The characters who inhabit ancient tragedy continue to burn themselves into our consciousness. Oedipus, Antigone, Clytemnestra, and Electra all offer us visions of heroes and villains, personalities and psychologies caught in the labyrinthine consequences of their own characters and of fate. Yet, ancient tragedy goes well beyond the portrayal of the actions and choices of these commanding figures. Through the presentation of an Antigone or an Oedipus or an Orestes, it explores as well the challenges entailed in the founding of political communities. Today, whether we turn to the newly democratizing states or the issues surrounding the creation of a political union in Europe, our understanding of political beginnings and communal life often resides in the process of constitution making, the creation of institutions, and legal safeguards intended to provide for the security and protection of individual freedom. The ancient Athenians, writing long before the legalistic language of constitutions came to define political foundings, grappled with a range of issues that force us to reflect on the beginnings of political communities and to take those concerns well beyond the abstract legalistic focus that dominates the contemporary process. The tragedians recognize the myths, the gender-laden choices, the exclusions at the base of assertions of political order.