, you talk like a sensible man” (Carson).
It seems there’s around 100 lines early on in the play devoted to building the case that Clytemnestra is “not like other women”. Homeric tradition primes the audience to expect Aegisthus as the lead conspirator; showing Clytemnestra as a capable “man-like” woman can be seen as foreshadowing her betrayal. In the sexist world of classical Athens, being a “woman with a mind like a man” seems to imply she is not only intelligent and capable, but ambitious and ruthless.
The genius and enterprise to set up her signal fire relay system, her dismissal of the approbation of the chorus, and her continued rule after Agamemnon’s death despite the fact he has an adult male heir in Orestes all speak to a woman of ambition. In the chaos following her lover Aegisthus’ murder by a “messenger” bearing news of her son’s death (the messenger of course is Orestes in disguise; she didn’t recognize her own son when she greeted him at the palace entrance), Clytemnestra comes rushing into the scene:
Clytemnestra: What ever is the matter? What is all this shouting in the house?
Servant: The living are killed by the dead!
Clytemnestra: I know what this riddle means, we killed by deceit and by deceit we die. Quickly, bring me the man-killing axe. Victory or defeat? We have come this far. Now we will know, once and for all. (Meineck 884-891)
We suffer and we learn, and we shall know the future when it comes.
The moment she learns her son is her foe (she had a premonitory dream about all this, but I thought she didn’t trust those?) she immediately called for the same axe she used to kill her husband.
There is ample evidence to believe Agamemnon’s murder isn’t a mother’s revenge for a stolen child, but a calculated betrayal and power grab. Elements of the play give the reader some latitude in how one interprets her actions, and I can’t help but find myself gravitating toward the aggrieved mother perspective as the root cause of her betrayal, but the treacherous, ambitious femme fatale is reasonable and fits with the text.
Clytemnestra may be caught up in her own agenda, but Iphigenia’s siblings don’t mention her either. I would expect Orestes and Elektra to discuss their pain and heartache over their situation and debate the business of revenge, kind of like Billy Shakeshaft does with our boy Hamlet. Something like, “Dammit this sucks! I kinda hated dad for killing Iphigenia, but the gods commanded it, and he was honor bound to go to Troy. I was looking forward to his homecoming and trying to mend things, but then mom… I mean I can’t say I blame her…. But then this whole thing with Aegisthus doesn’t feel right either….” There’s none of that going on in Libation Bearers. It’s all, “I just can’t wait to avenge our great and noble father on that lying whore mother!” That’s not an exact quote, but you get the idea. See Libation Bearers 235-513 for the extended “writer’s cut”.
The bottom line is that the basic assumption of the text is that Agamemnon didn’t betray his daughter and family when he killed Iphigenia. This attitude may or may not have reflected the attitude of the playwright and his audience. How could that be? First, recall that Aeschylus was writing about a time far enough in the past that imposing a certain level of anti-social behavior on his subjects is permissible and a time-honored tradition. Also recall that the post-Trojan War stories we have tend to focus on the dysfunction and inappropriate violence perpetrated by the Achaean victors. All this negativity may also be an attempt to account for the “dark age” between 1200 – 800 BCE. However, I think there’s another lesson Aeschylus doesn’t explicitly state, but that could be drawn.
The story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice as told by the Chorus is that the army was gathered at Aulis, ready to go to Troy, but they couldn’t leave because the prevailing winds were against them. There’s a mention that the army was nearly starving and almost defeated before ever stepping ashore at Troy. They’re desperate. Why in the world would an army gathered under the auspices of Zeus himself be so cursed?
One day two eagles are seen to swoop down out of the sky and snatch up a rabbit. As they rip into the rabbit, unborn rabbitlings spill out of her abdomen. The flight of birds consistently reveals the will of the gods in Ancient Greek myth. Calchas the prophet is summoned and asked to interpret the omen. His take is that the two eagles represent Agamemnon and Menelaus and the rabbit is Troy and the unborn rabbits are her women and children. The Achaeans are destined for victory and the “twin kings” for glory, however Artemis demands sacrifice. Why Artemis? She’s frequently cited as goddess of “the hunt” so there’s some logic there, but she’s also the goddess of hunted animals (kind of a weird combo right?) and also perplexing for a goddess who militantly maintains her perpetual virginity, she is also one of the goddesses of childbirth. Perhaps there’s a practical and implied taboo about hunting and killing pregnant animals. If you kill off the mothers you’ll destabilize the ecology of the system and ruin the hunt. So what? Maybe the goddess knew something the army didn’t?
The Achaeans famously spent 10 years besieging Troy. They didn’t supply themselves from home, they raided, pillaged, and destroyed cities all around. The plot of The Iliad is driven by a dispute over the prizes of war gained during one of these raids. If you’re so inclined, revisit the conversation between Agamemnon and Calchas in book one in light of the information you now have about their past interactions. Calchas seems to have a habit of taking young women away from Agamemnon. Anyway, when they finally breached their target’s famous walls their savagery incurred the wrath of many Olympians and famously resulted in death and destruction on their voyages home. See: The Odyssey Books 3 and 4. The Chorus has mentioned the lost generation of men whose ashes have returned home in urns. Agamemnon may have been pursuing a “righteous” war defending marriage and the customs of Xenia, but before it was said and done he and the army were going to do terrible and savage things.
Such is the nature of war. You may be preserving the union and liberating enslaved people, but there will be Gettysburg, Antietam, and Sherman’s March. You may be “making the world safe for democracy”, but you will fight The Battle of The Somme, and Gallipoli. You may be fighting back against an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, and liberating Jews and other minorities from death camps, but there will also be Omaha Beach, The Battle of The Bulge, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Thousands of innocent Americans were killed on 9/11, but hunting down suspected terrorists with drones resulted in accidentally bombing elementary schools. You’ll find yourself destroying hospitals when trying to defeat Hamas and recover hostages from a terrorist attack.
Maybe Artemis wanted to test Agamemnon’s commitment to his cause? Maybe she knew he needed a push to become the person who could complete the task? Maybe she knew that many other families sent their sons while his children stayed at home? Neither Calchas nor the chorus offer any actual explanation for why; child sacrifice was simply the price to satisfy the goddess. Maybe it was a test of his faith? I’m gonna resist the temptation to detour into the Book of Genesis here, but feel free to contemplate that on your own. The point is, the sacrifice of Iphigenia wouldn’t be the first or last time a divine mandate would defy human comprehension. The implied and explicit prerogatives of higher powers are frequently at odds with human understanding.
Calchas Cried, ‘My Captains, Artemis must have blood!’ – so harsh the sons of Atreus dashed their sceptres on the rocks, could not hold back the tears, I still can hear the older warlord saying,
‘Obey, obey, or a heavy doom will crush me! – Oh but doom will crush me once I rend my child, the glory of my house’–
A father’s hands are stained, blood of a young girl streaks the altar.
‘Pain both ways and what is worse? Desert the fleets, fail the alliance? No, but stop the winds with a virgin’s blood, feed their lust, their fury? – Feed their fury! Law is law! – Let all go well’
And once he slipped his neck in the strap of Fate, his spirit veering black, impure, unholy, once he turned he stopped at nothing, seized with the frenzy blinding driving to outrage – wretched frenzy, cause of all our grief!
This is the section of the play featuring the lines like “we must suffer, suffer into truth”, “From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench there comes a violent love”, and “we suffer and we learn, and we will know the future when it comes”.
The point here is that Agamemnon had multiple relationships intersecting at Aulis. He was not only a father, he was a king, a king of kings leading an army with a divine mandate. Despite the great power and authority he wielded among men, he was a subject of Zeus and all the gods. His defense of home and custom met with unexpected contradictions. He was placed in a position where he was going to betray someone; his men, his culture, the gods, his own ambition, or his daughter. He encountered the “violent love” of the gods, and suffered “into truth”. He learned that servicing one set of principles and relationships meant betraying another. The judgment implied in The Oresteia is that his choice, while terrible, was correct/appropriate, and his actions justified. You and I may disagree. I don’t intend to litigate the morality of that situation, but I hope to draw attention to how personal and cultural assumptions impact our perspectives about morals, duty, and acceptable behavior. The bottom line is that moral conflict and some forms of betrayal are not manifestations of social or personal decay, rather they are natural byproducts of having a variety of beliefs and relationships that necessitate the formation of a hierarchy of duties and obligations in our lives.
We suffer and we learn and we will know the future when it comes.
Within the internal logic of the story, personal and social judgment suggest that Agamemnon’s conduct was not the gross dereliction of basic familial duty and trust you and I see. This assumption colors all the action of the trilogy. If Agamemnon does not bear moral culpability for this act, then Clytemnestra has no grounds for vengeance, and the domestic violence against her husband is a sign that she is clearly in the wrong.
She is the dark mirror of Odysseus’ wife Penelope. Penelope is also intelligent and capable and waits patiently for 20 years. She resists suitors and keeps her son, Odysseus’ heir, under her protection and supervision. Clytemnestra has taken a lover while her husband is away leading a war to preserve marriage and xenia, fundamental tenets of civilization. She awaits her husband’s return while plotting his doom. She seeks to rule and sends the heir away. The message is clear: intelligent, and capable are great: Penelope played an important role in Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, but when combined with “a mind like a man” ambitious women will betray you and prove your demise. This is a deeply misogynistic point of view that matches the pervasive sexism of the time.
The key betrayal in the plot of The Oresteia is Clytemnestra’s infidelity: political as much as marital. This is the exact sort of thing that destabilizes home and society. The Chorus’ discussion of justice is primarily focused on how Paris’ violation of marriage is the great cause of all the social disruption over the past decade (359-466). Clytemnestra is guilty of essentially the same crimes, therefore social condemnation and punishment are warranted and necessary to maintain peace and order in a functioning group. In this light Orestes’ revenge shifts from pure matricide to something approaching a personal and social imperative. If we accept the premise that Clytemnestra was not avenging a lost daughter, instead she murdered out of ambition and lust, the narrative arc and internal logic of The Oresteia holds together very well. At its heart Agamemnon is a defense of duty to family/home, the gods, and country. It’s just the sort of thing a conservative radio talk show would proclaim as a proof of the venerable and shared values of western civilization. Right?
I’m sure there are many socially conservative people who come by their positions honestly. They genuinely want stable homes, peaceful cities and nations, and a reverence for something greater than our mundane lives. Traditional beliefs and practices like loyalty, fidelity, and duty to god(s) and community have a proven track record in this regard. The thing is that those desires and practices are often bound up with cultural assumptions about what is right, and worthy of preservation. There is a long and sad history of conservative arguments in defense of autocracy, racism, sexism, villainization of, and denial of civil rights to outgroups and foreigners.
Coupling genuinely useful and prosocial behaviors with self-serving and even hostile claims and policies in service of a political agenda isn’t new or isolated to a specific ideology, but conservatism, as the name implies, links these ideas to established power structures and an idealized past. Conservative isn’t what one would call a creative name. There’s nothing inherently wrong or even backward about looking to the wisdom of the past (see the thousands of words I’ve journaled on the subject of the past two years) or adopting traditional beliefs and behaviors on an individual or group level. There’s nothing wrong with bolstering existing social structures. Cultures have their own selective pressures and they grow and thrive only when they’re preserved and then adopted by succeeding generations. When viewed from afar, the questions Agamemnon raises are: what exactly are the core values that foster stability and peace within a society? How are they related to the beliefs and customs of specific groups? What values are worthy of conservation? Which can or should be discarded?
Despite the fetishization of “Western Civilization” and claims of cultural superiority by some, I doubt many modern social conservatives would use Agamemnon as a proof text supporting their agenda. In its lines domestic peace, piety, and patriotism are bound up with slavery, human sexual trafficking, monarchy, and polytheism. I don’t think even the most ardent defender of tradition in the 21st century would claim that slavery is indispensable to the proper functioning of civilization. Yet the United States fought a civil war based primarily on the question of the liberty of one human to keep another as property that claimed well over half a million lives. At some point many of the values we now accept as synonymous with peaceful coexistence and a fulfilling life were seen as betrayals to an older “traditional” way of doing things.
Conversely, a return to old ways would constitute a betrayal of what we now hold dear. There are very few Americans clamoring for a king. Fear of persecution arising from an official religion, a major motivation of early European colonization of what would become The United States, is why placing passages from the Bible in public schools frightens many. The reality is the past is an unreliable, or at least inconsistent, guide to questions of morality.
Consequently conservatives aren’t defending historical standards in general. They’re often not even interested in conserving any specific version of the past. They will praise the “founder’s vision” while simultaneously embracing the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and direct election of senators. They may borrow from inherited ideas, they may seek and find lessons drawn from history, they may cite precedent, and even claim authority through divine mandate, but they’re cherry-picking ideas that match their own interpretation of the past to wield in the present in the service of their own agenda for the future.
The Aeneid is a great example of just this behavior. Virgil re-writes the end of the Trojan War. Aeneas and a band of Trojans escape while the Greeks are sacking the city and eventually his descendants found Rome and return to conquer the Greeks in the form of The Roman Republic. Virgil also invents the source of everlasting enmity between Carthage and Rome when Aeneas spurns the advances of Dido. Prized Roman virtues of piety, honor, duty to family and state are exemplified in the narrative. He also proclaims Augustus as a direct descendant of Aeneas, a rightful heir to rule Rome. A convenient “fact” when you’re seeking to establish an autocracy in a society which has living memory of operating as a republic for the past 500 years.
Consider the historic flip-flop of the two main American political parties. In the 19th century the Republican party considerably expanded the scope of the US. Government and civil liberties. The prosecution of the civil war, “radical reconstruction”, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution, the development of antitrust legislation and move away from laissez-faire economic policy all represent revisions and expansion of scope and authority of the Federal government. The 18th amendment, prohibition, was sponsored by Republicans, and a Republican congress overrode Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s veto to pass the Volstead act that actually enforced prohibition. The 16th amendment, the one that allows for the imposition of income taxes, was enacted during a Republican administration and while it was bi-partisan, relied on support from the Theordore Roosevelt leaning branch of the party to pass. Compare that history with the mantras that “government is the problem” , “taxation is theft”, open hostility to voting rights, and a relentless focus on deregulation. Consider the shift in rhetoric on free-trade in the past decade by the GOP. The insight to be gained here is that like liberalism, or progressivism, or really any other social “ism”, conservatism is not a comprehensive, logical, internally consistent philosophy or identity. It is a marketing strategy defined relative to time, public sentiment, and an agenda. That doesn’t make it good or bad, but I think it seriously undercuts its primary claim to authority.
Wow. An untrustworthy politician? That’s one profound insight Mark. Based on the fact that we spent an estimated 16 Billion dollars on the 2024 election cycle, and there are people who believe god almighty himself spared the life of Donald Trump to become president while selling millions of hats emblazoned with the slogan “Make America Great Again”, I’d say many folks are blind to this reality.
To reiterate conservatism is far from unique in this respect. To the extent an idea is presented on its own merits be they philosophical, data driven, or even purely emotional, a person, movement, or culture can and should adopt the ideas that make sense and are aligned with their vision of the world. But if the idea’s primary support is drawn from the venerable past, tradition, or divine mandate, then it seems to me that a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. The moral compass that pointed Agamemnon toward sacrificing his own daughter was aligned with widely accepted “conservative” values of his time, yet you and I see a clear betrayal of his role as a father. When the Republican controlled North Carolina State legislature crafted a voter ID law specifically designed to disenfranchise black voters who frequently vote for Democrats, were they not betraying the heritage of their party? The point here is not an attempted “takedown” of Republicans, but an argument that like individuals, groups of people are placed in the situation where our hierarchy of values, informed by our specific time and situation, forces inevitable betrayals.
In my introduction I pointed out that our standards for betrayal are more relaxed than one might expect. I suggested this failure may find its roots in self-preservation; we all betray someone at some point. As a young person I was taught that imperfection or behavioral inconsistency was primarily a sign of human frailty. Conscious failure to act in accordance with beliefs and standards had a name. Not betrayal. Sin. And sin was unacceptable. Abrahamic religions have some ugly and beautiful ways of coping with sin that I don’t intend to get into here. The thing is that the supposed moral clarity of life and the definite nature of sin doesn’t strike me as fully compatible with reality. I acknowledge that humans, including me, make decisions predicated on fear, ambition, lust, pride, and anger with disappointing consistency. We often do so willingly, with utter clarity about the transgression of our claimed values, and the potential negative consequences of these decisions. In that sense something like sin exists and it is in our individual and collective interests to find ways of curbing our enthusiasm for self-destructive behaviors. Having acknowledged that, it is also clear that conflicts between values also drive behaviors that contradict our stated beliefs and therefore some forms of “sin” are unavoidable. The negative consequences of these “necessary evils” are no less real than when a decision results from malice or greed. Even if you choose to define “sin” differently than I have, or you choose to entirely reject the notion, the conundrum remains: should we distinguish between betrayals based on selfish desire and ambition versus those stemming from genuine moral conflict? If so, how? What standards should we use and how do we enforce judgments? These are questions of justice, the subject of Libations Bearers and Eumenides, and as luck would have it, my next essays.
MaximumKungFu 
