Advantage none; the poor hath equal right.
[Way’s translation]
Equally effective with any jingoes in the audience would be the scene in the Persians. Here Aeschylus “pays a pleasant compliment to Athenian vanity” by means of the following dialogue (vss. 231 ff.):
Atossa. Where, O friends, is famous Athens on the broad face of the earth?
Chorus. Far in the west: beside the setting of the lord of light the sun.
Atossa. This same Athens, my son Xerxes longed with much desire to take.
Chorus. Wisely: for all Greece submissive, when this city falls, will fall.
Atossa. Are they many? do they number men enough to meet my son?
Chorus. What they number was sufficient once to work the Medes much harm.