Whether Sophocles, as a man and a citizen, accepted this morality is beside the point. What matters is how he saw retaliation as a tragic process. An offence is committed. Someone suffers and retaliates. By his act, the first doer suffers; and this suffering, in its turn, evokes retaliation (by the sufferer or by his representative). And so there is set up a chain of action and passion which appears to have no end. Offence and retaliation; crime and counter-crime. It is nothing short of a formula for tragedy. It is certainly the formula upon which the Oresteia of Aeschylus is constructed.
References
Punishment Theory and Practice
Fiona Mary McHardy (1999). The Ideology of Revenge in Ancient Greek Culture: A Study of Ancient Athenian Revenge Ethics. University of Exeter. https://bit.ly/3lc2Kc2
https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.322388
Charles Segal (1999). Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles. Chapter 8: Electra: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 249–. ISBN 978-0-8061-3136-8.
Kucharski_Patterns_of_revenge_in_Greek_tragedy.pdf
A Religious Function of Greek Tragedy: A Study in the Oedipus Coloneus and the Oresteia
Author(s): R. P. Winnington-Ingram
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 74 (1954), pp. 16-24
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/627550
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