How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #4
(Apollo): "It is quite improper that you approach this temple—go rather where justice is decapitation and gouged-out eyes, and slaughtered throats; where boys' downy virility is foully destroyed by castration; where extremities are amputated and stonings done; and where men impaled up into their spine moan long and piteously. Do you hear? This is the kind of festivity for which your fondness makes you abominable to the gods." (185-191)
Here, once again, we see the conflict between different ideas of justice. By listing all these horrible tortures and punishments, Apollo implies that the Furies' idea of justice isn't justice at all.
Quote #5
(Apollo): "A man and wife's marriage-bed once under destiny is greater than any oath, with justice as its guardian. If therefore you are lax in exacting payment from them when they kill each other, and in watching over them with your rancor, I say you are driving Orestes into exile unjustly. I know that you lay the one thing very much to heart, but evidently you pursue the other more gently. Pallas however will watch over the pleas in this case."
(Chorus of Furies): "I will never leave this man alone!" (217-225)
So what's Apollo saying here? Basically, it looks like he's accusing the Furies of being inconsistent. How can they be chasing down Orestes, planning to kill him, when they didn't do anything to punish Clytemnestra for killing her husband Agamemnon? That looks pretty unfair, doesn't it? And what's unfair can't be just, can it? The Furies' lame comeback ("I will never leave this man alone!") certainly looks like they're just trying to avoid getting beaten in the argument.
Quote #6
(Chorus of Furies):
"And when I have withered you I will lead you off below, alive,
to pay the penalty for the matricide and its horror.
You shall see too every other mortal man who has sinned
in not reverencing a god or a stranger
or his own parents,
each one with his just deserts.
Hades is mortal men's great auditor
beneath the earth;
with the written tablets of his mind he watches over everything." (267-275)
Here, the Furies express a belief in divine justice. The god of death (Hades) presides over a kingdom of dead souls who have all gotten their own "just desserts." This still places the Furies in opposition to the view of justice put forward at the end of the play, however, which is (partly) in human hands.