Aeschylus

Persians and Three Other Plays: Seven Against Thebes, Suppliant Maidens, and Prometheus Bound Aeschylus

The tragedies in this volume of Aeschylus' works demonstrate the ills and flaws of the old ways of Politics and of Justice and demonstrate the virtues of the new ways, the democratic ways, the ways that included the common man as a "man-equal-to-all-men," in fact to all gods, including Zeus.

These ills and flaws of the old ways of pursuing justice through vengeance, revenge and blood-for-blood vendettas were acted out on a most brutal stage in the series of tragedies based on myths well known to the audience.

Here the poet exhorts his fellow Athenians to give power not to a single man, as did the Persians with their kings but to each other. Their neighbours, their friends, their equals. Justice and Politics are best served by a unified group of equals rather than by a single man, or God, like Zeus.