Zeus was afraid. For want of political skill men could not live together in communities. They were always at war with each other. So he called his winged messenger Hermes and told him to impart to ‘men the qualities of respect for others and a sense of justice, so as to bring order into our cities and create a bond of friendship and union’. Hermes was puzzled. Did Zeus mean that these skills should be given to some men only, so that there should be experts in politics, like doctors in medicine? Or should all men be given these qualities? Zeus replied: ‘Let all have their share. There could never be cities if only a few shared in these virtues, as in the arts’. And so the Athenians – who would have ‘refused to accept anything but expert advice in any craft’ – ‘when the subject of their counsel involves political wisdom, which must always follow the path of wisdom and moderation … listen to everyman's opinion, for they think that everyone must share in this kind of virtue; otherwise the state could not exist’. This allegory is one of the earliest assertions in the Western tradition that the basis of survival of state power is equal participation in what it does by all its members.