Ancient Greek
Aeschylus
525–456 BC
“It profits much to learn through suffering The bliss of self-control.”
Aeschylus was an Athenian tragic poet who fought as a soldier at Marathon and staged his plays at the civic festivals of Dionysus. Of the works that survive, the is the one the later tradition keeps answering. There blood calls for blood until the sequence cannot end inside the household. In the Eumenides, Athena founds a court, the Furies yield their private right of pursuit, and justice becomes a civic office. The drama moves the blood-claim from the family into the city. Later accounts of law, punishment, and the political community still start from that scene.
In the Conversation
4 of the Great Ideas