Counterpunch has an opinion piece using Aschylus' Oresteia as a point of departure for discussion of the US Patriot Act. Here's the incipit:
The foundations of modern law lie in a play about the trial of a refugee. It is in Aeschylus's Oresteia that we find the fulcrum on which law pivots from custom and religion to become a social contract, to which, in theory, at least, we all are parties. Human beings, not the gods, rationally have created a system of dispute resolution, to which we subordinate our irrational, piratical proclivities. From law as custom, symbolized by the titan Themis, whose blindfolded statue we place atop our court houses, come the impulses we seek through law to institutionalize: and no custom is more universally observed among primitive cultures than the obligation of hospitality to strangers. When the scope of expected rights was extended to protect the alien as well as the familiar, concrete custom became abstract justice. Our attitude toward foreigners thus measures the amplitude or meanness of our political vision, and probably predicts our prospects for survival.
Aeschylus, who died in 456 BC, wrote at the pinnacle of Greek power and optimism, a time when the aliens in Athens, called "metics," were honored, and invited to participate in the major religious festivals of the city. The Athenians enjoyed a prosperous mercantile economy, powered by the genius of artisans from all over the "known" world. Like the Americans after World War II, the Athenians believed that their recent victory over the mighty Persians was more than a military victory; they felt it was also a moral triumph of civilization over barbarism. It was the time when the arts, literature, philosophy, architecture, which we now consider the glory of ancient Greece, were flowering. The Athenians, like the founding fathers of the United States (in spite of slave owning and patriarchy) loved jealously their democracy, and therefore prized debate and persuasion over raw force.
[the rest]
The foundations of modern law lie in a play about the trial of a refugee. It is in Aeschylus's Oresteia that we find the fulcrum on which law pivots from custom and religion to become a social contract, to which, in theory, at least, we all are parties. Human beings, not the gods, rationally have created a system of dispute resolution, to which we subordinate our irrational, piratical proclivities. From law as custom, symbolized by the titan Themis, whose blindfolded statue we place atop our court houses, come the impulses we seek through law to institutionalize: and no custom is more universally observed among primitive cultures than the obligation of hospitality to strangers. When the scope of expected rights was extended to protect the alien as well as the familiar, concrete custom became abstract justice. Our attitude toward foreigners thus measures the amplitude or meanness of our political vision, and probably predicts our prospects for survival.
Aeschylus, who died in 456 BC, wrote at the pinnacle of Greek power and optimism, a time when the aliens in Athens, called "metics," were honored, and invited to participate in the major religious festivals of the city. The Athenians enjoyed a prosperous mercantile economy, powered by the genius of artisans from all over the "known" world. Like the Americans after World War II, the Athenians believed that their recent victory over the mighty Persians was more than a military victory; they felt it was also a moral triumph of civilization over barbarism. It was the time when the arts, literature, philosophy, architecture, which we now consider the glory of ancient Greece, were flowering. The Athenians, like the founding fathers of the United States (in spite of slave owning and patriarchy) loved jealously their democracy, and therefore prized debate and persuasion over raw force.
[the rest]