The political thought of the Suppliant women

Euripides' play the Suppliant Women was long neglected as an inferior tragic piece. The situation changed when Murray and, especially, Zuntz evaluated its qualities. Nowadays it is firmly established as a true political play with a very complex structure. There are many terms, images, symbols and concepts in Euripides' Suppliant Women which betray a reflection of both more ancient and contemporary political and social theorising and at the same time there are elements of contemporary public patriotic celebration and state ideology. Therefore, this paper focuses on two apparent political levels which are interwoven into the text itself: 1. the Athenian self-image and ideology and 2. political theory.