The Cilician Marshes shimmered beneath the star-strewn sky, the night as calm and fluid as water. Themis leaned back in her wicker chair, absentmindedly flipping through the parchment scroll in her hands.
The case was as follows: A father sacrificed his daughter in offering; the mother, consumed by hatred, conspired with her lover to kill him. The son, in turn, killed his mother to avenge his father.
The verdict ruled that the son should be acquitted.
Such righteous revenge, it was decided, ought to be forgiven.
"I cannot agree with this judgment."
After long contemplation, Themis lifted her head and shook it gravely.
Samael raised his cup, sipped the crystal dew within, and arched a brow.
"In the eyes of the son, the mother is nothing more than his father's murderer—an enemy. To him, she is not a mother."
"Avenging one's father—isn't that a noble act?"
Themis straightened, her tone resolute.
"If the son is innocent, then what crime did the mother commit in avenging her daughter?"
"There is no need to dress up the act of killing one's kin. If their sins cancel each other out, then all he did was kill an innocent woman."
Across from her, the ancient serpent countered.
"The father is the true sower; the mother is merely a vessel. The father is more important than the mother."
"The justice of a son avenging his father is far nobler than a mother venting her resentment!"
The fingertips of the goddess of justice brushed lightly across the parchment, her expression solemn.
"In raising children, the father provides the seed, the mother the womb. Both leave the same bloodline in their heirs."
"Furthermore, motherhood—the instinct to bear and protect children—is the foundation of the world's birth. Shouldn't a mother seeking justice for her daughter be the nobler act?"
Then Themis seemed to recall something. A faint smile curved her lips.
"Besides, if we weigh the justice of parental status..."
"A child can live without a father, but never without a mother."
"Even Uranus, Father of the Sky, was born from Gaia, Mother of the Earth, alone."
"It was the mother who created the father."
At this, Samael's expression grew peculiar, his eyes gleaming with subtle amusement.
This case, in fact, drew from Aeschylus's tragedy Orestes, adapted from the myths of old Greece.
During the famous Trojan War to come, the Greek commander Agamemnon led his army but was trapped by storms. To appease the sea god, he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia.
His wife, Clytemnestra, enraged, took a lover. Ten years later, when Agamemnon returned triumphant, she assassinated him at home, her lover seizing the throne.
Their young son, Orestes, only twelve at the time, fled in exile, vowing revenge. Years later he returned, and with his sister Electra, killed his mother and her lover.
But though he avenged his father, he was now guilty of matricide. Driven mad, hounded by the Furies, he could find no peace and wandered in torment.
At last, Apollo led him to Athens to seek the judgment of Athena, goddess of wisdom.
The sun god defended Orestes, claiming the father was the true begetter, and that one could exist without a mother—just as Athena had sprung from Zeus's head.
In the end, Athena, forced to decide, cast the tie-breaking vote. Orestes was acquitted and returned to Mycenae to claim the throne.
But if Themis had stood among them and thrown Gaia's creation of Uranus into Apollo's face, one could only imagine the expression of the sun god.
After all, if fathers are created by mothers, then wouldn't a mother killing a father be all the more justified?
And let's not forget—Uranus himself was castrated at Gaia's bidding by his son Kronos.
If Apollo dared to claim again that fathers outweighed mothers, or that avenging a father was more righteous, he'd be slapping Greece's great ancestress across the face.
Marvelous! Truly marvelous!
The schemer narrowed his eyes, quietly tucking the argument away for later.
"So, in your view, the son deserves the death penalty?"
Themis shook her head, frowning in thought before answering.
"If I were the judge, I would choose exile, not execution."
"Oh? Why? Matricide is a capital crime."
Samael's lips curved with faint amusement as he asked.
Themis's pale fingers stroked the parchment, her poise serene as she spoke.
"A mother avenging her daughter is, to some extent, understandable."
"But she enthroned her lover, leaving a twelve-year-old prince marked as an enemy by usurpers."
"The claim of avenging one's father cannot stand."
"Yet when one's life is threatened, extreme measures taken in self-preservation ought to be forgiven."
She paused, her brow knit slightly, her tone calm and measured.
"However, the prince survived his childhood peril, escaped, and only as an adult returned to kill both his mother and her lover."
"That stretches beyond the limits of self-defense. Sympathetic, yes—but not grounds for full acquittal."
"Still, before facing judgment he had already been cursed and driven mad by the Furies for years. The punishment must be lessened accordingly."
"Taking all this into account, stripping him of his greatest treasure—his claim to the throne—and casting him into permanent exile is, to me, the most fitting judgment."
The trial closed. Themis let out a breath of relief. But when she gathered herself again, she realized silence had fallen.
The weight of Samael's gaze made her hand rise instinctively to her cheek, where warmth was already blooming. A blush spread to her ears, and her body shifted slightly, uneasy.
"Why? Was my judgment wrong?"
Samael snapped to, shaking his head rapidly.
"No, no! You're right! Absolutely right!"
"Your grasp of law and arbitration far surpasses what I imagined!"
Amazing. In such a short time, she had already introduced concepts like "self-defense" and "excessive self-defense" into the case, and her reasoning was flawless.
Even in the well-developed legal systems of his past life, the outcome would have been much the same.
The Mycenaean prince's matricide could be likened to excessive self-defense compounded by mental illness—a devastating combination.
At most, he would have lost his political rights for life and been sentenced to life imprisonment. Perhaps he'd even be granted medical parole, locked away in a psychiatric ward, cut off from the world.
Wasn't that exile, with his inheritance revoked, in all but name?
To see such a judgment in the barbaric Age of Gods—one so close to modern law—was astonishing.
What more could he say? Inwardly, Samael cheered with a string of "66666," raising banners for the goddess of justice.