In a legalistic system of justice, human beings are responsible for their actions because they are assumed to have at least some control over their own actions and their environment. Therefore, taking into consideration certain mitigating factors, they can be judged for their actions, and be punished accordingly. Someone who orchestrated the killing of her husband, because her husband murdered a child, like Clytemnestra in the "Oresteia" of the early Greek playwright Aeschylus might be treated with some mercy by a jury. The jury would take into consideration f her feelings for her dead child, although the fact that she took a lover later on might count against her, as it would suggest a less sympathetic motive for the murder of her husband, as would the long period of premeditation of Clytemnestra's actions. But in the in mythic and heroic tradition of archaic society, the justice of the gods prevails, not the justice of equal or objective judgment and retribution, and everything happens according to the plan of Zeus.
             The belief and emphasis on fate in Greek philosophy and literature is the main reason that Agamemnon is not portrayed as evil, despite the fact he has committed what we would call a horrible crime. It is assumed that he had to kill the girl to bring the fair winds of Troy, to bring back Helen, as the gods asked for the girl's "virgin blood" (9). He is said to have been "gulled" and "hauled" into evil, rather than to have willed the sacrifice to happen (9). Willing to go against the gods was one of the greatest crimes in Greek religion, even more so than murder that is why Clytemnestra's willed act of revenge against Agamemnon, in defiance of the god Apollo's bidding, is portrayed in such a negative light. Clytemnestra is angry (justifiably so, a modern reader might counter) that her daughter was killed so men could go to war, but because the gods wanted it to...