"Evil gains work their punishment"
About this Quote
A grim bit of moral bookkeeping hides inside Sophocles' clean, almost legal phrasing: "Evil gains work their punishment". The line doesn’t thunder about justice; it clicks into place like a mechanism. "Gains" is the tell. Sophocles isn’t only condemning wicked acts, but the profit motive behind them - the idea that wrongdoing is a rational transaction with upside. His claim is sharper: the reward is not merely followed by punishment; it manufactures it. The consequence is baked into the payout.
That’s classic Greek tragedy logic, where the universe doesn’t need a detective or a jury to catch you. The crime arrives carrying its own sentence. Think of Sophoclean heroes and rulers who grab what they want - power, certainty, revenge, a shortcut around the gods - and discover that the spoils warp them, isolate them, and trigger the chain reaction that destroys their house. Punishment isn’t always a lightning bolt; it’s the slow conversion of ill-gotten advantage into paranoia, public unraveling, and the kind of irreversible choice that makes later repentance irrelevant.
The subtext is politically pointed. In a civic culture that watched leaders rise and fall in public, "evil gains" also means corrupt victories: the win secured by lying, coercion, or impiety. Sophocles suggests such success is unstable by nature. It demands upkeep, more wrongdoing to protect the first wrongdoing, until the original "gain" becomes a trap. The line works because it denies the fantasy at the heart of vice: that you can take the benefit without inheriting the cost.
That’s classic Greek tragedy logic, where the universe doesn’t need a detective or a jury to catch you. The crime arrives carrying its own sentence. Think of Sophoclean heroes and rulers who grab what they want - power, certainty, revenge, a shortcut around the gods - and discover that the spoils warp them, isolate them, and trigger the chain reaction that destroys their house. Punishment isn’t always a lightning bolt; it’s the slow conversion of ill-gotten advantage into paranoia, public unraveling, and the kind of irreversible choice that makes later repentance irrelevant.
The subtext is politically pointed. In a civic culture that watched leaders rise and fall in public, "evil gains" also means corrupt victories: the win secured by lying, coercion, or impiety. Sophocles suggests such success is unstable by nature. It demands upkeep, more wrongdoing to protect the first wrongdoing, until the original "gain" becomes a trap. The line works because it denies the fantasy at the heart of vice: that you can take the benefit without inheriting the cost.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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